THE TRUE STORY OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CALLED THE GREAT ADMIRAL

By Elbridge S. {Streeter} Brooks

 [This was orginally done on the 400th Anniversary of 1492 as was the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Interesting how our heroes have all been de-canonized in the interest of Political Correctitude--Comments by Michael S. Hart]

PREFACE. 

This "True Story of Christopher Columbus" is offered and inscribedto the boys and girls of America as the opening volume in a seriesespecially designed for their reading, and to be called "Children'sLives of Great Men. " In this series the place of honor, or rather ofposition, is given to Columbus the Admiral, because had it not been forhim and for his pluck and faith and perseverance there might have beenno young Americans, such as we know to-day, to read or care about theworld's great men. 

Columbus led the American advance; he discovered the New World; he lefta record of persistence in spite of discouragement and of triumph overall obstacles, that has been the inspiration and guide for Americansever since his day, and that has led them to work on in faith and hopeuntil the end they strove for was won. 

"The True Story of Christopher Columbus" will be followed by the "truestory" of others who have left names for us to honor and revere, whohave made the world better because they lived, and who have helped tomake and to develop American freedom, strength and progress. 

It will be the endeavor to have all these presented in the simple, straightforward, earnest way that appeals to children, and shows how thehero can be the man, and the man the hero. E. S. B. 

THE TRUE STORY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CHAPTER I. BOY WITH AN IDEA. 

Men who do great things are men we all like to read about. This is thestory of Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered America. He livedfour hundred years ago. When he was a little boy he lived in Genoa. It was a beautiful city in the northwestern part of the country calledItaly. The mountains were behind it; the sea was in front of it, andit was so beautiful a place that the people who lived there called it"Genoa the Superb. " Christopher Columbus was born in this beautifulcity of Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He wasa bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear eye and goldenhair. His father's name was Domenico Columbus; his mother's name wasSusanna. His father was a wool-comber. He cleaned and straightened outthe snarled-up wool that was cut from the sheep so as to make it readyto be woven into cloth. 

Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong enough, but hewent to school, too, and learned to read and write and to draw maps andcharts. These charts were maps of the sea, to show the sailors wherethey could steer without running on the rocks and sand, and how to sailsafely from one country to another. 

This world was not as big then as it is now--or, should say, peopledid not know it was as big. Most of the lands that Columbus had studiedabout in school, and most of the people he had heard about, were inEurope and parts of Asia and Africa. The city of Genoa where Columbuslived was a very busy and a very rich city. It was on the MediterraneanSea, and many of the people who lived there were sailors who went intheir ships on voyages to distant lands. They sailed to other places onthe Mediterranean Sea, which is a very large body of water, you know, and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far away as the coldnorthern island of Iceland. This was thought to be a great journey. 

The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a time as is this inwhich you live. People were always quarreling and fighting about onething or another, and the sailors who belonged to one country would tryto catch and steal the ships or the things that belonged to the sailorsor the storekeepers of another country. This is what we call piracy, anda pirate, you know, is thought to be a very wicked man. 

But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so very wicked to bea sort of half-way pirate, although they did know that they wouldbe killed if they were caught. So almost every sailor was about halfpirate. Every boy who lived near the seashore and saw the ships and thesailors, felt as though he would like to sail away to far-off lands andsee all the strange sights and do all the brave things that the sailorstold about. Many of them even said they would like to be pirates andfight with other sailors, and show how strong and brave and plucky theycould be. 

Columbus was one of these. He was what is called an adventurous boy. Hedid not like to stay quietly at home with his father and comb out thetangled wool. He thought it would be much nicer to sail away to sea andbe a brave captain or a rich merchant. 

When he was about fourteen years old he really did go to sea. There wasa captain of a sailing vessel that sometimes came to Genoa who had thesame last name--Columbus. He was no relation, but the little Christophersomehow got acquainted with him among the wharves of Genoa. Perhaps hehad run on errands for him, or helped him with some of the sea-charts heknew so well how to draw. At any rate he sailed away with this CaptainColumbus as his cabin boy, and went to the wars with him and had quitean exciting life for a boy. 

Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their own adventuresor about far-off lands and countries. Columbus, listened to many ofthese sea-stories, and heard many wonderful things about a very richland away to the East that folks called Cathay. 

If you look in your geographies you will not find any such place on themap as Cathay, but you will find China, and that was what men in thetime of Columbus called Cathay. They told very big stories about thisfar-off Eastern land. They said its kings lived in golden houses, thatthey were covered with pearls and diamonds, and that everybody there wasso rich that money was as plentiful as the stones in the street. 

This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who were partpirate, very anxious to go to Cathay and get some of the gold and jewelsand spices and splendor for themselves. But Cathay was miles and milesaway from Italy and Spain and France and England. It was away across thedeserts and mountains and seas and rivers, and they had to give it upbecause they could not sail there. 

At last a man whose name was Marco Polo, and who was a very brave andfamous traveler, really did go there, in spite of all the trouble ittook. And when he got back his stories were so very surprising that menwere all the more anxious to find a way to sail in their ships to Cathayand see it for themselves. 

But of course they could not sail over the deserts and mountains, andthey were very much troubled because they had to give up the idea, untilthe son of the king of Portugal, named Prince Henry, said he believedthat ships could sail around Africa and so get to India or "the Indies"as they called that land, and finally to Cathay. 

Just look at your map again and see what a long, long voyage it wouldbe to sail from Spain and around Africa to India, China and Japan. It issuch a long sail that, as you know, the Suez Canal was dug some twentyyears ago so that ships could sail through the Mediterranean Sea and outinto the Indian Ocean, and not have to go away around Africa. 

But when Columbus was a boy it was even worse than now, for no onereally knew how long Africa was, or whether ships really could sailaround it. But Prince Henry said he knew they could, and he sent outships to try. He died before his Portuguese sailors, Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did sail around it and gotas far as "the Indies. "

So while Prince Henry was trying to see whether ships could sail aroundAfrica and reach Cathay in that way, the boy Columbus was listening tothe stories the sailors told and was wondering whether some other andeasier way to Cathay might not be found. 

When he was at school he had studied about a certain man namedPythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands of years before he wasborn, and who had said that the earth was round "like a ball or anorange. "

As Columbus grew older and made maps and studied the sea, and read booksand listened to what other people said, he began to believe that thisman named Pythagoras might be right, and that the earth was round, though everybody declared it was flat. If it is round, he said tohimself, "what is the use of trying to sail around Africa to get toCathay? Why not just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going rightaround the world until you strike Cathay? I believe it could be done, "said Columbus. 

By this time Columbus was a man. He was thirty years old and was a greatsailor. He had been captain of a number of vessels; he had sailed northand south and east; he knew all about a ship and all about the sea. But, though he was so good a sailor, when he said that he believed the earthwas round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy. "Why, how can the earth be round?" they cried. "The water would all spill outif it were, and the men who live on the other side would all be standingon their heads with their feet waving in the air. " And then they laughedall the harder. 

But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh at. He believed itso strongly, and felt so sure that he was right, that he set to work tofind some king or prince or great lord to let him have ships and sailorsand money enough to try to find a way to Cathay by sailing out into theWest and across the Atlantic Ocean. 

Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which break upon ourrocks and beaches, was thought in Columbus's day to be a dreadful place. People called it the Sea of Darkness, because they did not know what wason the other side of it, or what dangers lay beyond that distant bluerim where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we call the horizon. They thought the ocean stretched to the end of a flat world, straightaway to a sort of "jumping-off place, " and that in this horriblejumping-off place were giants and goblins and dragons and monsters andall sorts of terrible things that would catch the ships and destroy themand the sailors. 

So when Columbus said that he wanted to sail away toward this dreadfuljumping-off place, the people said that he was worse than crazy. Theysaid he was a wicked man and ought to be punished. 

But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on trying. He went fromplace to place trying to get the ships and sailors he wanted and wasbound to have. As you will see in the next chapter, he tried to gethelp wherever he thought it could be had. He asked the people of his ownhome, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and played when a boy; heasked the people of the beautiful city that is built in the sea--Venice;he tried the king of Portugal, the king of England, the king of Francethe king and queen of Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listento such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan--to go to Cathay by theway of the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place. You would neverget there alive, they said. 

And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white while he waited, thoughhe was not yet an old man. He had thought and worked and hoped so muchthat he began to look like an old man when he was forty years old. Butstill he would never say that perhaps he was wrong, after all. He saidhe knew he was right, and that some day he should find the Indies andsail to Cathay. 

CHAPTER II. WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 

I do not wish you to think that Columbus was the first man to say thatthe earth was round, or the first to sail to the West over the AtlanticOcean. He was not. Other men had said that they believed the earth wasround; other men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. But no sailorwho believed the earth was round had ever yet tried to prove that it wasby crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus was really the first manto say, I believe the earth is round and I will show you that it is bysailing to the lands that are on the other side of the earth. 

He even figured out how far it was around the world. Your geography, you know, tells you now that what is called the circumference ofthe earth--that is, a straight line drawn right around it--is nearlytwenty-five thousand miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty carefullyand he thought it was about twenty thousand miles. If I could start fromGenoa, he said, and walk straight ahead until I got back to Genoa again, I should walk about twenty thousand miles. Cathay, he thought, wouldtake up so much land on the other side of the world that, if he wentwest instead of east, he would only need to sail about twenty-fivehundred or three thousand miles. 

If you have studied your geography carefully you will see what a mistakehe made. 

It is really about twelve thousand miles from Spain to China (or Cathayas he called it). But America is just about three thousand miles fromSpain, and if you read all this story you will see how Columbus'smistake really helped him to discover America. 

I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do something great fromthe time when, as a little boy, he had hung around the wharves inGenoa and looked at the ships sailing east and west and talked with thesailors and wished that he could go to sea. Perhaps what he had learnedat school--how some men said that the earth was round--and what he hadheard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set him to thinkingand to dreaming that it might be possible for a ship to sail around theworld without falling off. At any rate, he kept on thinking and dreamingand longing until, at last, he began doing. 

Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portugal, of whom I havetold you, in their trying to sail around Africa discovered two groupsof islands out in the Atlantic that they called the Azores, or Isles ofHawks, and the Canaries, or Isles of Dogs. When Columbus was in Portugalin 1470 he became acquainted with a young woman whose name was PhilippaPerestrelo. In 1473 he married her. 

Now Philippa's father, before his death, had been governor of PortoSanto, one of the Azores, and Columbus and his wife went off there tolive. In the governor's house Columbus found a lot of charts and mapsthat told him about parts of the ocean that he had never before seen, and made him feel certain that he was right in saying that if he sailedaway to the West he should find Cathay. 

At that time there was an old man who lived in Florence, a city ofItaly. His name was Toscanelli. He was a great scholar and studied thestars and made maps, and was a very wise man. Columbus knew what a wiseold scholar Toscanelli was, for Florence is not very far from Genoa. Sowhile he was living in the Azores he wrote to this old scholar askinghim what he thought about his idea that a man could sail around theworld until he reached the land called the Indies and at last foundCathay. 

Toscanelli wrote to Columbus saying that he believed his idea was theright one, and he said it would be a grand thing to do, if Columbusdared to try it. Perhaps, he said, you can find all those splendidthings that I know are in Cathay--the great cities with marble bridges, the houses of marble covered with gold, the jewels and the spices andthe precious stones, and all the other wonderful and magnificent things. I do not wonder you wish to try, he said, for if you find Cathay it willbe a wonderful thing for you and for Portugal. 

That settled it with Columbus. If this wise old scholar said he wasright, he must be right. So he left his home in the Azores and went toPortugal. This was in 1475, and from that time on, for seventeen longyears he was trying to get some king or prince to help him sail to theWest to find Cathay. 

