sted for the first time; they also brought
merchandise from a far land denoting some high civilisation. Columbus
believed that he had reached the golden east, whence the gold had been
obtained for Solomon's temple.

Had Columbus only sailed west he might have discovered Mexico with
all its wealth, and "a succession of splendid discoveries would have
shed fresh glory on his declining age, instead of his sinking amidst
gloom, neglect, and disappointment." At the isthmus of Darien,
Columbus gave up the search. He was weary of the bad weather. Incessant
downpours of rain, storms of thunder and lightning with terrific
seas--these discouraged him. Disaster followed disaster. The food was
nearly finished; the biscuit "was so full of maggots that the people
could only eat it in the dark, when they were not visible." Columbus
himself seemed to be at the point of death. "Never," he wrote, "was
the sea seen so high, so terrific, so covered with foam; the waters
from heaven never ceased--it was like a repetition of the deluge."

He reached Spain in 1504 to be carried ashore on a litter, and to learn
that the Queen of Spain was dead. He was friendless, penniless, and
sick unto death.

"After twenty years of toil and peril," he says pitifully, "I do not
own a roof in Spain."

"I, lying here, bedridden and alone,
Cast off, put by, scouted by count and king,
The first discoverer starves."

And so the brilliant navigator, Christopher Columbus, passed away,
all unconscious of the great New World he had reached. Four centuries
have passed away, but--

"When shall the world forget
The glory and the debt,
Indomitable soul,
Immortal Genoese?
Not while the shrewd salt gale
Whines amid shroud and sail,
Above the rhythmic roll
And thunder of the seas."

It has been well said, "injustice was not buried with Columbus," and
soon after his death an attempt was made, and made successfully, to
name the New World after another--a Florentine pilot, Amerigo
Vespucci.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE WORLD, DRAWN IN 1500, THE FIRST TO SHOW
AMERICA. By Juan de la Cosa, who is supposed to have been the pilot
of Columbus. At the top, between the two green masses representing
America, La Cosa has drawn Columbus as St. Christopher carrying the
infant Christ, according to the legend.]

It was but natural that when the first discoveries by Columbus of land
to westward had been made known, that others shou