been preserved, and taking the
mean of four contemporary accounts of it, was as follows. This man,
whose name is doubtful, but is given as Alonso Sanchez, was sailing on a
voyage from one of the Spanish ports to England or Flanders. He had a
crew of seventeen men. When they had got well out to sea a severe
easterly gale sprung up, which drove the vessel before it to the
westward. Day after day and week after week, for twenty-eight days, this
gale continued. The islands were all left far behind, and the ship was
carried into a region far beyond the limits of the ocean marked on the
charts. At last they sighted some islands, upon one of which they landed
and took in wood and water. The pilot took the bearings of the island,
in so far as he was able, and made some observations, the only one of
which that has remained being that the natives went naked; and, the wind
having changed, set forth on his homeward voyage. This voyage was long
and painful. The wind did not hold steady from the west; the pilot and
his crew had a very hazy notion of where they were; their dead reckoning
was confused; their provisions fell short; and one by one the crew
sickened and died until they were reduced to five or six--the ones who,
worn out by sickness and famine, and the labours of working the ship
short-handed and in their enfeebled condition, at last made the island of
Madeira, and cast anchor in the beautiful bay of Funchal, only to die
there. All these things we may imagine the dying man relating in
snatches to his absorbed listener; who felt himself to be receiving a
pearl of knowledge to be guarded and used, now that its finder must
depart upon the last and longest voyage of human discovery. Such
observations as he had made--probably a few figures giving the bearings
of stars, an account of dead reckoning, and a quite useless and
inaccurate chart or map--the pilot gave to his host; then, having
delivered his soul of its secret, he died. This is the story; not an
impossible or improbable one in its main outlines. Whether the pilot
really landed on one of the Antilles is extremely doubtful, although it
is possible. Superstitious and storm-tossed sailors in those days were
only too ready to believe that they saw some of the fabled islands of the
Atlantic; and it is quite possible that the pilot simply announced that
he had seen land, and that the details as to his having actually set foot
upon it were added later. That does n