ne who was coming to make him
happier still. It is a splendid setting, this, for the sea adventurer;
a charming picture that one has of him there so long ago, walking on the
white shores of the great sweeping bay, with the glorious purple
Atlantic sparkling and thundering on the sands, as it sparkles and
thunders to-day. A place empty and vivid, swept by the mellow winds;
silent, but for the continuous roar of the sea; still, but for the
scuttling of the rabbits among the sand-hills and the occasional passage
of a figure from the mills up to the sugar-fields; but brilliant with
sunshine and colour and the bright environment of the sea. It was upon
such scenes that he looked during this happy pause in his life; they
were the setting of Philippa's dreams and anxieties as the time of
motherhood drew near; and it was upon them that their little son first
opened his eyes, and with the boom of the Atlantic breakers that he
first mingled his small voice.

It is but a moment of rest and happiness; for Christopher the scene is
soon changed, and he must set forth upon a voyage again, while Philippa
is left, with a new light in her eyes, to watch over the atom that wakes
and weeps and twists and struggles and mews, and sleeps again, in her
charge. Sleep well, little son! Yet a little while, and you too shall
make voyages and conquests; new worlds lie waiting for you, who are so
greatly astonished at this Old World; far journeys by land and sea, and
the company of courtiers and kings; and much honour from the name and
deeds of him who looked into your eyes with a laugh and, a sob, and was
so very large and overshadowing! But with her who quietly sings to you,
whose hands soothe and caress you, in whose eyes shines that wonderful
light of mother's love--only a little while longer.

While Diego, as this son was christened, was yet only a baby in his
cradle, Columbus made an important voyage to the, coast of Guinea as all
the western part of the African continent was then called. His solid and
practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by
Philippa's haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest of
her uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of
Portugal, that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which
set out for Guinea in December 1481. A few miles from Cape Coast Castle,
and on the borders of the Dutch colony, there are to-day the ruined
remains of a fo