But not one of the people who could have helped him, if they had reallywished to, believed in Columbus. As I told you, they said that he wascrazy. The king of Portugal, whose name was John, did a very unkindthing--I am sure you would call it a mean trick. Columbus had gone tohim with his story and asked for ships and sailors. The king and hischief men refused to help him; but King John said to himself, perhapsthere is something in this worth looking after and, if so, perhaps Ican have my own people find Cathay and save the money that Columbus willwant to keep for himself as his share of what he finds. So one day hecopied off the sailing directions that Columbus had left with him, and gave them to one of his own captains without letting Columbus knowanything about it, The Portuguese captain sailed away to the West inthe direction Columbus had marked down, but a great storm came up andso frightened the sailors that they turned around in a hurry. Then theyhunted up Columbus and began to abuse him for getting them into such ascrape. You might as well expect to find land in the sky, they said, asin those terrible waters. 

And when, in this way, Columbus found out that King John had tried touse his ideas without letting him know anything about it, he wasvery angry. His wife had died in the midst of this mean trick of thePortuguese king, and so, taking with him his little five-year-old son, Diego, he left Portugal secretly and went over into Spain. 

Near the little town of Palos, in western Spain, is a green hill lookingout toward the Atlantic. Upon this hill stands an old building that, four hundred years ago, was used as a a convent or home for priests. Itwas called the Convent of Rabida, and the priest at the head of it wasnamed the Friar Juan Perez. One autumn day, in the year 1484, FriarJuan Perez saw a dusty traveler with a little boy talking with thegate-keeper of the convent. The stranger was so tall and fine-looking, and seemed such an interesting man, that Friar Juan went out and beganto talk with him. This man was Columbus. 

As they talked, the priest grew more and more interested in whatColumbus said. He invited him into the convent to stay for a few days, and he asked some other people--the doctor of Palos and some of the seacaptains and sailors of the town--to come and talk with this strangerwho had such a singular idea about sailing across the Atlantic. 

It ended in Columbus's staying some months in Palos, waiting for achance to go and see the king and queen. At last, in 1485, he set outfor the Spanish court with a letter to a priest who was a friend ofFriar Juan's, and who could help him to see the king and queen. 

At that time the king and queen of Spain were fighting to drive out ofSpain the people called the Moors. These people came from Africa, butthey had lived in Spain for many years and had once been a very rich andpowerful nation. They were not Spaniards; they were not Christians. Soall Spaniards and all Christians hated them and tried to drive them outof Europe. 

The king and queen of Spain who were fighting the Moors were namedFerdinand and Isabella. They were pretty good people as kings and queenswent in those days, but they did a great many very cruel and very meanthings, just as the kings and queens of those days were apt to do. Iam afraid we should not think they were very nice people nowadays. Wecertainly should not wish our American boys and girls to look up to themas good and true and noble. 

When Columbus first came to them, they were with the army in the campnear the city of Cordova. The king and queen had no time to listen towhat they thought were crazy plans, and poor Columbus could get no oneto talk with him who could be of any help. So he was obliged to goback to drawing maps and selling books to make enough money to supporthimself and his little Diego. 

But at last, through the friend of good Friar Juan Perez of Rabida, who was a priest at the court, and named Talavera, and to whom he had aletter of introduction, Columbus found a chance to talk over his planswith a number of priests and scholars in the city of Salamanca wherethere was a famous college and many learned men. 

Columbus told his story. He said what he wished to do, and asked theselearned men to say a good word for him to, Ferdinand and Isabella sothat he could have the ships and sailors to sail to Cathay. But it wasof no use. 

What! sail away around the world? those wise men cried in horror. Why, you are crazy. The world is not round; it is flat. Your ships wouldtumble off the edge of the world and all the king's money and all theking's men would be lost. No, no; go away; you must not trouble thequeen or even mention such a ridiculous thing again. 

So the most of them said. But one or two thought it might be worthtrying. Cathay was a very rich country, and if this foolish fellow werewilling to run the risk and did succeed, it would be a good thing forSpain, as the king and queen would need a great deal of money after thewar with the Moors was over. At any rate, it was a chance worth thinkingabout. 

And so, although Columbus was dreadfully disappointed, he thought thatif he had only a few friends at Court who were ready to say a good wordfor him he must not give up, but must try, try again. And so he staid inSpain. 

CHAPTER III. HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 

When you wish very much to do a certain thing it is dreadfully hard tobe patient; it is harder still to have to wait. Columbus had to do both. The wars against the Moors were of much greater interest to the king andqueen of Spain than was the finding of a new and very uncertain way toget to Cathay. If it had not been for the patience and what we call thepersistence of Columbus, America would never have been discovered--atleast not in his time. 

He staid in Spain. He grew poorer and, poorer. He was almost friendless. It seemed as if his great enterprise must be given up. But he never losthope. He never stopped trying. Even when he failed he kept on hoping andkept on trying. He felt certain that sometime he should succeed. 

As we have seen, he tried to interest the rulers of different countries, but with no success. He tried to get help from his old home-town ofGenoa and failed; he tried Portugal and failed; he tried the Republic ofVenice and failed; he tried the king and queen of Spain and failed; hetried some of the richest and most powerful of the nobles of Spainand failed; he tried the king of England (whom he got his brother, Bartholomew Columbus, to go and see) and failed. There was still leftthe king of France. He would make one last attempt to win the king andqueen of Spain to his side and if he failed with them he would try thelast of the rulers of Western Europe, the king of France. 

He followed the king and queen of Spain as they went from place to placefighting the Moors. He hoped that some day, when they wished to thinkof something besides fighting, they might think of him and the gold andjewels and spices of Cathay. 

The days grew into months, the months to years, and still the waragainst the Moors kept on; and still Columbus waited for the chance thatdid not come. People grew to know him as "the crazy explorer" as theymet him in the streets or on the church steps of Seville or Cordova, andeven ragged little boys of the town, sharp-eyed and shrill-voiced as allsuch ragged little urchins are, would run after this big man withthe streaming white hair and the tattered cloak, calling him names ortapping their brown little foreheads with their dirty fingers to showthat even they knew that he was "as crazy as a loon. "

At last he decided to make one more attempt before giving it up inSpain. His money was gone; his friends were few; but he remembered hisacquaintances at Palos and so he journeyed back to see once more hisgood friend Friar Juan Perez at the Convent of Rabida on the hill thatlooked out upon the Atlantic he was so anxious to cross. 

It was in the month of November, 1491, that he went back to theConvent of Rabida. If he could not get any encouragement there, he wasdetermined to stay in Spain no longer but to go away and try the king ofFrance. 

Once more he talked over the finding of Cathay with the priests and thesailors of Palos. They saw how patient he was; how persistent he was;how he would never give up his ideas until he had tried them. They weremoved by his determination. They began to believe in him more and more. They resolved to help him. One of the principal sea captains of Paloswas named Martin Alonso Pinzon. He became so interested that he offeredto lend Columbus money enough to make one last appeal to the king andqueen of Spain, and if Columbus should succeed with them, this CaptainPinzon said that he would go into partnership with Columbus and help himout when it came to getting ready to sail to Cathay. 

This was a move in the right direction. At once a messenger was sentto the splendid Spanish camp before the city of Granada, the lastunconquered city of the Moors of Spain. The king and queen of Spain hadbeen so long trying to capture Granada that this camp was really a city, with gates and walls and houses. It was called Santa Fe. Queen Isabella, who was in Santa Fe, after some delay, agreed to hear more about thecrazy scheme of this persistent Genoese sailor, and the Friar Juan Perezwas sent for. He talked so well in behalf of his friend Columbus thatthe queen became still more interested. She ordered Columbus to come andsee her, and sent him sixty-five dollars to pay for a mule, a new suitof clothes and the journey to court. 

About Christmas time, in the year 1491, Columbus, mounted upon his mule, rode into the Spanish camp before the city of Granada. But even now, when he had been told to come, he had to wait. Granada was almostcaptured; the Moors were almost conquered. At last the end came. Onthe second of January, 1492, the Moorish king gave up the keys of hisbeloved city, and the great Spanish banner was hoisted on the highesttower of the Alhambra--the handsomest building in Granada and one ofthe most beautiful in the world. The Moors were driven out of Spain andColumbus's chance had come. 

So he appeared before Queen Isabella and her chief men and told themagain of all his plans and desires. The queen and her advisers sat in agreat room in that splendid Alhambra I have told you of. King Ferdinandwas not there. He did not believe in Columbus and did not wish to lethim have either money, ships or sailors to lose in such a foolish way. But as Columbus stood before her and talked so earnestly about how heexpected to find the Indies and Cathay and what he hoped to bring awayfrom there, Queen Isabella listened and thought the plan worth trying. 

Then a singular thing happened. You would think if you wished forsomething very much that you would give up a good deal for the sake ofgetting it. Columbus had worked and waited for seventeen years. He hadnever got what he wanted. He was always being disappointed. And yet, as he talked to the queen and told her what he wished to do, he said hemust have so much as a reward for doing it that the queen and herchief men were simply amazed at his--well, what the boys to-day call"cheek"--that they would have nothing to do with him. This man reallyis crazy, they said. This poor Genoese sailor comes here without a thingexcept his very odd ideas, and almost "wants the earth" as a reward. This is not exactly what they said, but it is what they meant. 

His few friends begged him to be more modest. Do not ask so much, theysaid, or you will get nothing. But Columbus was determined. I haveworked and waited all these years, he replied. I know just what I cando and just how much I can do for the king and queen of Spain. They mustpay me what I ask and promise what I say, or I will go somewhere else. Go, then! said the queen and her advisers. And Columbus turned his backon what seemed almost his last hope, mounted his mule and rode away. 

Then something else happened. As Columbus rode off to find the Frenchking, sick and tired of all his long and useless labor at the Spanishcourt, his few firm friends there saw that, unless they did somethingright away, all the glory and all the gain of this enterprise Columbushad taught them to believe in would be lost to Spain. So two of them, whose names were Santangel and Quintanilla, rushed into the queen'sroom and begged her, if she wished to become the greatest queen inChristendom, to call back this wandering sailor, agree to his terms andprofit by his labors. 

What if he does ask a great deal? they said. He has spent his lifethinking his plan out; no wonder he feels that he ought to have a goodshare of what he finds. What he asks is really small compared with whatSpain will gain. The war with the Moors has cost you ever so much; yourmoney-chests are empty; Columbus will fill them up. The people of Cathayare heathen; Columbus will help you make them Christian men. The Indiesand Cathay are full of gold and jewels; Columbus will bring you homeshiploads of treasures. Spain has conquered the Moors; Columbus willhelp you conquer Cathay. 

In fact, they talked to Queen Isabella so strongly and so earnestly, that she, too, became excited over this chance for glory and riches thatshe had almost lost, Quick! send for Columbus. Call him back! she said. I agree to his terms. If King Ferdinand cannot or will not take therisk, I, the queen, will do it all. Quick! do not let the man get intoFrance. After him. Bring him back!

And without delay a royal messenger, mounted on a swift horse, was sentat full gallop to bring Columbus back. 

All this time poor Columbus felt bad enough. Everything had gone wrong. Now he must go away into a new land and do it all over again. Kings andqueens, he felt, were not to be depended upon, and he remembered aplace in the Bible where it said: "Put not your trust in princes. " Sad, solitary and heavy-hearted, he jogged slowly along toward the mountains, wondering what the king of France would say to him, and whether it wasreally worth trying. 

Just as he was riding across the little bridge called the Bridge ofPinos, some six miles from Granada, he heard the quick hoof-beats of ahorse behind him. It was a great spot for robbers, and Columbus felt ofthe little money he had in his traveling pouch, and wondered whether hemust lose it all. The hoof-beats came nearer. Then a voice hailed him. Turn back, turn back! the messenger cried out. The queen bids you returnto Granada. She grants you all you ask. 

