40] and the
treachery,[41] coolness, or contempt of courts. On Friday,[42] the 3d
of August, 1492, a squadron of three small, crazy ships, bearing ninety
men, sailed from the port of Palos, in Andalusia. Columbus, the
commander and pilot, was deeply impressed with sentiments of religion;
and, as the spread of Christianity was one great object of the
expedition, he and his followers before their departure had implored the
blessing of Heaven[43] upon the voyage, from which they might never
return.

They steered at first for the Canaries, over a well-known course; but on
the 6th of September they sailed from Gomera, the most distant of those
islands, and, leaving the usual track of navigation, stretched westward
into the unknown sea. And still ever westward for six-and-thirty days
they bent their course through the dreary desert of waters; terrified by
the changeless wind that wafted them hour after hour further into the
awful solitude, and seemed to forbid the prospect of return; bewildered
by the altered hours of day and night, and more than all by the
mysterious variation of their only guide, for the magnetic needle no
longer pointed to the pole.[44] Then strange appearances in the sea
aroused new fears: vast quantities of weeds covered the surface,
retarding the motion of the vessels; the sailors imagined that they had
reached the utmost boundary of the navigable ocean, and that they were
rushing blindly into the rocks and quicksands of some submerged
continent.

The master mind turned all these strange novelties into omens of
success. The changeless wind was the favoring breath of the Omnipotent;
the day lengthened as they followed the sun's course; an ingenious
fiction explained the inconstancy of the needle; the vast fields of
sea-weed bespoke a neighboring shore; and the flight of unknown
birds[45] was hailed with happy promise. But as time passed on, and
brought no fulfillment of their hopes, the spirits of the timid began to
fail; the flattering appearances of land had repeatedly deceived them;
they were now very far beyond the limit of any former voyage. From the
timid and ignorant these doubts spread upward, and by degrees the
contagion extended from ship to ship: secret murmurs rose to
conspiracies, complaints, and mutiny. They affirmed that they had
already performed their duty in so long pursuing an unknown and hopeless
course, and that they would no more follow a desperate adventurer to
destruction. Some