ral pride is
peculiarly fitted to give an excuse for a centenary feast. The
complaints justly made as to the artificial character of the excuses
often chosen for these gatherings and their eloquence do not apply here.
Beyond all doubt, when Columbus sailed from Palos on August 3, 1492, he
did something by which the history of the world was profoundly
influenced. Every schoolboy of course knows that if Columbus had never
lived America would have been discovered all the same, when Pedro
Alvarez Cabral, the Portuguese admiral, was carried by the trade-winds
over to the coast of Brazil in 1500. But in that case it would not have
been discovered by Spain, and the whole course of the inevitable
European settlement on the continent must have been modified.

When that can be said of any particular event there can be no question
as to its importance. There is a kind of historical critic, rather
conspicuous in these latter days, who finds a peculiar satisfaction in
pointing out that Columbus discovered America without knowing it--which
is true. That he believed, and died in the belief, that he had reached
Asia is certain. It is not less sure that Amerigo Vespucci, from whom
the continent was named, by a series of flukes, misprints, and
misunderstandings, went to his grave in the same faith. He thought that
he had found an island of uncertain size to the south of the equator,
and that what Columbus had found to the north was the eastern extremity
of Asia. But the world which knows that Columbus did, as a matter of
fact, do it the service of finding America, and is aware that without
him the voyage from Palos would never have been undertaken, has refused
to belittle him because he did not know beforehand what was only found
out through his exertions.

The learned who have written very largely about Columbus have their
serious doubts as to the truth of the stories told of his connection
with Palos. Not that there is any question as to whether he sailed from
there. The dispute is as to the number and circumstances of his visits
to the Convent of Santa Maria Rabida, and the exact nature of his
relations to the Prior Juan Perez de Marchena. There has, in fact, been
a considerable accumulation of what that very rude man, Mr. Carlyle,
called the marine stores of history about the life of Columbus, as about
most great transactions. He certainly had been at La Rabida, and the
prior was his friend. But, with or without Juan Perez, Columbus