Columbus hesitated. Ought he to trust this promise, he wondered. Put notyour trust in princes, the verse in the Bible had said. If I go back Imay only be put off and worried as I have been before. And yet, perhapsshe means what she says. At any rate, I will go back and try once more. 

So, on the little Bridge of Pinos, he turned his mule around and rodeback to Granada. And, sure enough, when he saw Queen Isabella sheagreed to all that he asked. If he found Cathay, Columbus was to bemade admiral for life of all the new seas and oceans into which he mightsail; he was to be chief ruler of all the lands he might find; he was tokeep one tenth part of all the gold and jewels and treasures he shouldbring away, and was to have his "say" in all questions about the newlands. For his part (and this was because of the offer of his friend atPalos, Captain Pinzon) he agreed to pay one eighth of all the expensesof this expedition and of all new enterprises, and was to have oneeighth of all the profits from them. 

So Columbus had his wish at last. The queen's men figured up howmuch money they could let him have; they called him "Don ChristopherColumbus, " "Your Excellency" and "Admiral, " and at once he set aboutgetting ready for his voyage. 

CHAPTER IV. HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 

The agreement made between Columbus and the king and queen of Spain wassigned on the seventeenth of April, 1492. But it was four months beforehe was quite ready to sail away. 

He selected the town of Palos as the place to sail from, becausethere, as you know, Captain Pinzon lived; there, too, he had otheracquaintances, so that he supposed it would be easy to get the sailorshe needed for his ships. But in this he was greatly mistaken. 

As soon as the papers had been signed that held the queen to herpromise, Columbus set off for Palos. He stopped at the Convent of Rabidato tell the Friar Juan Perez how thankful he was to him for the help thegood priest had given him, and how everything now looked promising andsuccessful. 

The town of Palos, as you can see from your map of Spain, is situated atthe mouth of the river Tinto on a little bay in the southwestern partof Spain, not far from the borders of Portugal. To-day the sea has goneaway from it so much that it is nearly high and dry; but four hundredyears ago it was quite a seaport, when Spain did not have a great manysea towns on the Atlantic coast. 

At the time of Columbus's voyage the king and queen of Spain wereangry with the port of Palos for something its people had done that waswrong--just what this was we do not know. But to punish the town, andbecause Columbus wished to sail from there, the king and queen orderedthat Palos should pay them a fine for their wrong-doing. And this finewas to lend the king and queen of Spain, for one year, without pay, twosailing vessels of the kind called caravel's, armed and equipped "forthe service of the crown"--that is, for the use of the king and queen ofSpain, in the western voyage that Columbus was to make. 

When Columbus called together the leading people of Palos to meet him inthe church of St. George and hear the royal commands, they came; but atfirst they did not understand just what they must do. But when they knewthat they must send two of their ships and some of their sailing menon this dreadful voyage far out upon the terrible Sea of Darkness, theywere terribly distressed. Nobody was willing to go. They would obey thecommands of the king and queen and furnish the two ships, but as forsailing off with this crazy sea captain--that they would not do. 

Then the king's officers went to work. They seized some sailors(impressed is the word for this), and made them go; they took somefrom the jails, and gave them their freedom as a reward for going; theybegged and threatened and paid in advance, and still it was hard toget enough men for the two ships. Then Captain Pinzon, who had promisedColumbus that he would join him, tried his hand. He added a third shipto the Admiral's "fleet. " He made big promises to the sailors, andworked for weeks, until at last he was able to do what even the royalcommands could not do, and a crew of ninety men was got together to manthe three vessels. The names of these three vessels were the Capitana(changed before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and the Ninaor Baby. Captain de la Cosa commanded the Santa Maria, Captain MartinAlonso Pinzon the Pinta and his brother, Captain Vincent Pinzon, theNina. The Santa Maria was the largest of the three vessels; it wastherefore selected as the leader of the fleet--the flag-ship, as it iscalled--and upon it sailed the commander of the expedition, the AdmiralDon Christopher Columbus. 

When we think of a voyage across the Atlantic nowadays, we think ofvessels as large as the big three-masted ships or the great oceansteamers--vessels over six hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. Butthese "ships" of Columbus were not really ships. They were hardly largerthan the "fishing smacks" that sail up and down our coast to-day. Someof them were not so large. The Santa Maria was, as I have told you, thelargest of the three, and she was only sixty-three feet long, twentyfeet wide and ten and a half feet deep. Just measure this out on theground and see how small, after all, the Admiral's "flag-ship" reallywas. The Pinta was even smaller than this, while the little Nina washardly anything more than a good-sized sail boat. Do you wonder that thepoor people of Palos and the towns round about were frightened when theythought of their fathers and brothers and sons putting out to sea, onthe great ocean they had learned to dread so much, in such shaky littleboats as these?

But finally the vessels were ready. The crews were selected. The timehad come to go. Most of the sailors were Spanish men from the towns nearto the sea, but somehow a few who were not Spaniards joined the crew. 

One of the first men to land in America from one of the ships ofColumbus was an Irishman named William, from the County Galway. Andanother was an Englishman named either Arthur Laws or Arthur Larkins. The Spanish names for both these men look very queer, and only a wisescholar who digs among names and words could have found out what theyreally were. But such a one did find it out, and it increases ourinterest in the discovery of America to know that some of our ownnorthern blood--the Irishman and the Englishman--were in the crews ofColumbus. 

The Admiral Columbus was so sure he was going to find a rich andcivilized country, such as India and Cathay were said to be, that hetook along on his ships the men he would need in such places as heexpected to visit and among such splendid people as he was sure heshould meet. He took along a lawyer to make out all the forms andproclamations and papers that would have to be sent by the Admiralto the kings and princes he expected to visit; he had a secretary andhistorian to write out the story of what he should find and what heshould do. There was a learned Jew, named Louis, who could speak almosta dozen languages, and who could, of course, tell him what the peopleof Cathay and Cipango and the Indies were talking about. There wasa jeweler and silversmith who knew all about the gold and silver andprecious stones that Columbus was going to load the ships with; therewas a doctor and a surgeon; there were cooks and pilots, and even alittle fellow, who sailed in the Santa Maria as the Admiral's cabin boy, and whose name was Pedro de Acevedo. 

Some scholars have said that it cost about two hundred and thirtythousand dollars to fit out this expedition. I do not think it costnearly so much. We do know that Queen Isabella gave sixty-seven thousanddollars to help pay for it. Some people, however, reckoning the oldSpanish money in a different way, say that what Queen Isabella gavetoward the expedition was not over three or four thousand dollars of ourmoney. Perhaps as much more was borrowed from King Ferdinand, althoughhe was to have no share in the enterprise in which Queen Isabella andColumbus were partners. 

It was just an hour before sunrise on Friday, the third of August, 1492, that the three little ships hoisted their anchors and sailed away fromthe port of Palos. I suppose it was a very sorry and a very excitingmorning in Palos. The people probably crowded down on the docks, some ofthem sad and sorrowful, some of them restless and curious. Their fathersand brothers and sons and acquaintances were going--no one knew where, dragged off to sea by a crazy old Italian sailor who thought there wasland to be found somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place. They all knewhe was wrong. They were certain that nothing but dreadful goblins andhorrible monsters lived off there to the West, just waiting to devouror destroy the poor sailors when these three little ships should tumbleover the edge. 

But how different Columbus must have felt as he stepped, into therowboat that took him off to his "flag-ship, " the Santa Maria. Hisdreams had come true. He had ships and sailors under his command, andwas about to sail away to discover great and wonderful things. He whohad been so poor that he could hardly buy his own dinner, was now calledDon and Admiral. He had a queen for his friend and helper. He was givena power that only the richest and noblest could hope for. But more thanall, he was to have the chance he had wished and worked for so long. Hewas to find the Indies; he was to see Cathay; he was to have his sharein all the wealth he should discover and bring away. The son of thepoor wool-weaver of Genoa was to be the friend of kings and princes; thecabin boy of a pirate was now Admiral of the Seas and Governor of theColonies of Spain! Do you wonder that he felt proud?

So, as I have told you, just before sunrise on a Friday morning inAugust, he boarded the Santa Maria and gave orders to his captains"to get under way. " The sailors with a "yo heave ho!" (or whatever theSpanish for that is) tugged at the anchors, the sails filled with themorning breeze, and while the people of Palos watched them from theshore, while the good friar, Juan Perez, raised his hands to Heavencalling down a blessing on the enterprise, while the children waved alast good-by from the water-stairs, the three vessels steered out fromPalos Harbor, and before that day's sun had set, Columbus and his fleetwere full fifty miles on their way across the Sea of Darkness. Thewestward voyage to those wonderful lands, the Indies and Cathay, had atlast begun. 

CHAPTER V. HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 

Did you ever set out, in the dark, to walk with your little brother orsister along a road you did not know much about or had never gone overbefore? It was not an easy thing to do, was it? And how did your littlebrother or sister feel when it was known that you were not just certainwhether you were right or not? Do you remember what the Bible says aboutthe blind leading the blind?

It was much the same with Columbus when he set out from Palos to sailover an unknown sea to find the uncertain land of Cathay. He had his ownidea of the way there, but no one in all his company had ever sailed it, and he himself was not sure about it. He was very much in the dark. Andthe sailors in the three ships were worse than little children. They didnot even have the confidence in their leader that your little brotheror sister would probably have in you as you traveled that new road on adark night. It was almost another case of the blind leading the blind, was it not?

Columbus first steered his ships to the south so as to reach the CanaryIslands and commence his real westward voyage from there. The CanaryIslands, as you will see by looking in your geography, are made up ofseven islands and lie off the northern corner of Africa, some sixtymiles or so west of Morocco. They were named Canaria by the Romans fromthe Latin canis, a dog, "because of the multitude of dogs of great size"that were found there. The canary birds that sing so sweetly in yourhome come from these islands. They had been known to the Spaniards andother European sailors of Columbus's day about a hundred years. 

At the Canaries the troubles of Columbus commenced. And he did have alot of trouble before his voyage was over. While near the island calledthe Grand Canary the rudder of the Pinta, in which Captain Alonso Pinzonsailed, somehow got loose, then broke and finally came off. It was saidthat two of the Pinta's crew, who were really the owners of the vessel, broke the rudder on purpose, because they had become frightened at thethoughts of the perilous voyage, and hoped by damaging their vessel tobe left behind. 

But Columbus had no thought of doing any such thing. He sailed to theisland of Gomera, where he knew some people, and had the Pinta mended. And while lying here with his fleet the great mountain on the island ofTeneriffe, twelve thousand feet high, suddenly began to spit out flameand smoke. It was, as of course you know, a volcano; but the poorfrightened sailors did not know what set this mountain on fire, and theywere scared almost out of their wits' and begged the Admiral to go backhome. But Columbus would not. And as they sailed away from Gomera somesailors told them that the king of Portugal was angry with Columbusbecause he had got his ships from the king and queen of Spain, and thathe had sent out some of his war-ships to worry or capture Columbus. 

But these, too, Columbus escaped, although not before his crews hadgrown terribly nervous for fear of capture. At last they got away fromthe Canaries, and on Sunday, the ninth of September, 1492, with a freshbreeze filling their sails, the three caravels sailed away into theWest. And as the shores of Ferro, the very last of the Canary Islands, faded out of sight, the sailors burst into sighs and murmurings andtears, saying that now indeed they were sailing off--off--off--upon theawful Sea of Darkness and would never see land any more. 

When Columbus thought that he was sailing too slowly--he had now beenaway from Palos a month and was only about a hundred miles out atsea--and when he saw what babies his sailors were, he did something thatwas not just right (for it is never right to do anything that is nottrue) but which he felt he really must do. He made two records (orreckonings as they are called) of his sailing. One of these records wasa true one; this he kept for himself. The other was a false one; this hekept to show his sailors. So while they thought they were sailing slowlyand that the ocean was not so very wide, Columbus knew from his own truerecord that they were getting miles and miles away from home. 

