t of sea navigation. Then began
his travels for help to carry out his wonderful plans. He took with him
his motherless boy, Diego. From place to place he went with a heroism of
patience never surpassed. The story of the rebuffs and privations
through which he passed will be the wonder and praise of men forever.
Weary and footsore and hungry, he stopped one day before the Franciscan
Convent La Rabida, in Andalusia, to beg some bread and water for his
child. Then came the mysterious turning of the scales in the forces of
human greatness. The Superior of the convent happened to pass by, and,
struck by the appearance of the poor traveler, began to talk to him. The
Superior at once saw that no ordinary man was before him. Grander views
were never presented and greater plans of conquest were never known.
Christianity was to invade Asia on its eastern shores and meet the
irresistible forces from the West. Columbus believed himself divinely
inspired for this and therefore demanded that he be made high-admiral,
governor-general and viceroy over all the land he reached and that for
his revenue there should be given one-tenth of the entire produce of the
countries. Such a far reaching demand as this could not have been
acceded to only by a doubting sovereign, and he would probably have been
beheaded with his puny crew of one hundred and twenty men if he had
reached Asia and attempted to carry out such a wholesale scheme of
subjugation.

"The months of this voyage were scarcely less full of treason, burdens,
and peril than the years that had been given to make the voyage
possible. A pension was promised to the man who first sighted land but
Columbus saw a light rising and falling on the evening of Oct. 11, and
on that account claimed and received the pension. It is said that the
sailor who really saw land first foreswore his country and fled to
Africa because of having lost the pension and the honor of being the
first to see land. This is told by the enemies of Columbus to prove a
sordid and avaricious nature. It is also told that he took such
exasperating and outrageous measures to uphold his visionary schemes of
conquest and government as high-admiral, governor-general and viceroy,
that it became more than his home government could endure.

"His last voyage was disastrous, but whether from his own desire for
gold hunting, or because from the demands of his crew, it can not be
told. A man was sent to supersede him and chains were