saw a
moving light, as if some one on the shore were running with a flaming
torch. At two o'clock the next morning--Friday, the twelfth of October,
1492 the sharp eyes of a watchful sailor on the Pinta (his name was
Rodrigo de Triana) caught sight of a long low coastline not far away. He
raised the joyful shout Land, ho! The ships ran in as near to the shore
as they dared, and just ten weeks after the anchors had been hauled up
in Palos Harbor they were dropped overboard, and the hips of Columbus
were anchored in the waters of a new world.

Where was it? What was it? Was it Cathay? Columbus was sure that it was.
He was certain that the morning sun would shine for him upon the marble
towers and golden roofs of the wonderful city of the kings of Cathay.

CHAPTER VI. WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

A little over three hundred years ago there was a Pope of Rome whose
name was Gregory XIII. He was greatly interested in learning and
science, and when the scholars and wise men of his day showed him that a
mistake in reckoning time had long before been made he set about to make
it right. At that time the Pope of Rome had great influence with the
kings and queens of Europe, and whatever he wished them to do they
generally did.

So they all agreed to his plan of renumbering the days of the year, and
a new reckoning of time was made upon the rule that most of you know by
heart in the old rhyme:

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November; All the rest have
thirty-one, Excepting February which alone Hath twenty-eight--and this,
in fine, One year in four hath twenty-nine.

And the order of the days of the months and the year is what is called,
after Pope Gregory, the Gregorian Calendar.

This change in reckoning time made, of course, all past dates wrong.
The old dates, which were called Old Style, had to be made to correspond
with the new dates which were called New Style.

Now, according to the Old Style, Columbus discovered the islands he
thought to be the Indies (and which have ever since been called the
West Indies) on the twelfth of October, 1492. But, according to the New
Style, adopted nearly one hundred years after his discovery, the right
date would be the twenty-first of October. And this is why, in the
Columbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated the four hundredth
anniversary of the discovery of America on the twenty-first of October;
which, as you see, is the same as the twelfth under the O