Soon another thing happened to worry the sailors. The pilots weresteering by the compass. You know what that is--a sort of bigmagnet-needle perfectly balanced and pointing always to the north. Atthe time of Columbus the compass was a new thing and was only understoodby a few. On the thirteenth of September they had really got into themiddle of the ocean, and the line of the north changed. Of course thismade the needle in the compass change its position also. Now the sailorshad been taught to believe so fully in the compass that they thought itcould never change its position. And here it was playing a cruel trickupon them. We are trapped! they cried. The goblins in this dreadful seaare making our compass point wrong so as to drag us to destruction. Goback; take us back! they demanded. 

But Columbus, though he knew that his explanation was wrong, said thecompass was all right. The North Star, toward which the needle alwayspointed, had, so he said, changed its position. This quieted the sailorsfor a while. 

When they had been about forty days out from Palos, the ship ran intowhat is marked upon your maps as the Sargasso Sea. This is a vast meadowof floating seaweed and seagrass in the middle of the Atlantic; it iskept drifting about in the same place by the two great sea currents thatflow past it but not through it. 

The sailors did not know this, of course, and when the ships began tosail slower and slower because the seaweed was so thick and heavy andbecause there was no current to carry them along, they were sure thatthey were somewhere near to the jumping-off place, and that the horriblemonsters they had heard of were making ready to stop their ships, andwhen they had got them all snarled up in this weed to drag them all downto the bottom of the sea. 

For nearly a week the ships sailed over these vast sea-meadows, andwhen they were out of them they struck what we call the trade-winds--anever-failing breeze that blew them ever westward. Then the sailorscried out that they were in an enchanted land where there was but onewind and never a breeze to blow the poor sailors home again. Were theynot fearfully "scarey?" But no doubt we should have been so, too, if wehad been with them and knew no more than they did. 

And when they had been over fifty days from home on the twenty-fifth ofSeptember, some one suddenly cried Land! Land! And all hands crowdedto the side. Sure enough, they all saw it, straight ahead of them--fairgreen islands and lofty hills and a city with castles and temples andpalaces that glittered beautifully in the sun. 

Then they all cried for joy and sang hymns of praise and shouted to eachother that their troubles were over. Cathay, it is Cathay! they cried;and they steered straight for the shining city. But, worst of all theirtroubles, even as they sailed toward the land they thought to be Cathay, behold! it all disappeared--island and castle and palace and temple andcity, and nothing but the tossing sea lay all about them. 

For this that they had seen was what is called a mirage--a trick of theclouds and the sun and the sea that makes people imagine they see whatthey would like to, but really do not. But after this Columbus had aharder time than ever with his men, for they were sure he was leadingthem all astray. 

And so with frights and imaginings and mysteries like these, withstrange birds flying about the ships and floating things in the waterthat told of land somewhere about them, with hopes again and againdisappointed, and with the sailors growing more and more restless anddiscontented, and muttering threats against this Italian adventurerwho, was leading the ships and sailors of the Spanish king to suredestruction, Columbus still sailed on, as full of patience and of faith, as certain of success as he had ever been. 

On the seventh of October, 1492, the true record that Columbus waskeeping showed that he had sailed twenty-seven hundred miles from theCanaries; the false record that the sailors saw said they had sailedtwenty-two hundred miles. Had Columbus kept straight on, he would havelanded very soon upon the coast of Florida or South Carolina, and wouldreally have discovered the mainland of America. But Captain AlonsoPinzon saw what looked like a flock of parrots flying south. This madehim think the land lay that way; so he begged the Admiral to change hiscourse to the southward as he was sure there was no land to the west. Against his will, Columbus at last consented, and turning to thesouthwest headed for Cuba. 

But he thought he was steering for Cathay. The islands of Japan, were, he thought, only a few leagues away to the west. They were really, asyou know, away across the United States and then across the PacificOcean, thousands of miles farther west than Columbus could sail. Butaccording to his reckoning he hoped within a day or two to see thecities and palaces of this wonderful land. 

When they sailed from the Canaries a reward had been offered towhomsoever should first see land. This reward was to be a silken jacketand nearly five hundred dollars in money; so all the sailors were on thewatch. 

At about ten o'clock on the evening of the eleventh of October, Columbus, standing on the high raised stern of the Santa Maria, saw amoving light, as if some one on the shore were running with a flamingtorch. 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 wasRodrigo de Triana) caught sight of a long low coastline not far away. Heraised the joyful shout Land, ho! The ships ran in as near to the shoreas they dared, and just ten weeks after the anchors had been hauled upin Palos Harbor they were dropped overboard, and the hips of Columbuswere 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 marbletowers 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 whosename was Gregory XIII. He was greatly interested in learning andscience, and when the scholars and wise men of his day showed him that amistake in reckoning time had long before been made he set about to makeit right. At that time the Pope of Rome had great influence with thekings and queens of Europe, and whatever he wished them to do theygenerally did. 

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

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November; All the rest havethirty-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 correspondwith the new dates which were called New Style. 

Now, according to the Old Style, Columbus discovered the islands hethought to be the Indies (and which have ever since been called theWest Indies) on the twelfth of October, 1492. But, according to the NewStyle, adopted nearly one hundred years after his discovery, the rightdate would be the twenty-first of October. And this is why, in theColumbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated the four hundredthanniversary of the discovery of America on the twenty-first of October;which, as you see, is the same as the twelfth under the Old Style ofreckoning time. 

But did Columbus discover America? What was this land that greeted hiseyes as the daylight came on that Friday morning, and he saw the lowgreen shores that lay ahead of his caravels. 

As far as Columbus was concerned he was sure that he had found some oneof the outermost islands of Cipango or Japan. So he dropped his anchors, ordered out his rowboat, and prepared to take possession of the land inthe name of the queen of Spain, who had helped him in his enterprise. 

Just why or by what right a man from one country could sail up to theland belonging to another country and, planting in the ground theflag of his king, could say, "This land belongs to my king!" is a hardquestion to answer. But there is an old saying that tells us, Mightmakes right; and the servants of the kings and queens--the adventurersand explorers of old--used to go sailing about the world with this ideain their heads, and as soon as they came to a land they, had never seenbefore, up would go their flag, and they would say, This land is mineand my king's! They would not of course do this in any of the well-knownor "Christian lands" of Europe; but they believed that all "paganlands" belonged by right to the first European king whose sailors shoulddiscover and claim them. 

So Columbus lowered a boat from the Santa Maria, and with two of hischief men and some sailors for rowers he pulled off toward the island. 

But before he did so, he had to listen to the cheers and congratulationsof the very sailors who, only a few days before, were ready to kill him. But, you see, this man whom they thought crazy had really brought themto the beautiful land, just as he had promised. It does make such adifference, you know, in what people say whether a thing turns out rightor not. 

Columbus, as I say, got into his rowboat with his chief inspector andhis lawyer. He wore a crimson cloak over his armor, and in his hand heheld the royal banner of Spain. Following him came Captain Alonso Pinzonin a rowboat from the Pinta, and in a rowboat from the Nina CaptainVincent Pinzon. Each of these captains carried the "banner of the greencross" on which were to be seen the initials of the king and queen ofSpain. 

As they rowed toward the land they saw some people on the shore. Theywere not dressed in the splendid clothes the Spaniards expected to findthe people of Cathay wearing. In fact, they did not have on much ofanything but grease and paint. And the land showed no signs of themarble temples and gold-roofed palaces the sailors expected to find. Itwas a little, low, flat green island, partly covered with trees and withwhat looked like a lake in the center. 

This land was, in fact, one of the three thousand keys or coral islandsthat stretch from the capes of Florida to the island of Hayti, and areknown as the Bahama Islands. The one upon which Columbus landed wascalled by the natives Guanahani, and was either the little island nowmarked on the map as Cat Island or else the one called Watling's Island. Just which of these it was has been discussed over and over again, butcareful scholars have now but little doubt that it was the one knownto-day as Watling's Island. To see no sign of glittering palaces andgayly dressed people was quite a disappointment to Columbus. But then, he said, this, is probably the island farthest out to sea, and thepeople who live here are not the real Cathay folks. We shall see themvery soon. 

So with the royal banner and the green-cross standards floating abovehim, with his captains and chief officers and some of the sailorsgathered about him, while all the others watched him from the decks ofhis fleet, Columbus stepped upon the shore. Then he took off his hat, and holding the royal banner in one hand and his sword in the otherhe said aloud: I take possession of this island, which I name SanSalvador, (*) and of all the islands and lands about it in the name of mypatron and sovereign lady, Isabella, and her kingdom of Castile. This, or something like it, he said, for the exact words are not known to us. 

 (*) The island of San Salvador means the island of the Holy Saviour. Columbus and the Spanish explorers who followed him gave Bible or religious names to very much of the land they discovered. 

And when he had done this the captains and sailors fell at his feetin wonder and admiration, begging him to forgive them for all the hardthings they had said about him. For you have found Cathay, they cried. You are our leader. You will make us rich and powerful. Hurrah for thegreat Admiral!

And when the naked and astonished people of the island saw all this--thecanoes with wings, as they called the ships, the richly-dressed men withwhite and bearded faces, the flags and swords, and the people kneelingabout this grand-looking old man in the crimson cloak--they said to oneanother: These men are gods; they have come from Heaven to see us. Andthen, they, too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from Heaven, as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be. 

And when they found that the men from Heaven did not offer to hurt them, they came nearer; and the man in the crimson cloak gave them beads andpieces of bright cloth and other beautiful things they had never seenbefore. And this made them feel all the more certain that these menwho had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be fromHeaven. So they brought them fruits and flowers and feathers and birdsas presents; and both parties, the men with clothes and the men withoutclothes, got on very well together. 

But Columbus, as we know, had come across the water for one especialreason. He was to find Cathay, and he was to find it so that he couldcarry back to Spain the gold and jewels and spices of Cathay. The firstthing, therefore, that he tried to find out from the people of theisland--whom he called "Indians, " because he thought he had come to apart of the coast of India was where Cathay might be. 

Of course they did not understand him. Even Louis, the interpreter, whoknew a dozen languages and who tried them all, could not make out whatthese "Indians" said. But from their signs and actions and from thesound of the words they spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay was offsomewhere to the southwest, and that the gold he was bound to find camefrom there. The "Indians" had little bits of gold hanging in their earsand noses. So Columbus supposed that among the finer people he hopedsoon to meet in the southwest, he should find great quantities of theyellow metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was not far off. Japanwas near, China was near, India was near. Of this he was certain; andeven until he died Columbus did not have any idea that he had found anew world--such as America really was. He was sure that he had simplylanded upon the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he setout to discover--the nearest route to the Indies. 

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and having seized andcarried off to his ships some of the poor natives who had welcomed himso gladly, he commenced a cruise among the islands of the group he haddiscovered. 

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic islands, and ofthem and of the people who lived upon them he wrote to the king andqueen of Spain: "This country excels all others as far as the daysurpasses the night in splendor. The natives love their neighbors asthemselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their facessmiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear toYour Highness there is not a better people in the world. "

Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have acted so meanlytoward these innocent people who loved and trusted him so? For it wasColumbus who first stole them away from their island homes and who firstthought of making them slaves to the white men. 

CHAPTER VII. HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 

Columbus kept sailing on from one island to another. Each new islandhe found would, he hoped, bring him nearer to Cathay and to the marbletemples and golden palaces and splendid cities he was looking for. Butthe temples and palaces and cities did not appear. When the Admiral cameto the coast of Cuba he said: This, I know, is the mainland of Asia. Sohe sent off Louis, the interpreter, with a letter to the "great Emperorof Cathay. " Louis was gone several days; but he found no emperor, nopalace, no city, no gold, no jewels, no spices, no Cathay--only frailhouses of bark and reeds, fields of corn and grain, with simple peoplewho could tell him nothing about Cathay or Cipango or the Indies. 

