mbus appear slight indeed. While we have no right to extenuate his
errors and his abuses, we have as little right to hold him to a standard
nowhere set up in his day. He had learned his ethics in a school which
taught that, for great and pious objects, the end justified the means.
In the ardor of his zeal for what he deemed the Christian faith,
Columbus committed many glaring mistakes and errors; but what
over-zealous apostle or reformer has failed to do the same? Columbus was
unduly eager after gold, they say; but in our advanced age, when that
which Virgil called "the accursed hunger for gold" pervades all ranks,
and our cities are nothing but great encampments of fortune-hunters,
does it lie in our mouths to condemn him?

The age of Columbus took him as he was--all full of human imperfections
and frailties, but full also to overflowing with a great idea, and with
a will, a perseverance, a constancy, and a faith so sublime, as fairly
to conquer every obstacle, after a weary struggle of eighteen years, and
to carry forward his arduous enterprise to triumphant success. That the
great discoverer failed as a governor and administrator makes nothing
against his merits as a discoverer. That his light at last went out in
darkness--that the world he discovered brought nothing to Spain but
disappointment and Dead Sea ashes--that he dragged out a miserable old
age in rotten and unseaworthy ships, lying ill in the torrid heats of
the West Indies, racked with excruciating pain, and in absolute penury
and want--all this but adds point to a life so full of paradox that we
may almost pardon him for believing in miracles. After so much glory and
so much fame, his life darkened down to its dreary and pathetic close.
His ardent soul went at last where wicked governments cease from
troubling, and weary mariners are at rest. On May 20, 1506, worn out by
disease, anxieties, and labors, the great discoverer launched forth on
his last voyage of discovery, beyond the border of that unknown land
whose boundaries are hid from mortal ken.

His place among the immortals is secure. By the power of the
unconquerable mind with which nature had endowed him, he achieved a fame
so imperishable that neither the arrows of malice, nor the shafts of
envy, nor the keenest pens of critics, nor the assaults of iconoclasts
can avail to destroy it.

[Signature: A. R. Spofford.]

VASCO DA GAMA[10]

[Footnote 10: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar He