dwelling-places.
Rations destroyed by wet. Clothing lost and blankets scarce.
Grand views not fully enjoyed. A wild run through ten miles
of rapids. In places the rocks so cut by water that it is
impossible to see overhead. Great amphitheatres, half-dome
shaped. Mammoth springs of lime-laden waters. An ancient
lava-bed channelled out. Stolen squashes provide a feast.
Difficulties thicken: is it wise to go on? Three of the party
say no, the remainder proceed. All but lost in a whirlpool.
Emergence from the Grand Canon in safety and joy. 131

EXPLORERS COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA

Justin Winsor

[Part of Chapter IX., "The Final Agreement and the First
Voyage" from "Christopher Columbus and How He Received and
Imparted the Spirit of Discovery," copyright by Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1892.]

So, everything being ready, on the 3rd of August, 1492, a half-hour
before sunrise, he unmoored his little fleet in the stream, and,
spreading his sails, the vessels passed out of the little river
roadstead of Palos, gazed after, perhaps, in the increasing light, as
the little crafts reached the ocean, by the friar of Rabida, from its
distant promontory of rock.

The day was Friday, and the advocates of Columbus's canonization have
not failed to see a purpose in its choice as the day of our Redemption,
and as that of the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre by Geoffrey de
Bouillon, and of the rendition of Granada, with the fall of the Moslem
power in Spain. We must resort to the books of such advocates, if we
would enliven the picture with a multitude of rites and devotional
feelings that they gather in the meshes of the story of the departure.
They supply to the embarkation a variety of detail that their holy
purposes readily imagine, and place Columbus at last on his poop, with
the standard of the Cross, the image of the Saviour nailed to the holy
wood, waving in the early breeze that heralded the day. The
embellishments may be pleasing, but they are not of the strictest
authenticity.

In order that his performance of an embassy to the princes of the East
might be duly chronicled, Columbus determined, as his journal says, to
keep an account of the voyage by the west, "by which course," he says,
"unto the present time, we do not know, _for certain_, that any one has
passed." It was his purpose to write down, as he proceeded, everyt