So day after day Columbus kept on his search, sailing from island toisland, getting a little gold here and there, or some pearls and silverand a lot of beautiful bird skins, feathers and trinkets. 

Then Captain Alonso Pinzon, who was sailing in the Pinta, believed hecould do better than follow the Admiral's lead. I know, he said, if Icould go off on my own hook I could find plenty of gold and pearls, andperhaps I could find Cathay. So one day he sailed away and Columbus didnot know what had become of him. 

At last Columbus, sailing on and troubled at the way Captain AlonsoPinzon had acted, came one day to the island of Hayti. If Cuba wasCathay (or China), Hayti, he felt sure, must be Cipango (or Japan). Sohe decided to sail into one of its harbors to spend Christmas Day. Butjust before Christmas morning dawned, the helmsman of the Santa Maria, thinking that everything was safe, gave the tiller into the hands of aboy--perhaps it was little Pedro the cabin boy--and went to sleep. Therest of the crew also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, feltquite big to think that he was really steering the Admiral's flagship, was a little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had driven the SantaMaria plump upon a hidden reef. And there she was wrecked. They workedhard to get her off but it was no use. She keeled over on her side, herseams opened, the water leaked in, the waves broke over her, the mastsfell out and the Santa Maria had made her last voyage. 

Then Columbus was in distress. The Pinta had deserted him, the SantaMaria was a wreck, the Nina was not nearly large enough to carry all hismen back to Spain. And to Spain he must return at once. What should hedo?

Columbus was quick at getting out of a fix. So in this case he speedilydecided what to do. He set his men at work tearing the wreck of theSanta Maria to pieces. Out of her timbers and woodwork, helped out withtrees from the woods and a few stones from the shore, he made quitea fort. It had a ditch and a watch-tower and a drawbridge. It proudlyfloated the flag of Spain. It was the first European fort in the newworld. On its ramparts Columbus mounted the cannons he had saved fromthe wreck and named the fort La Navidad--that is, Fort Nativity, becauseit was made out of the ship that was wrecked on Christmas Day-the day ofChrist's nativity, his birthday. 

He selected forty of his men to stay in the fort until he should returnfrom Spain. The most of them were quite willing to do this as theythought the place was a beautiful one and they would be kept very busyfilling the fort with gold. Columbus told them they must have at least aton of gold before he came back. He left them provisions and powderfor a year, he told them to be careful and watchful, to be kind to theIndians and to make the year such a good one that the king and queen ofSpain would be glad to reward them. And then he said good-by and sailedaway for Spain. 

It was on the fourth of January, 1493, that Columbus turned the littleNina homeward. He had not sailed very far when what should he comeacross but the lost Pinta. Captain Alonso Pinzon seemed very muchashamed when he saw the Admiral, and tried to explain his absence. Columbus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon had gone off gold huntingand had not found any gold. But he did not scold him, and both thevessels sailed toward Spain. 

The homeward voyage was a stormy and seasick one. Once it was so roughthat Columbus thought surely the Nina would be wrecked. So he copiedoff the story of what he had seen and done, addressed it to the king andqueen of Spain, put it into a barrel and threw the barrel overboard. 

But the Nina was not shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth of FebruaryColumbus reached the Azores. The Portuguese governor was so surprisedwhen he heard this crazy Italian really had returned, and was so angryto think it was Spain and not Portugal that was to profit by his voyagethat he tried to make Columbus a prisoner. But the Admiral gave thisinhospitable welcomer the slip and was soon off the coast of Portugal. 

Here he was obliged to land and meet the king of Portugal--that sameKing John who had once acted so meanly toward him. King John wouldhave done so again had he dared. But things were quite different now. Columbus was a great man. He had made a successful voyage, and the kingand queen of Spain would have made it go hard with the king of Portugalif he dared trouble their admiral. So King John had to give a royalreception to Columbus, and permit him to send a messenger to the kingand queen of Spain with the news of his return from Cathay. 

Then Columbus went on board the Nina again and sailed for Palos. But hisold friend Captain Alonso Pinzon had again acted badly. For he had leftthe Admiral in one of the storms at sea and had hurried homeward. Thenhe sailed into one of the northern ports of Spain, and hoping to get allthe credit for his voyage, sent a messenger post-haste to the king andqueen with the word that he had returned from Cathay and had much totell them. And then he, too, sailed for Palos. 

On the fifteenth of March, 1493, just seven months after he had sailedaway to the West, Columbus in the Nina sailed into Palos Harbor. Thepeople knew the little vessel at once. And then what a time they made!Columbus has come back, they cried. He has found Cathay. Hurrah! hurrah!And the bells rang and the cannons boomed and the streets were fullof people. The sailors were welcomed with shouts of joy, and thebig stories they told were listened to with open mouths and manyexclamations of surprise. So Columbus came back to Palos. And everybodypointed him out and cheered him and he was no longer spoken of as "thatcrazy Italian who dragged away the men of Palos to the Jumping-offplace. "

And in the midst of all this rejoicing what should sail into the harborof Palos but the Pinta, just a few hours late! And when Captain AlonsoPinzon heard the sounds of rejoicing, and knew that his plans to takeaway from Columbus all the glory of what had been done had all gonewrong, he did not even go to see his old friend and ask his pardon. Hewent away to his own house without seeing any one. And there he found astern letter from the king and queen of Spain scolding him for tryingto get the best of Columbus, and refusing to hear or see him. The waythings had turned out made Captain Alonso Pinzon feel so badly that hefell sick; and in a few days he died. 

But Columbus, after he had seen his good friend Juan Perez, the friar atRabida, and told him all his adventures, went on to Barcelona where KingFerdinand and Queen Isabella were waiting for him. They had already senthim letters telling him how pleased they were that he had found Cathay, and ordering him to get ready for a second expedition at once. Columbusgave his directions for this, and then, in a grand procession thatcalled everybody to the street or window or housetop, he set off forBarcelona. He reached the court on a fine April day and was at oncereceived with much pleasure by the king and queen of Spain. 

Columbus told them where he had been and what he had seen; he showedthem the gold and the pearls and the birds and curiosities he hadbrought to Spain as specimens, of what was to be found in Cathay; heshowed them the ten painted and "fixed-up" Indians he had stolen andbrought back with him. 

And the king and queen of Spain said he had done well. They had himsit beside them while he told his story, and treated this poor Italianwool-weaver as they would one of their great princes or mighty lords. They told him he could put the royal arms alongside his own on hisshield or crest, and they bade him get together at once ships andsailors for a second expedition to Cathay--ships and sailors enough, they said, to get away up to the great cities of Cathay, where themarble temples and the golden palaces must be. It was their wish, theysaid, to gain the friendship of the great Emperor of Cathay, to tradewith him and get a good share of his gold and jewels and spices. For, you see, no one as yet imagined that Columbus had discovered America. They did not even know that there was such a continent. They thought hehad sailed to Asia and found the rich countries that Marco Polo had toldsuch big stories about. 

Columbus, you may be sure, was "all the rage" now. Wherever he went thepeople followed him, cheering and shouting, and begging him to take themwith him on his next voyage to Cathay. 

He was as anxious as any one to get back to those beautiful islandsand hunt for gold and jewels. He set to work at once, and on thetwenty-fifth of September, 1493, with a fleet of seventeen ships and acompany of fifteen hundred men, Columbus the Admiral set sail from Cadizon his second voyage to Cathay and Cipango and the Indies. And this timehe was certain he should find all these wonderful places, and bringback from the splendid cities unbounded wealth for the king and queen ofSpain. 

CHAPTER VIII. TRYING IT AGAIN. 

Do you not think Columbus must have felt very fine as he sailed out ofCadiz Harbor on his second voyage to the West? It was just about a yearbefore, you know, that his feeble fleet of three little ships sailedfrom Palos port. His hundred sailors hated to go; his friends were few;everybody else said he was crazy; his success was very doubtful. Now, as he stood on the high quarter-deck of his big flag-ship, the MariaGalante, he was a great man. By appointment of his king and queen hewas "Admiral of the Ocean Seas" and "Viceroy of the Indies. " Hehad servants, to do as he directed; he had supreme command over theseventeen ships of his fleet, large and small; fifteen hundred menjoyfully crowded his decks, while thousands left at home wished thatthey might go with him, too. He had soldiers and sailors, horsemen andfootmen; his ships were filled with all the things necessary for tradingwith the Indians and the great merchants of Cathay, and for building thehomes of those who wished to live in the lands beyond the sea. 

Everything looked so well and everybody was so full of hope andexpectation that the Admiral felt that now his fondest dreams werecoming to pass and that he was a great man indeed. 

This was to be a hunt for gold. And so sure of success was Columbus thathe promised the king and queen of Spain, out of the money he should makeon this voyage, to, himself pay for the fitting out of a great army offifty thousand foot soldiers and four thousand horsemen to drive awaythe pagan Turks who had captured and held possession of the city ofJerusalem and the sepulcher of Christ. For this had been the chiefdesire, for years and years, of the Christian people of Europe. Toaccomplish it many brave knights and warriors had fought and failed. Butnow Columbus was certain he could do it. 

So, out into the western ocean sailed the great expedition of theAdmiral. He sailed first to the Canary Isles, where he took aboard woodand water and many cattle, sheep and swine. Then, on the seventeenth ofOctober, he steered straight out into the broad Atlantic, and on Sunday, the third of November, he saw the hill-tops of one of the West IndiaIslands that he named Dominica. You can find it on your map of the WestIndies. 

For days he sailed on, passing island after island, landing on some andgiving them names. Some of them were inhabited, some of them were not;some were very large, some were very small. But none of them helpedhim in any way to find Cathay, so at last he steered toward Hayti (orHispaniola, as he called it) and the little ship-built fortress of LaNavidad, where his forty comrades had been left. 

On the twenty-seventh of November, the fleet of the Admiral cast anchoroff the solitary fort. It was night. No light was to be seen on theshore; through the darkness nothing could be made out that looked likethe walls of the fort. Columbus fired a cannon; then he fired another. The echoes were the only answer. They must be sound sleepers in ourfortress there, said the Admiral. At last, over the water he heard thesound of oars--or was it the dip of a paddle? A voice called for theAdmiral; but it was not a Spanish voice. The interpreter--who wasthe only one left of those ten stolen Indians carried by Columbus toSpain--came to the Admiral's side; by the light of the ship's lanternthey could make out the figure of an Indian in his canoe. He broughtpresents from his chief. But where are my men at the fort? asked theAdmiral. And then the whole sad story was told. 

The fort of La Navidad was destroyed; the Spaniards were all dead; thefirst attempt of Spain to start a colony in the new world was a terriblefailure. And for it the Spaniards themselves were to blame. 

After Columbus had left them, the forty men in the fort did not do ashe told them or as they had solemnly promised. They were lazy; they wererough; they treated the Indians badly; they quarreled among themselves;some of them ran off to live in the woods. Then sickness came; therewere two "sides, " each one jealous of the other; the Indians becameenemies. A fiery war-chief from the hills, whose name was Caonabo, ledthe Indians against the white men. The fort and village were surprised, surrounded and destroyed. And the little band of "conquerors"--as theSpaniards loved to call themselves--was itself conquered and killed. 

It was a terrible disappointment to Columbus. The men in whom he hadtrusted had proved false. The gold he had told them to get together theyhad not even found. His plans had all gone wrong. 

But Columbus was not the man to stay defeated. His fort was destroyed, his men were killed, his settlement was a failure. It can't be helpednow, he said. I will try again. 

This time he would not only build a fort, he would build a city. He hadmen and material enough to do this and to do it well. So he set to work. 

But the place where he had built from the wreck of the unlucky SantaMaria his unlucky fort of La Navidad did not suit him. It was low, dampand unhealthy. He must find a better place. After looking about for sometime he finally selected a place on the northern side of the island. Youcan find it if you look at the map of Hayti in the West Indies; it isnear to Cape Isabella. 

