in dealing with his crew, and it marked the beginning of a long struggle
with deceived and mutinous subordinates, which forms so large a part of
the record of his subsequent career.

The result of Monday's sail, which he knew to be sixty leagues, he noted
as forty-eight, so that the distance from home might appear less than it
was. He continued to practise this deceit.

The distances given by Columbus are those of dead reckoning beyond any
question. Lieutenant Murdock, of the United States Navy, who has
commented on this voyage, makes his league the equivalent of three
modern nautical miles, and his mile about three-quarters of our present
estimate for that distance. Navarrete says that Columbus reckoned in
Italian miles, which are a quarter less than Spanish miles. The Admiral
had expected to make land after sailing about seven hundred leagues from
Ferro; and in ordering his vessels in case of separation to proceed
westward, he warned them when they sailed that distance to come to the
wind at night, and only to proceed by day.

The log as at present understood in navigation had not yet been devised.
Columbus depended in judging of his distance on the eye alone, basing
his calculations on the passage of objects or bubbles past the ship,
while the running out of his hour glasses afforded the multiple for long
distances.

On Thursday, the 13th of September, he notes that the ships were
encountering adverse currents. He was now three degrees west of Flores,
and the needle of the compass pointed as it had never been observed
before, directly to the true north. His observation of this fact marks a
significant point in the history of navigation. The polarity of the
magnet, an ancient possession of the Chinese, had been known perhaps for
three hundred years, when this new spirit of discovery awoke in the
fifteenth century. The Indian Ocean and its traditions were to impart,
perhaps through the Arabs, perhaps through the returning Crusaders, a
knowledge of the magnet to the dwellers on the shores of the
Mediterranean, and to the hardier mariners who had pushed beyond the
pillars of Hercules, so that the new route to that same Indian Ocean was
made possible in the fifteenth century. The way was prepared for it
gradually. The Catalans from the port of Barcelona pushed out into the
great Sea of Darkness under the direction of their needles, as early at
least as the twelfth century. The pilots of Genoa and Venice, the hardy
Ma