miracle it kept afloat, and
on March 15, 1493, sailed again into the port of Palos. The great
navigator was received with triumphal honors by Ferdinand and Isabella,
and invited to sit in their presence while he told the wonderful story
of his discoveries.

Wonderful indeed! Yet what a dizziness would have seized that audience
could they have guessed the truth! Could they have guessed that the
proud kingdom of Spain was but an insignificant patch compared with the
vast continent Columbus had discovered and upon which a score of nations
were to dwell.

The life-work of the great navigator practically ended on the day he
told his story to the court of Spain, for, though he led three other
expeditions across the ocean, the discoveries they made were of no great
importance. Not a trace did he find of that golden country, which he
sought so eagerly, and at last, broken in health and fortune, in
disfavor at court, stripped of the rewards and dignities which had been
promised him, he died in a little house at Valladolid on the twentieth
of May, 1506. He believed to the last that it was the Indies he had
discovered, never dreaming that he had given a new continent to the
world.

Yet is his fame secure, for the task which he accomplished was unique,
never to be repeated. He had robbed the Sea of Darkness of its terrors,
and while those who followed him had need of courage and resolution, it
was no longer into the unknown that they sailed forth. They knew that
there was no danger of sailing over the edge and dropping off into
space; they knew that there were no dragons, nor monsters, nor other
blood-curdling terrors to be encountered, but that the other side of the
world was much like the side they lived on. That was Columbus's great
achievement. To cross the Atlantic, perilous as the voyage was, was
after all a little thing; but actually to _start_--to surmount the wall
of bigotry and ignorance which, for centuries, had shut the west away
from the east, to surmount that wall and throw it down by a faith which
rose superior to human belief and incredulity and terror of the
unknown--there was the miracle!

* * * * *

Many there were to follow, each contributing his mite toward the task of
defining the new continent. Perhaps you have seen a photographic
negative slowly take shape in the acid bath--the sharp out-lines first,
then, bit by bit, the detail. Just so did America grow beneath the gaze