He found here a good harbor for ships, a good place on the rocks for afort, and good land for gardens. Here Columbus laid out his new town, and called it after his friend the queen of Spain, the city of Isabella. 

He marked out a central spot for his park or square; around this rana street, and along this street he built large stone buildings for astorehouse, a church and a house for himself, as governor of the colony. On the side streets were built the houses for the people who were tolive in the new town, while on a rocky point with its queer little roundtower looking out to sea stood the stone fort to protect the littlecity. It was the first settlement made by white men in all the great newworld of America. 

You must know that there are some very wise and very bright people whodo not agree to this. They say that nearly five hundred years beforeColumbus landed, a Norwegian prince or viking, whose name was LeifEricsson, had built on the banks of the beautiful Charles River, sometwelve miles from Boston, a city which he called Norumbega. 

But this has not really been proved. It is almost all the fancy of awise man who has studied it out for himself, and says he believes therewas such a city. But he does not really know it as we know of the cityof Isabella, and so we must still say that Christopher Columbus reallydiscovered America and built the first fort and the first city on itsshores--although he thought he was doing all this in Asia, on the shoresof China or Japan. 

When Columbus had his people nearly settled in their new city ofIsabella, he remembered that the main thing he was sent to do was to gettogether as much gold as possible. His men were already grumbling. Theyhad come over the sea, they said, not to dig cellars and build huts, butto find gold--gold that should make them rich and great and happy. 

So Columbus set to work gold-hunting. At first things seemed to promisesuccess. The Indians told big stories of gold to be found in themountains of Hayti; the men sent to the mountains discovered signs ofgold, and at once Columbus sent home joyful tidings to the king andqueen of Spain. 

Then he and his men hunted everywhere for the glittering yellow metal. They fished for it in the streams; they dug for it in the earth; theydrove the Indians to hunt for it also until the poor redmen learned tohate the very sound of the word gold, and believed that this was all thewhite men lived for, cared for or worked for; holding up a piece ofthis hated gold the Indians would say, one to another: "Behold theChristian's god!" And so it came about that the poor worried natives, who were not used to such hard work, took the easiest way out of it all, and told the Spaniards the biggest kind of lies as to where gold mightbe found--always away off somewhere else--if only the white men would gothere to look for it. 

On the thirteenth of January, 1494, Columbus sent back to Spain twelveof his seventeen ships. He did not send back in them to the king, andqueen, the gold he had promised. He sent back the letters that promisedgold; he sent back as prisoners for punishment some of the mostdiscontented and quarrelsome of his colonists; and, worst of all, hesent to the king and queen a note asking, them to permit him to send toSpain all the Indians he could catch, to be sold as slaves. He said thatby doing this they could make "good Christians" of the Indians, whilethe money that came from selling the natives would buy cattle for thecolony and leave some money for the royal money-chests. 

It is not pleasant to think this of so great a man as Columbus. Butit is true, and he is really the man who, started the slave-trade inAmerica. Of course things were very different in his time from what theyare to-day, and people did not think so badly of this horrible business. But some good men did, and spoke out boldly against it. What they saidwas not of much use, however, and slavery was started in the new world. And from that act of Columbus came much sorrow and trouble for the landhe found. Even the great war between the northern and southern sectionsof our own United States, upon one side or the other of which yourfathers, or your grandfathers perhaps, fought with gun and sword, wasbrought about by this act of the great Admiral Columbus hundreds ofyears before. 

So the twelve ships sailed back to Spain, and Columbus, with his fiveremaining ships, his soldiers and his colonists, remained in the newcity of Isabella to keep up the hunt for gold or to become farmers inthe new world. 

CHAPTER IX. HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 

Both the farmers and the gold hunters had a hard time of it in the landthey had come to so hopefully. The farmers did not like to farm whenthey thought they could do so much better at gold hunting; the goldhunters found that it was the hardest kind of work to get from the wateror pick from the rocks the yellow metal they were so anxious to obtain. 

Columbus himself was not satisfied with the small amount of gold he gotfrom the streams and mines of Hayti; he was tired of the wrangling andgrumbling of his men. So, one day, he hoisted sail on his five shipsand started away on a hunt for richer gold mines, or, perhaps, for thosewonderful cities of Cathay he was still determined to find. 

He sailed to the south and discovered the island of Jamaica. Then hecoasted along the shores of Cuba. The great island stretched away somany miles that Columbus was certain it was the mainland of Asia. Therewas some excuse for this mistake. The great number of small islands hehad sailed by all seemed to lie just as the books about Cathay thathe had read said they did; the trees and fruits that he found in theseislands seemed to be just the same that travelers said grew in Cathay. 

To be sure the marble temples, the golden-roofed palaces, the gorgeouscities had not yet appeared; but Columbus was so certain that he hadfound Asia that he made all his men sign a paper in which they declaredthat the land they had found (which was, as you know, the island ofCuba) was really and truly the coast of Asia. 

This did not make it so, of course; but it made the people of Spain, andthe king and queen, think it was so. And this was most important. So, to keep the sailors from going back on their word and the statement theyhad signed, Columbus ordered that if any officer should afterward sayhe had been mistaken, he should be fined one hundred dollars; and if anysailor should say so, he should receive one hundred lashes with a whipand have his tongue pulled out. That was a curious way to discoverCathay, was it not?

Then Columbus, fearing another shipwreck or another mutiny, sailed backagain to the city of Isabella. His men were discontented, his ships werebattered and leaky, his hunt for gold and palaces had again proved afailure. He sailed around Jamaica; he got as far as the eastern endof Hayti, and then, just as he was about to run into the harbor ofIsabella, all his strength gave out. The strain and the disappointmentwere too much for him; he fell very, very sick, and on the twenty-ninthof September, 1494, after just about five months of sailing andwandering and hunting, the Nina ran into Isabella Harbor with Columbusso sick from fever that he could not raise his hand or his head to givean order to his men. 

For five long months Columbus lay in his stone house on the plaza orsquare of Isabella a very sick man. His brother Bartholomew had comeacross from Spain with three supply ships, bringing provisions for thecolony. So Bartholomew took charge of affairs for a while. 

And while Columbus lay so sick, some of the leading men in the colonyseized the ships in which Bartholomew Columbus had come to his brother'said, and sailing back to Spain they told the king and queen all sortsof bad stories about Columbus. They were Spaniards. Columbus was anItalian. They were jealous of him because he was higher placed and hadmore to say than they had. They were angry to think that when he hadpromised to bring them to the gorgeous cities and the glittering goldmines of Cathay he had only landed them on islands which were the homesof naked savages, and made them work dreadfully hard for what littlegold they could find. He had promised them power; they went home poorerthan when they came away. So they were "mad" at Columbus--just as boysand girls are sometimes "mad" at one another; and they told the worststories they could think of about him, and called him all sorts of hardnames, and said the king and queen of Spain ought to look out for "theirgreat Admiral, " or he would get the best of them and keep for himselfthe most of whatever he could find in the new lands. 

At last Columbus began to grow better. And when he knew what his enemieshad done he was very much troubled for fear they should get the king andqueen to refuse him any further aid. So, just as soon as he was able, onthe tenth of March, 1496, he sailed home to Spain. 

How different was this from his splendid setting out from Cadiztwo years before. Then everything looked bright and promising; noweverything seemed dark and disappointing. The second voyage to theIndies had been a failure. 

So, tired of his hard work in trying to keep his dissatisfied men inorder, in trying to check the Indians who were no longer his friends, intrying to find the gold and pearls that were to be got at only by hardwork, in trying to make out just where he was and just where Cathaymight be, Columbus started for home. Sick, troubled, disappointed, threatened by enemies in the Indies and by more bitter enemies at home, sad, sorry and full of fear, but yet as determined and as brave as ever, on the tenth of March, 1496, he went on board his caravels with twohundred and fifty homesick and feversick men, and on the eleventh ofJune his two vessels sailed into the harbor of Cadiz. 

The voyage had been a tedious one. Short of food, storm-tossed and fullof aches and pains the starving company "crawled ashore, " glad to bein their home land once more, and most of them full of complaints andgrumblings at their commander, the Admiral. 

And Columbus felt as downcast as any. He came ashore dressed, not in thegleaming armor and crimson robes of a conqueror, as on his first return, but in the garb of what was known as a penitent--the long, coarse gown, the knotted girdle and peaked hood of a priest. For, you see, he did notknow just what terrible stories had been told by his enemies; he did notknow how the king and queen would receive him. He had promised them somuch; he had brought them so little. He had sailed away so hopefully; hehad come back humbled and hated. The greatest man in the world, he hadbeen in 1492; and in 1496 he was unsuccessful, almost friendless andvery unpopular. So you see, boys and girls, that success is a mostuncertain thing, and the man who is a hero to-day may be a beggarto-morrow. 

But, as is often the case, Columbus was too full of fear. He was notreally in such disgrace as he thought he was. Though his enemies hadsaid all sorts of hard things against him, the king--and especially thequeen--could not forget that he was, after all, the man who, had foundthe new land for Spain; they knew that even though he had not broughthome the great riches that were to have been gathered in the Indies, hehad still found for Spain a land that would surely, in time, give to itriches, possessions and power. 

So they sent knightly messengers to Columbus telling him to come and seethem at once, and greeting him with many pleasant and friendly words. Columbus was, as you must have seen, quick to feel glad again the momentthings seemed to turn in his favor; so he laid aside his penitent'sgown, and hurried off to court. And almost the first thing he did was toask the king and queen to fit out another fleet for him. Six ships, hesaid he should want this time; and with these he was certain he couldsail into the yet undiscovered waters that lay beyond Hayti and uponwhich he knew he should find Cathay. 

I am afraid the king and queen of Spain were beginning to feel a littledoubtful as to this still undiscovered Cathay. At any rate, they hadother matters to think of and they did not seem so very anxious tospend more money on ships and sailors. But they talked very nicely toColumbus; they gave him a new title (this time it was duke or marquis);they made him a present of a great tract of land in Hayti, but it wasmonths and months before they would help him with the ships and money hekept asking for. 

At last, however, the queen, Isabella, who had always had more interestin Columbus and his plans than had the king, her husband, said a goodword for him. The six ships were given him, men and supplies were puton board and on the twentieth of May, 1498, the Admiral set out on histhird voyage to what every one now called the Indies. 

There was not nearly so much excitement among the people about thisvoyage. Cathay and its riches had almost become an old story; at anyrate it was a story that was not altogether believed in. Great crowdsdid not now follow the Admiral from place to place begging him to takethem with him to the Indies. The hundreds of sick, disappointed andangry men who had come home poor when they expected to be rich, and sickwhen they expected to be strong, had gone through the land, and folksbegan to think that Cathay was after all only a dream, and that thestories of great gold and of untold riches which they had heard were but"sailors' yarns" which no one could believe. 

So it was hard to get together a crew large enough to man the sixvessels that made up the fleet. At last, however, all was ready, andwith a company of two hundred men, besides his sailors, Columbus hoistedanchor in the little port of San Lucar just north of Cadiz, near themouth of the Guadalquivir river, and sailed away into the West. 

This time he was determined to find the continent of Asia. Even though, as you remember, he made his men sign a paper saying that the coast ofCuba was Asia, he really seems to have doubted this himself. He feltthat he had only found islands. If so, he said, Cathay must be the otherside of those islands; and Cathay is what I must find. 

So, with this plan in mind, he sent three of his ships to the littlesettlement of Isabella, and with the other three he sailed more to thesouthwest. On the first of August the ships came in sight of the threemountain peaks of the large island he called Trindad, or Trinity. 

Look on your map of South America and you will see that Trinidad liesalmost in the mouth of the Orinoco, a mighty river in the northern partof South America. 

