an were only known to
Europeans through the narratives of Marco Polo or Sir John
Mandeville--early on the morning of Friday, October 12th, a man stood
bareheaded on the deck of a caravel and watched the rising sun lighting
up the luxuriant tropical vegetation of a level and beautiful island
toward which the vessel was gently speeding her way. Three-and-thirty
days had elapsed since the last known point of the Old World, the Island
of Ferrol, had faded away over the high poop of his vessel; eventful
weeks, during which he had to contend against the natural fears of the
ignorant and superstitious men by whom he was surrounded, and by the
stratagem of a double reckoning, together with promises of future
wealth, to allay the murmuring which threatened to frustrate the project
that for so many years had been nearest his heart. Never, in the darkest
hour, did the courage of that man quail or his soul admit a single
doubt of success. When the terrified mariners remarked with awe that the
needle deviated from the pole star, their intrepid Admiral, by an
ingenious theory of his own, explained the cause of the phenomenon and
soothed the alarm that had arisen. When the steady trade-winds were
reached, and the vessels flew rapidly for days toward the west, the
commander hailed as a godsend the mysterious breeze that his followers
regarded with awe as imposing an insuperable barrier to their return to
sunny Spain. When the prow of the caravel was impeded, and her way
deadened by the drifting network of the Sargasso Sea, the leader saw
therein only assured indications of land, and resolutely shut his ears
against those prophets who foresaw evil in every incident.

Now his hopes were fulfilled, the yearnings of a lifetime realized.
During the night a light had been seen, and at 2 o'clock in the morning
land became, beyond all doubt, visible. Then the three little vessels
laid to, and with the earliest streak of dawn made sail toward the
coast. A man stood bareheaded on the deck of the leading caravel and
feasted his eyes upon the wooded shore; the man was Christopher
Columbus, the land he gazed on the "West Indies."

SAN SALVADOR, OR WATLING'S ISLAND.

San Salvador, or Watling's Island, is about twelve miles in length by
six in breadth, having its interior largely cut up by salt-water
lagoons, separated from each other by low woody hills. Being one of the
most fertile of the group, it maintains nearly 2,000 inhabitants, who
are s