followed the weary struggle of the infirm old voyager to
secure justice and a part of his hard-earned benefits from the crown.
But Isabella had died, and Ferdinand, under the influence of the
hard-hearted and cruel bigot, Fonseca, postponed all the claims of
Columbus. He who had given a world died in poverty, a suppliant for the
means of an honorable existence.

It is easy enough for the writers of the nineteenth century to criticise
the actors of the fifteenth; and learned scholars, sitting in luxurious
easy-chairs in great libraries, can pass swift and severe judgment upon
the acts and motives of Columbus. But let them go back four hundred
years, and divest themselves of the bias which the science of to-day
unconsciously inspires; let them quit the age of steam-engines,
telegraphs, democratic governments, printing-presses, and
Sunday-schools; let them orient themselves, and become Spaniards of
1492, instead of Americans of 1892; let them take the place of
Columbus--if they are gifted with imagination enough among their
manifold endowments to do it; let them think his thoughts, endure his
trials, cherish his resolves, encounter his rebuffs, overcome his
obstacles, launch out on his voyage, govern his mutinous crew, deal with
his savage and hostile tribes, combat the traitors in his camp, suffer
his shipwrecks, struggle with his disappointments, bear the ignominy of
his chains, see his visions, and pray his prayers.

Behold him, launched on his uncertain voyage across the "sea of
darkness," in three little caravels, no larger than the modern yacht,
and far less seaworthy. Watch his devoted and anxious look, his solitary
self-communings, his all-night vigils under the silent stars. See his
motley crew, picked up at random in Palos streets, ignorant,
superstitious, and full of fears, dreading every added mile of the
voyage, and alarmed at the prevalent east winds which they thought would
never permit them to sail back to Spain; so that Columbus, on a contrary
head-wind springing up, thanked God with all the fervency of his pious
soul. Pursue his career in his later expeditions, hampered by the
mutinous vagabonds whom fate had thrust upon him as followers, many of
them desperadoes just out of jail. See his baffled endeavors to maintain
order and discipline among such a crew; to restrain their excesses, curb
their lawless acts of violence, and secure some semblance of decency in
their conduct toward the natives. Many of t