Columbus coasted about this island, and as he did so, looking acrossto the west, he saw what he supposed to be still another island. It wasnot. It was the coast of South America. For the first time, but withoutknowing it, Columbus saw the great continent he had so long been huntingfor, though he had been seeking it under another name. 

So you see, the story of Columbus shows how his life was full ofmistakes. In his first voyage he found an island and thought it was themainland of the Eastern Hemisphere; in his third voyage he discoveredthe mainland of the New World and thought it only an island off thecoast of the Old World. His life was full of mistakes, but thosemistakes have turned out to be, for us, glorious successes. 

CHAPTER X. FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 

If you know a boy or a girl whose mind is set on any one thing, you willfind that they are always talking about that thing. Is not this so? Theyhave what people call a "hobby" (which is a kind of a horse, you know), and they are apt, as we say, to "ride their hobby to death. "

If this is true of certain boys and girls, it is even more true of menand women. They get to be what we call people of one idea, and whateverthey see or whatever they do always turns on that one idea. 

It was so with Columbus. All his life his one idea had been the findingof Asia--the Indies, or Cathay, as he called it--by sailing to the west. He did sail to the west. He did find land. And, because of this, as wehave seen, all his voyaging and all his exploring were done in the firmbelief that he was discovering new parts of the eastern coast of Asia. The idea that he had found a new world never entered his head. 

So, when he looked toward the west, as he sailed around the island ofTrinidad and saw the distant shore, he said it was a new part of Asia. He was as certain of this as he had before been certain that Cuba was apart of the Asiatic mainland. 

But when he sailed into the mouth of the great Orinoco River he waspuzzled. For the water was no longer salt; it grew fresher and fresheras he sailed on. And it rushed out so furiously through the two straitsat the northern and southern ends of Trinidad (which because of theterrible rush of their currents he called the Lion's Mouth and theDragon's Mouth) that he was at first unable to explain it all. 

Then he had a curious idea. Columbus was a great reader of the Bible;some of the Bible scholars of his day said that the Garden of Eden wasin a far Eastern land where a mighty river came down through it from thehills of Paradise; as Columbus saw the beautiful land he had reached, and saw the great river sending down its waters to the sea, he fittedall that he saw to the Bible stories he knew so well, and felt sure thathe had really discovered the entrance to the Garden of Eden. 

He would gladly have sailed across the broad bay and up the great riverto explore this heavenly land; but he was ill with gout, he was nearlyblind from his sore eyes, his ships were shaky and leaky, and he feltthat he ought to hurry away to the city of Isabella where his brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, were in charge of affairs and were, he knew, anxiously waiting for him to come back. 

So at last he turned away from the lovely land that he thought mustbe Paradise and steered toward Hayti. On the nineteenth of August hearrived off the coast of Hayti. He sent a messenger with news of hisarrival, and soon greeted his brother Bartholomew, who, when he heard ofthe Admiral's arrival, sailed at once to meet him. 

Bartholomew Columbus had a sad story to tell his brother Christopher. Things had been going badly in Hayti, and the poor Admiral grew sickerand sicker as he listened to what Bartholomew had to tell. 

You have heard it said that there are black sheep in every flock. Therewere black sheep in this colony of Columbus. There were lazy men anddiscontented men and jealous men, and they made great trouble, both inthe city of Isabella and in the new town which Bartholomew bad built inanother part of the island and called Santo Domingo. 

Such men are sure to make mischief, and these men in Hayti had made alot of it. Columbus had staid so long in Spain that these men began tosay that they knew he was certainly in trouble or disgrace there, thatthe king and queen were angry with him, and that his offices of viceroyand admiral were to be taken away from him. If this were so, they weregoing to look out for themselves, they said. They would no longer obeythe commands of the Admiral's brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, whom hehad left in charge. 

So they rose in rebellion, and made things so uncomfortable for the twobrothers that the colony was soon full of strife and quarreling. 

The leader of this revolt was one of the chief men in the colony. Hisname was Roldan. When Columbus and Bartholomew sailed into the harborof Santo Domingo, on the thirtieth of August, they found that Roldan andhis followers had set up a camp for themselves in another part of theisland, and given out that they were determined never to have anythingmore to do with the three Columbus brothers. 

This rebellion weakened the colony dreadfully. Things looked desperate;so desperate indeed that Columbus, after thinking it all over, thoughtthat the only way to do was to seem to give in to Roldan and patchup some sort of an agreement by which they could all live together inpeace. But all the same, he said, I will complain to the king and havethis rebel Roldan punished. 

So the Admiral wrote Roldan a letter in which he offered to forgiveand forget all that he had done if he would come back and help make thecolony strong and united again. Roldan agreed to do this, if he couldhave the same position he held before, and if Columbus would see thathis followers had all the land they wanted. Columbus agreed to this andalso gave the rebels permission to use the poor natives as slaves ontheir lands. So the trouble seemed to be over for a while, and Columbussent two of his ships to Spain with letters to the king and queen. Butin these letters he accused Roldan of rebellion and tried to explain whyit was that things were going so badly in Hayti. 

But when these ships arrived in Spain the tidings they brought and theother letters sent by them only made matters worse. People in Spain hadheard so many queer things from across the sea that they were beginningto lose faith in Columbus. The men who had lost health and money in theunlucky second voyage of the Admiral were now lazy loafers about thedocks, or they hung about the court and told how Columbus had madebeggars of them, while they hooted after and insulted the two sons ofColumbus who were pages in the queen's train. They called the boys thesons of "the Admiral of Mosquitoland. "

Then came the ships with news of Roldan's rebellion, but with little orno gold. And people said this was a fine viceroy who couldn't keep orderamong his own men because, no doubt, he was too busy hiding away for hisown use the gold and pearls they knew he must have found in the river ofParadise he said he had discovered. 

Then came five shiploads of Indian slaves, sent to Spain by Columbus, and along with them came the story that Columbus had forgiven Roldan forhis rebellion and given him lands and office in Hayti. 

King Ferdinand had never really liked Columbus and had always been sorrythat he had given him so much power and so large a share in the profits. The queen, too, began to think that while Columbus was a good sailor, hewas a very poor governor. But when she heard of the shiploads of slaveshe had sent, and found out that among the poor creatures were thedaughters of some of the chiefs, or caciques, of the Indians, she wasvery angry, and asked how "her viceroy" dared to use "her vassals" sowithout letting her know about it. Things were indeed beginning to lookbad for Columbus. The king and queen had promised that only membersof the Admiral's family should be sent to govern the island; they hadpromised that no one but himself should have the right to trade in thenew lands. But now they began to go back on their promises. If Columbuscannot find us gold and spices, they said, other men can. So they gavepermission to other captains to explore and trade in the western lands. And as the complaints against the Admiral kept coming they began to talkof sending over some one else to govern the islands. 

More letters came from Columbus asking the king and queen to let himkeep up his slave-trade, and to send out some one to act as a judge ofhis quarrel with Roldan. Then the king and queen decided that somethingmust be done at once. The queen ordered the return of the slavesColumbus had sent over, and the king told one of his officers namedBobadilla to go over to Hayti and set things straight. And he sent aletter by him commanding Columbus to talk with him, to give up all theforts and arms in the colony and to obey Bobadilla in all things. 

Bobadilla sailed at once. But before he got across the sea matters, aswe know, had been straightened out by the Admiral; and when Bobadillareached Hayti he found everything quiet there. Columbus had made friendswith Roldan (or made believe that he had), and had got things into goodrunning order again. 

This was not what Bobadilla had reckoned upon. He had expected to findthings in such a bad way that he would have to take matters into his ownhand at once, and become a greater man than the Admiral. If everythingwas all right he would have his journey for nothing and everybody wouldlaugh at him. So he determined to go ahead, even though there was nonecessity for his taking charge of affairs. He had been sent to docertain things, and he did them at once. Without asking Columbus for hisadvice or his assistance, he took possession of the forts and told everyone that he was governor now. He said that he had come to set thingsstraight, and he listened to the complaints of all the black sheep ofthe colony--and how they did crowd around him and say the worst thingsthey could think of against the Admiral they had once been so anxious tofollow. 

Bobadilla listened to all their stories. He proceeded to use the powerthe king and queen had given him to punish and disgrace Columbus--whichwas not what they meant him to do. He moved into the palace of theAdmiral; he ordered the Admiral and his brothers to come to him, andwhen they came expecting to talk things over, Bobadilla ordered thatthey be seized as prisoners and traitors, that they be chained hand andfoot and put in prison. 

Columbus's saddest day had come. The man who had found a new world forhis king and queen, who had worked so hard in their service and who hadmeant to do right, although he had made many mistakes, was thrust intoprison as if he were a thief or a murderer. The Admiral of the OceanSeas, the Viceroy of the Indies, the grand man whom all Spain hadhonored and all the world had envied, was held as a prisoner in the landhe had found, and all his powers were taken by a stranger. He was sick, he was disappointed, he was defeated in all his plans. And now he was inchains. His third voyage had ended the worst of all. He had sailed awayto find Cathay; he had, so he believed, found the Garden of Eden andthe river of Paradise. And here, as an end to it all, he was arrestedby order of the king and queen he had tried to serve, his power andposition were taken from him by an insolent and unpitying messenger fromSpain; he was thrown into prison and after a few days he was hurriedwith his brothers on board a ship and sent to Spain for trial andpunishment. How would it all turn out? Was it not a sad and sorry endingto his bright dreams of success?

CHAPTER XI. HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 

I suppose you think Bobadilla was a very cruel man. He was. But in histime people were apt to be cruel to one another whenever they had thepower in their own hands. The days in which Columbus lived were not likethese in which we are living. You can never be too thankful for that, boys and girls. Bobadilla had been told to go over the water and set theColumbus matters straight. He had been brought up to believe that to setmatters straight you must be harsh and cruel; and so he did as he wasused to seeing other people in power do. Even Queen Isabella did nothesitate to do some dreadful things to certain people she did not likewhen she got them in her power. Cruelty was common in those days. It waswhat we call the "spirit of the age. " So you must not blame Bobadillatoo much, although we will all agree that it was very hard on Columbus. 

So Columbus, as I have told you, sailed back to Spain. But when theofficer who had charge of him and whose name was Villijo, had got out tosea and out of Bobadilla's sight, he wanted to take the chains off. Forhe loved Columbus and it made him feel very sad to see the old Admiraltreated like a convict or a murderer. Let me have these cruel chainsstruck off, Your Excellency, he said. No, no, Villijo, Columbus replied. Let these fetters remain upon me. My king and queen ordered me to submitand Bobadilla has put me in chains. I will wear these irons until myking and queen shall order them removed, and I shall keep them always asrelics and memorials of my services. 

It always makes us sad to see any one in great trouble. To hear ofa great man who has fallen low or of a rich man who has become poor, always makes us say: Is not that too bad? Columbus had many enemies inSpain. The nobles of the court, the men who had lost money in voyagesto the Indies, the people whose fathers and sons and brothers had sailedaway never to return, could not say anything bad enough about "thisupstart Italian, " as they called Columbus. 

But to the most of the people Columbus was still the great Admiral. Hewas the man who had stuck to his one idea until he had made a friendof the queen; who had sailed away into the West and proved the Sea ofDarkness and the Jumping-off place to be only fairy tales after all; whohad found Cathay and the Indies for Spain. He was still a great man tothe multitude. 

So when on a certain October day, in the year 1500, it was spread abroadthat a ship had just come into the harbor of Cadiz, bringing home thegreat Admiral, Christopher Columbus, a prisoner and in chains, folksbegan to talk at once. Why, who has done this? they cried. Is this theway to treat the man who found Cathay for Spain, the man whom the kingand the queen delighted to honor, the man who made a procession for uswith all sorts of birds and animals and pagan Indians? It cannot be. Why, we all remember how he sailed into Palos Harbor eight years ago andwas received like a prince with banners and proclamations and salutes. And now to bring him home in chains! It is a shame; it is cruel; it iswicked. And when people began to talk in this way, the very ones who hadsaid the worst things against him began to change their tone. 

