Admiral, with great sagacity,
deemed small vessels best adapted to his purpose, in order to enter
safely shallow harbors and sail near the coast.

He sails in the most propitious season of the year, and is aided by
steady trade-winds which waft his ships gently through the unknown
ocean. He meets with no obstacles of any account. The skies are serene,
the sea is as smooth as the waters of an inland lake; and he is
comforted, as he advances to the west, by the appearance of strange
birds and weeds and plants that indicate nearness to the land. He has
only two objects of solicitude,--the variations of the magnetic needle,
and the superstitious fears of his men; the last he succeeds in allaying
by inventing plausible theories, and by concealing the real distance he
has traversed. He encourages them by inflaming their cupidity. He is
nearly baffled by their mutinous spirit. He is in danger, not from coral
reefs and whirlpools and sunken rocks and tempests, as at first was
feared, but from his men themselves, who clamor to return. It is his
faith and moral courage and fertility of resources which we most admire.
Days pass in alternate hope and disappointment, amid angry clamors, in
great anxiety, for no land appears after he has sailed far beyond the
points where he expected to find it. The world is larger than even he
has supposed. He promises great rewards to the one who shall first see
the unknown shores. It is said that he himself was the first to discover
land by observing a flickering light, which is exceedingly improbable,
as he was several leagues from shore; but certain it is, that the very
night the land was seen from the Admiral's vessel, it was also
discovered by one of the seamen on board another ship. The problem of
the age was at last solved. A new continent was given to Ferdinand
and Isabella.

On the 12th of October Columbus lands--not, however, on the continent,
as he supposed, but on an island--in great pomp, as admiral of the seas
and viceroy of the king, in a purple doublet, and with a drawn sword in
one hand and the standard of Spain in the other, followed by officers in
appropriate costume, and a friar bearing the emblem of our redemption,
which is solemnly planted on the shore, and the land called San
Salvador. This little island, one of the Bahamas, is not, however,
gilded with the anticipated splendors of Oriental countries. He finds
neither gold, nor jewels, nor silks, nor spices, nor any signs of