. Columbus alone, regarded merely as a brave and intelligent seaman
and pilot, conceived the idea that the earth was spherical, and that the
East Indies, the great El Dorado of the century, might be reached by
circumnavigating the globe. If we picture to ourselves the mental
condition of the age and the state of science, we shall find no
difficulty in conceiving the scorn and incredulity with which the theory
of Columbus was received. We shall not wonder that he was regarded as a
madman or a fool; we are not surprised to remember that he encountered
repulse upon repulse as he journeyed wearily from court to court, and
pleaded in vain to the sovereigns of Europe for aid to prosecute his
great design. The marvel is that when door after door was closed against
him, when all ears were deaf to his earnest importunities, when day by
day the opposition to his views increased, when, weary and footsore, he
was forced to beg a bit of bread and a cup of water for his fainting and
famishing boy at the door of a Spanish convent, his reason did not give
way, and his great heart did not break with disappointment.

THE FIRST AMERICAN MONUMENT TO COLUMBUS.

From an article in the Baltimore _American_.

To a patriotic Frenchman and to Baltimore belongs the credit of the
erection of the first monument to the memory of Christopher Columbus.
This shaft, though unpretentious in height and material, is the first
ever erected in the "Monumental City" or in the whole United States. The
monument was put up on his estate by Charles Francis Adrian le Paulmier,
Chevalier d'Amour. The property is now occupied by the Samuel Ready
Orphan Asylum, at North and Hartford avenues. It passed into the hands
of the trustees from the executors of the late Zenus Barnum's will.

It has ever been a matter of surprise, particularly among tourists, that
among the thousand and one monuments which have been put up in the
United States to the illustrious dead, that the daring navigator who
first sighted an island which was part of a great continent which 400
years later developed into the first nation of the world, should be so
completely and entirely overlooked. It is on record that the only other
monument in the world, up to 1863, which has been erected in the honor
of Columbus is in Genoa. There is no authoritative account of the
construction of the Baltimore monument. The fact that it was built in
honor of Columbus is substantial, as the following inscrip