d the western halves of our
planet was first really begun, and the two streams of human life which
had flowed on for countless ages apart were thenceforth to mingle
together. The first voyage of Columbus is thus a unique event in the
history of mankind. Nothing like it was ever done before, and nothing
like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for a future Columbus
to conquer. The era of which this great Italian mariner was the most
illustrious representative has closed forever.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

[Sidenote: The Discovery of America was a gradual process.]

But that era did not close with Columbus, nor did he live long enough to
complete the Discovery of America. Our practice of affixing specific
dates to great events is on many accounts indispensable, but it is
sometimes misleading. Such an event as the discovery of a pair of vast
continents does not take place within a single year. When we speak of
America as discovered in 1492, we do not mean that the moment Columbus
landed on two or three islands of the West Indies, a full outline map of
the western hemisphere from Labrador and Alaska to Cape Horn suddenly
sprang into existence--like Pallas from the forehead of Zeus--in the
minds of European men. Yet people are perpetually using arguments which
have neither force nor meaning save upon the tacit assumption that
somehow or other some such sort of thing must have happened. This
grotesque fallacy lies at the bottom of the tradition which has caused
so many foolish things to be said about that gallant mariner, Americus
Vespucius. In geographical discussions the tendency to overlook the fact
that Columbus and his immediate successors did not sail with the latest
edition of Black's General Atlas in their cabins is almost inveterate;
it keeps revealing itself in all sorts of queer statements, and probably
there is no cure for it except in familiarity with the long series of
perplexed and struggling maps made in the sixteenth century. Properly
regarded, the Discovery of America was not a single event, but a very
gradual process. It was not like a case of special creation, for it was
a case of evolution, and the voyage of 1492 was simply the most decisive
and epoch-marking incident in that evolution. Columbus himself, after
all his four eventful voyages across the Sea of Darkness, died in the
belief that he had simply discovered the best and straightest route to
the eastern shor