feeling the exhilarating effect of this adventurous voyage. We were
floating, safely and gracefully, upon the billows, with nothing but sea
and sky in every direction but one, where the rugged shores of our
island home gave a bold, yet menacing feature to the view.

My heart seemed to expand with the majestic prospect before me. Never
had mariner, when discovering some prodigious continent, felt a greater
degree of exultation than I experienced when directing my little vessel
over the immense wilderness of waters that spread out before me, till it
joined the line of the horizon.

I sat down by the side of Mrs Reichardt, and allowed the boat to
proceed on its course, either as if it required no directing hand, or
that its present direction was so agreeable, I felt no inclination to
alter it.

"I can easily imagine," said I, "the enthusiasm of such men as Columbus,
whose discovery of America you were relating to me the other day. The
vocation of these early navigators was a glorious one, and, when they
had tracked their way over so many thousand miles of pathless water, and
found themselves in strange seas, expecting the appearance of land,
hitherto unknown to the civilised world, they must have felt the
importance of their mission as discoverers."

"No doubt, Frank," she replied; "and probably, it was this that
supported the great man you have just named, in the severe trials he was
obliged to endure, on the very eve of the discovery that was to render
his name famous to all generations. He had endured intolerable
hardships, the ship had been so long without sight of land, that no one
thought it worth while to look out for it, and he expected that his crew
would mutiny, and insist on returning. At this critical period of his
existence, first one indication of land, and then another, made itself
manifest; the curiosity of the disheartened sailors became excited; hope
revived in the breast of their immortal captain; a man was now induced
to ascend the main-top, and his joyful cry of land woke up the
slumbering spirit of the crew. In this way, a new world was first
presented to the attention of the inhabitants of the old."

"It appears to me very unjust," I observed, "that so important a
discovery should have become known to us, not by the name of its
original discoverer, but by that of a subsequent visitor to its shores."

"Undoubtedly," said Mrs Reichardt, "it is apparently unfair that
Americus Vespucius shoul