who had given themselves up as lost and doomed to die in
the fathomless vast.

"When Columbus heard the glad cry he knelt in rapture on the deck
and with clasped hands lifted his joy-filled eyes to Heaven and
intoned the 'Gloria in Excelsis' to the Author of all things.

"The signs of land now made it high time to prepare for the
debarkation for which all measures had been wisely planned by the
admiral, who had never doubted the realization of his predictions.

"Each moment brought a revelation. A solitary, half-tamed
turtle-dove flew near them and was followed by a floating, leafy
reed.

"About two in the morning of October 12th, amid the sheen of the
stars and phosphorescence of the sea, one of the crew, with eyes
accustomed, like some nocturnal creature, to the darkness, cried
'Land! land!'

* * * * * * * * *

"Columbus donned his richest apparel, upon his shoulders a cloak of
rosy purple, and grasped in one hand the sword of combat and in the
other the Redeemer's cross; then, disembarking, he knelt upon the
land, and, with uplifted arms, joined with his followers in the Te
Deum."

In these paintings much is left to the imagination, which renders them
all the more beautiful and poetical, although also in them the artist
has accurately portrayed the caravels, costumes, figures and indications
of the nearby shore, so that the scenes are vividly brought to mind as
actually described in the journals of the great navigator himself and
his first biographer, his own son Ferdinand.

It is not the purpose of the author to write history, and yet how
tempting, in the study of these pictures, is it to reflect upon and
recall the romance which surrounds the whole life of Columbus and his
period: the honors which he received on his return to Spain, his
subsequent two additional voyages of discovery, when, to those of the
first, consisting of San Salvador, Cuba, and the other islands, he added
that of the continent of South America; how he returned from his third
voyage in chains and afterwards died in poverty and forgotten at
Valladolid, on May 20, 1506, his name scarcely mentioned at the time in
the records of that town; how still stranger that Columbus never knew
that he had discovered a new continent, but believed that, as he had
originally intended, he had reached the shores of the Indi