nsummation --a catastrophe! At such a time
one's soul is isolated so perfectly that it feels not the remotest
influence from any other of all the universe. The moment preceding the
old patriarch's first glimpse of the promised land; that point of time
between certainty and uncertainty, between pursuit and capture,
whereinto are crowded all the hopes of a lifetime, as when the brave old
sailor from Genoa first heard the man up in the rigging utter the shout
of discovery; the moment of awful hope, like that when Napoleon watched
the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, is not to be described. There
is but one such crisis for any man. It is the yes or no of destiny. It
comes, he lives a lifetime in its span; it goes, and he never can pass
that point again.

GREAT WEST.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, an American author and naturalist. Born in
Concord, Mass., in 1817; died, 1862. From his "Excursions,"
published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west
as distant and as far as that into which the sun goes down. He appears
to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great
Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those
mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which
were last gilded by his rays. The Island of Atlantis, and the islands
and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear
to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and
poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset
sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those
fables?

[Illustration: Harper's Weekly.

Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.

THE LANDING OF COLUMBUS. Bas-relief on the New York Monument. (See page
244.)]

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He
obeyed it, and found a new world for Castille and Leon. The herd of men
in those days scented fresh pastures from afar.

And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last _he_ rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

THE ROUTE TO THE SPICE INDIES.

PAOLO DEL POZZO TOSCANELLI, a celebrated Italian astronomer. Born
at Florence, 1397; died, 1482. From a letter to Columbus in 1474.

I praise your desire to navigate toward the west; the expedition