own
countrymen not less treacherous than the worst of cannibals. His state
was critical indeed! One calamity was from over-high living--this I was
bound to guard against--the other was from neglect on the part of his
people to care for the ship in a seaman-like manner. Of the latter
difficulty I had no risk to run.

Lazy and lawless, but through the pretext of religion, the infected crew
wrought on the pious feelings of the good admiral, inducing him at every
landing to hold mass instead of cleaning the foul ship. Thus through
petty intrigue and grave neglects, they brought disaster and sorrow on
their leader and confusion on their own heads. Their religion, never
deep, could not be expected to keep _Terredo_ from the ship's bottom, so
her timbers were ravished, and ruin came to them all! Poor Columbus! had
he but sailed with his son Diego and his noble brother Bartholomew, for
his only crew and companions, not forgetting the help of a good woman,
America would have been discovered without those harrowing tales of woe
and indeed heartrending calamities which followed in the wake of his
designing people. Nor would his ship have been less well manned than was
the _Liberdade_, sailing, centuries after, over the same sea and among
many of the islands visited by the great discoverer--sailing, too,
without serious accident of any kind, and without sickness or
discontent. Our advantage over Columbus, I say, was very great, not
more from the possession of data of the centuries which had passed than
from having a willing crew sailing without dissent or murmur--sailing in
the same boat, as it were.

A pensive mood comes over one voyaging among the scenes of the New
World's early play-ground. To us while on this canoe voyage of pleasant
recollection the fancied experience of navigators gone before was
intensely thrilling.

Sailing among islands clothed in eternal green, the same that Columbus
beheld with marvellous anticipations, and the venerable Las Casas had
looked upon with pious wonder, brought us, in the mind's eye, near the
old discoverers; and a feeling that we should come suddenly upon their
ships around some near headland took deep hold upon our thoughts as we
drew in with the shores. All was there to please the imagination and
dream over in the same balmy, sleepy atmosphere, where Juan Ponce de
Leon would fain have tarried young, but found death rapid, working side
by side with ever springing life. To live long in th