famous 12th of October, 1492.

The learned have disputed over the matter for a century, and no less
than five islands of the Bahama group have had their advocates. This is
not the fault of Columbus, albeit we only have an abstract of his
journal. The island is there fully and clearly described, and courses
and distances are given thence to Cuba, which furnish data for fixing
the landfall with precision. Here it is not a case for the learning and
erudition of Navarretes, Humboldts, and Varnhagens. It is a sailor's
question. If the materials from the journal were placed in the hands of
any midshipman in her Majesty's navy, he would put his finger on the
true landfall within half an hour. When sailors took the matter in hand,
such as Admiral Becher, of the Hydrographic Office, and Lieut. Murdoch,
of the United States navy, they did so.

Our lamented associate, Mr. R. H. Major, read a paper on this
interesting subject on May 8, 1871, in which he proved that Watling's
Island was the Guanahani, or San Salvador, of Columbus. He did so by two
lines of argument--the first being the exact agreement between the
description of Guanahani, in the journal of Columbus, and Watling's
Island, a description which can not be referred to any other island in
the Bahama group; and the second being a comparison of the maps of Juan
de la Cosa and of Herrera with modern charts. He showed that out of
twenty-four islands on the Herrera map of 1600, ten retain the same
names as they then had, thus affording stations for comparison; and the
relative bearings of these ten islands lead us to the accurate
identification of the rest. The shapes are not correct, but the relative
bearings are, and the Guanahani of the Herrera map is thus identified
with the present Watling's Island. Mr. Major, by careful and minute
attention to the words of the journal of Columbus, also established the
exact position of the first anchorage as having been a little to the
west of the southeast point of Watling's Island.

I can not leave the subject of Mr. Major's admirable paper without
expressing my sense of the loss sustained by comparative geography when
his well-known face, so genial and sympathetic, disappeared from among
us. The biographer of Prince Henry the Navigator, Major did more than
any other Englishman of this century to bring the authentic history of
Columbus within the reach of his countrymen. His translations of the
letters of the illustrious Genoese, an