ll
any one wonder that Columbus was something less than sane after all he
had gone through, and with the beginnings of a serious illness already in
his blood. His achievement was slipping from his grasp; the gold had not
been found, the wonders of the East had not been discovered; and it was
his instinct to secure something from the general wreck that seemed to be
falling about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused
him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba. He
thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation
that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as
insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that
way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again
in such a place. He wished his journey, therefore, not to have been made
in vain; and as he himself believed that he had stood on the mainland of
Asia he took care to take back with him the only kind of evidence that
was possible namely, the sworn affidavits of the ships' crews.

Perhaps in his madness he would really have gone on and tried to reach
the Golden Chersonesus of Ptolemy, which according to Marco Polo lay just
beyond, and so to steer homeward round Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope;
in which case he would either have been lost or would have discovered
Mexico. The crews, however, would not hear of the voyage being continued
westward. The ships were leaking and the salt water was spoiling the
already doubtful provisions and he was forced to turn back. He stood to
the south-east, and reached the Isle of Pines, to which he gave the name
of Evangelista, where the water-casks were filled, and from there he
tried to sail back to the east. But he found himself surrounded by
islands and banks in every direction, which made any straight course
impossible. He sailed south and east and west and north, and found
himself always back again in the middle of this charmed group of islands.
He spent almost a month trying to escape from them, and once his ship
went ashore on a sandbank and was only warped off with the greatest
difficulty. On July 7th he was back again in the region of the "Queen's
Gardens," from which he stood across to the coast of Cuba.

He anchored and landed there, and being in great distress and difficulty
he had a large cross erected on the mainland, and had mass said. When
the Spaniards rose from their knees