stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand.

THE PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF COLUMBUS.

ANTONIO HERRERA Y TORDESILLAS, an eminent Spanish historian. Born
at Cuellar in 1549; died, 1625.

Columbus was tall of stature, with a long and imposing visage. His nose
was aquiline; his eyes blue; his complexion clear, and having a tendency
to a glowing red; the beard and hair red in his youth, but his fatigues
early turned them white.

AN INCIDENT OF THE VOYAGE.

FERNANDO HERRERA, Spanish poet, 1534-1597.

Many sighed and wept, and every hour seemed a year.

THE EFFECT OF THE DISCOVERY.

C. W. HODGIN, professor of history in Earlham College, Indiana.
From "Preparation for the Discovery of America."

The discovery of America by Columbus stands out in history as an event
of supreme importance, both because of its value in itself and because
of its reflex action upon Europe. It swept away the hideous monsters and
frightful apparitions with which a superstitious imagination had peopled
the unknown Atlantic, and removed at once and forever the fancied
dangers in the way of its navigation. It destroyed the old patristic
geography and practically demonstrated the rotundity of the earth. It
overthrew the old ideas of science and gave a new meaning to the
Baconian method of investigation. It revolutionized the commerce of the
world, and greatly stimulated the intellect of Europe, already awakening
from the long torpor of the Dark Ages. It opened the doors of a new
world, through which the oppressed and overcrowded population of the Old
World might enter and make homes, build states, and develop a higher
ideal of freedom than the world had before conceived.

But this event did not come to pass by accident, neither was it the
result of a single cause. It was the culmination of a series of events,
each of which had a tendency, more or less marked, to concentrate into
the close of the fifteenth century the results of an _instinct_ to
search over unexplored seas for unknown lands.

COLUMBUS THE FIRST DISCOVERER.

FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER, Baron VON HUMBOLDT, the illustrious
traveler, naturalist, and cosmographer. Born in Berlin, September
14, 1769; died there May 6, 1859. He has been well termed "The
Modern Aristotle."

To say the truth, Vespucci shone only by reflection from an age of
glory. When compared with Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, Bartolome