Project Gutenberg's Christopher Columbus, Complete, by Filson Young

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Title: Christopher Columbus, Complete

Author: Filson Young

Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #4116]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY

A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG

TO
THE RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
K.C.V.O., D.C.L., F.R.S.

MY DEAR HORACE,

Often while I have been studying the records of colonisation in the New
World I have thought of you and your difficult work in Ireland; and I
have said to myself, "What a time he would have had if he had been
Viceroy of the Indies in 1493!" There, if ever, was the chance for a
Department such as yours; and there, if anywhere, was the place for the
Economic Man. Alas! there war only one of him; William Ires or Eyre, by
name, from the county Galway; and though he fertilised the soil he did it
with his blood and bones. A wonderful chance; and yet you see what came
of it all. It would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you
are trying to undo some of Columbus's work, and to stop up the hole he
made in Ireland when he found a channel into which so much of what was
best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each
your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you
may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really
answering the same call and working in the same vineyard. For we all set
out to discover new worlds; and they are wise who realise early that
human nature has roots that spread beneath the ocean bed, that neither
latitude nor longitude nor time itself can change it to anything richer
or stranger than what it is, and that furrows ploughed in it are furrows
ploughed in the sea sand. Columbus tried to pour the wine of
civilisation into very old bottles; you, more wisely, are trying to pour
the old wine of our country into new