ind if it had not been combined
with great capacity for taking trouble, and with habits of order and
accuracy. In considering the qualities of the great Genoese as a seaman
and an explorer, we can not fail to be impressed with this accuracy, the
result of incessant watchfulness and of orderly habits. Yet it is his
accuracy which has been called in question by some modern writers, on
the ground of passages in his letters which they have misinterpreted, or
failed to understand. In every instance the blunder has not been
committed by Columbus, but by his critics.

The Admiral's letters do not show him to be either careless or
inaccurate. On the contrary, they bear witness to his watchfulness, to
his methodical habits, and to his attention to details; although at the
same time they are full of speculations, and of the thoughts which
followed each other so rapidly in his imaginative brain. It was, indeed,
the combination of these two qualities, of practical and methodical
habits of thought with a vivid imagination, which constituted his
genius--a combination as rare as it is valuable. It created the thoughts
which conceived the great discovery, as well as the skill and ability
which achieved it.

Unfortunately, the journals and charts of Columbus are lost. But we have
the full abstract of the journal of his first voyage, made by Las Casas,
we have his letters and dispatches, and we have the map of his
discoveries, except those made during his last voyage, drawn by his own
pilot and draughtsman, Juan de la Cosa. We are thus able to obtain a
sufficient insight into the system on which his exploring voyages were
conducted, and into the sequence in which his discoveries followed each
other. This is the point of view from which the labors of the Admiral
are most interesting to geographers. The deficient means at the disposal
of a navigator in the end of the fifteenth century increase the
necessity for a long apprenticeship. It is much easier to become a
navigator with the aid of modern instruments constructed with extreme
accuracy, and with tables of logarithms, nautical almanacs, and
admiralty charts. With ruder appliances Columbus and his contemporaries
had to trust far more to their own personal skill and watchfulness, and
to ways of handling and using such instruments as they possessed, which
could only be acquired by constant practice and the experience of a
lifetime. _Even then, an insight and ability which few men possess