As soon as the ship got into Cadiz, Columbus sent off a letter to afriend of his at the court in the beautiful city of Granada. This letterwas, of course, shown to the queen. And it told all about what Columbushad suffered, and was, so full of sorrow and humbleness and yet of pridein what he had been able to do, even though he had been disgraced, thatQueen Isabella (who was really a friend to Columbus in spite of herdissatisfaction with the things he sometimes did) became very angry atthe way he had been treated. 

She took the letter to King Ferdinand, and at once both the king and thequeen hastened to send a messenger to Columbus telling him how angryand sorry they were that Bobadilla should have dared to treat theirgood friend the Admiral so. They ordered his immediate release fromimprisonment; they sent him a present of five thousand dollars and askedhim to come to court at once. 

On the seventeenth of December, 1500, Columbus came to the court atGranada in the beautiful palace of the Alhambra. He rode on a mule. Atthat time, in Spain, people were not allowed to ride on mules, becauseif they did the Spanish horses would not be bought and sold, as muleswere so much cheaper and were easier to ride. But Columbus was sick andit hurt him to ride horseback, while he could be fairly comfortable onan easy-going mule. So the king and queen gave him special permission tocome on mule-back. 

When Columbus appeared before the queen, looking so sick and troubled, Isabella was greatly affected. She thought of all he had done and all hehad gone through and all he had suffered, and as he came to the steps ofthe throne the queen burst into tears. That made Columbus cry too, forhe thought a great deal of the queen, and he fell at her feet and toldher how much he honored her, and how much he was ready to do for her, ifhe could but have the chance. 

Then the king and queen told him how sorry they were that any one shouldhave so misunderstood their desires and have treated their brave andloyal Admiral so shamefully. They promised to make everything all rightfor him again, and to show him that they were his good friends now asthey always had been since the day he first sailed away to find theIndies for them and for Spain. 

Of course this made Columbus feel much better. He had left Hayti in fearand trembling. He had come home expecting something dreadful was goingto happen; he would not have been surprised at a long imprisonment; hewould not even have been surprised if he had been put to death--for thekings and queens and high lords of his day were very apt to order peopleput to death if they did not like what had been done. The harsh way inwhich Bobadilla had treated him made him think the king and queen hadreally ordered it. Perhaps they had; and perhaps the way in which thepeople cried out in indignation when they saw the great Admiral broughtashore in chains had its influence on Queen Isabella. King Ferdinandreally cared nothing about it. He would gladly have seen Columbus put inprison for life; but the queen had very much to say about things inher kingdom, and so King Ferdinand made believe he was sorry and talkedquite as pleasantly to Columbus as did the queen. 

Now Columbus, as you must have found out by this time, was as quick tofeel glad as he was to feel sad. And when he found that the king andqueen were his friends once more, he became full of hope again and beganto say where he would go and what he would do when he went back again asViceroy of the Indies and Admiral of the Ocean Seas. He begged the queento let him go back again at once, with ships and sailors and the powerto do as he pleased in the islands he had found and in the lands hehoped to find. 

They promised him everything, for promising is easy. But Columbus hadonce more to learn the truth of the old Bible warning that he had calledto mind years before on the Bridge of Pinos: Put not your trust inprinces. 

The king and queen talked very nicely and promised much, but to onething King Ferdinand had made up his mind--Columbus should never go backagain to the Indies as viceroy or governor. And King Ferdinand was asstubborn as Columbus was persistent. 

Not very much gold had yet been brought back from the Indies, but theking and queen knew from the reports of those who had been over theseas and kept their eyes open that, in time, a great deal of gold andtreasure would come from there. So they felt that if they kept theirpromises to Columbus he would take away too large a slice of theirprofits, and if they let him have everything to say there it would notbe possible to let other people, who were ready to share the profitswith them, go off discovering on their own hook. 

So they talked and delayed and sent out other expeditions and keptColumbus in Spain, unsatisfied. Another governor was sent over to takethe place of Bobadilla, for they soon learned that that ungentlemanlyknight was not even so good or so strict a governor as Columbus hadbeen. 

Almost two years passed in this way and still Columbus staid in Spain. At last the king and queen said he might go if he would not go nearHayti and would be sure to find other and better gold lands. 

Columbus did not relish being told where to go and where not to go likethis; but he promised. And on the ninth of May, 1502, with four smallcaravels and one hundred and fifty men, Christopher Columbus sailed fromCadiz on his fourth and last voyage to the western world. 

He was now fifty-six years old. That is not an age at which we wouldcall any one an old man. But Columbus had grown old long before histime. Care, excitement, exposure, peril, trouble and worry had madehim white-haired and wrinkled. He was sick, he was nearly blind, he wasweak, he was feeble--but his determination was just as firm, his hopejust as high, his desire just as strong as ever. He was bound, thistime, to find Cathay. 

And he had one other wish. He had enemies in Hayti; they had laughed andhooted at him when he had been dragged off to prison and sent in chainson board the ship. He did wish to get even with them. He could notforgive them. He wanted to sail into the harbor of Isabella and SantoDomingo with his four ships and to say: See, all of you! Here I amagain, as proud and powerful as ever. The king and queen have sent meover here once more with ships and sailors at my command. I am stillthe Admiral of the Ocean Seas and all you tried to do against me hasamounted to nothing. 

This is not the right sort of a spirit to have, either for men or boys;it is not wise or well to have it gratified. Forgiveness is better thanvengeance; kindliness is better than pride. 

At any rate, it was not to be gratified with Columbus. When his shipsarrived off the coast of Hayti, although his orders from the king andqueen were not to stop at the island going over, the temptation to showhimself was too strong. He could not resist it. So he sent word to thenew governor, whose name was Ovando, that he had arrived with his fleetfor the discovery of new lands in the Indies, and that he wished to comeinto Santo Domingo Harbor as one of his ships needed repairs; he wouldtake the opportunity, he said, of mending his vessel and visiting thegovernor at the same time. 

Now it so happened that Governor Ovando was just about sending to Spaina large fleet. And in these ships were to go some of the men who hadtreated Columbus so badly. Bobadilla, the ex-governor, was one of them;so was the rebel Roldan who had done so much mischief; and there wereothers among the passengers and prisoners whom Columbus disliked or whohated Columbus. There was also to go in the fleet a wonderful cargo ofgold--the largest amount yet sent across to Spain. There were twenty-sixships in all, in the great gold fleet, and the little city of SantoDomingo was filled with excitement and confusion. 

We cannot altogether make out whether Governor Ovando was a friend toColumbus or not. At any rate, he felt that it would be unwise and unsafefor Columbus to come into the harbor or show himself in the town when somany of his bitter enemies were there. So he sent back word to Columbusthat he was sorry, but that really he could not let him come in. 

How bad that must have made the old Admiral feel! To be refusedadmission to the place he had found and built up for Spain! It wasunkind, he said; he must and would go in. 

Just then Columbus, who was a skillful sailor and knew all the signsof the sky, and all about the weather, happened to notice the singularappearance of the sky, and saw that there was every sign that a bigstorm was coming on. So he sent word to Governor Ovando again, tellinghim of this, and asking permission to run into the harbor of SantoDomingo with his ships to escape the coming storm. But the governorcould not see that any storm was coming on. He said: Oh! that is onlyanother way for the Admiral to try to get around me and get me to lethim in. I can't do it. So, he sent back word a second time that hereally could not, let Columbus come in. I know you are a very cleversailor, he said, but, really, I think you must be mistaken about thisstorm. At any rate, you will have time to go somewhere else before itcomes on, and I shall be much obliged if you will. 

Now, among the twenty-six vessels of the gold fleet was one in whichwas stored some of the gold that belonged to Columbus as his share, according to his arrangement with the king and queen. If a storm cameon, this vessel would be in danger, to say nothing of all the rest ofthe fleet. So Columbus sent in to Governor Ovando a third time. He toldhim he was certain a great storm was coming. And he begged the governor, even if he was not allowed to come up to Santo Domingo, by all meansto keep the fleet in the harbor until the storm was over. If you don't, there will surely be trouble, he said. And then he sailed with his shipsalong shore looking for a safe harbor. 

But the people in Santo Domingo put no faith in the Admiral's"probabilities. " There will be no storm, the captains and the officerssaid. If there should be our ships are strong enough to stand it. TheAdmiral Columbus is getting to be timid as he grows older. And in spiteof the old sailor's warning, the big gold fleet sailed out of the harborof Santo Domingo and headed for Spain. 

But almost before they had reached the eastern end of the island ofHayti, the storm that Columbus had prophesied burst upon them. 

It was a terrible tempest. Twenty of the ships went to the bottom. Thegreat gold fleet was destroyed. The enemies of Columbus--Bobadilla, Roldan and the rest were drowned. Only a few of the ships managed to getback into Santo Domingo Harbor, broken and shattered. And the only shipof all the great fleet that got safely through the storm and reachedSpain all right was the one that carried on board the gold that belongedto Columbus. Was not that singular?

Then all the friends of Columbus cried: How wonderful! Truly the Lord ison the side of the great Admiral!

But his enemies said: This Genoese is a wizard. He was mad because thegovernor would not let him come into the harbor, and he raised thisstorm in revenge. It is a dangerous thing to interfere with theAdmiral's wishes. 

For you see in those days people believed in witches and spells and allkinds of fairy-book things like those, when they could not explain whythings happened. And when they could not give a good reason for somegreat disaster or for some stroke of bad luck, they just said: It iswitchcraft; and left it so. 

CHAPTER XII. HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 

While the terrible storm that wrecked the great gold fleet of thegovernor was raging so furiously, Columbus with his four ships was lyingas near shore as he dared in a little bay farther down the coast ofHayti. Here he escaped the full fury of the gale, but still his shipssuffered greatly, and came very near being shipwrecked. They becameseparated in the storm, but the caravels met at last after the storm wasover and steered away for the island of Jamaica. 

For several days they sailed about among the West India Islands; thenthey took a westerly course, and on the thirtieth of July, Columbussaw before him the misty outlines of certain high mountains which hesupposed to be somewhere in Asia, but which we now know were the CoastRange Mountains of Honduras. And Honduras, you remember, is a part ofCentral America. 

Just turn to the map of Central America in your geography and findHonduras. The mountains, you see, are marked there; and on the northerncoast, at the head of a fine bay, you will notice the seaport town ofTruxillo. And that is about the spot where, for the first time, Columbussaw the mainland of North America. 

As he sailed toward the coast a great canoe came close to the ship. Itwas almost as large as one of his own caravels, for it was over fortyfeet long and fully eight feet wide. It was paddled by twenty-fiveIndians, while in the middle, under an awning of palm-thatch sat thechief Indian, or cacique, as he was called. A curious kind of sail hadbeen rigged to catch the breeze, and the canoe was loaded with fruitsand Indian merchandise. 

This canoe surprised Columbus very much. He had seen nothing just likeit among the other Indians he had visited. The cacique and his people, too, were dressed in clothes and had sharp swords and spears. He thoughtof the great galleys of Venice and Genoa; he remembered the stories thathad come to him of the people of Cathay; he believed that, at last, hehad come to the right place. The shores ahead of him were, he was sure, the coasts of the Cathay he was hunting for, and these people in "thegalley of the cacique" were much nearer the kind of people he wasexpecting to meet than were the poor naked Indians of Hayti and Cuba. 

In a certain way he was right. These people in the big canoe were, probably, some of the trading Indians of Yucatan, and beyond them, inwhat we know to-day as Mexico, was a race of Indians, known as Aztecs, who were what is called half-civilized; for they had cities and templesand stone houses and almost as much gold and treasure as Columbus hopedto find in his fairyland of Cathay. But Columbus was not to find Mexico. Another daring and cruel Spanish captain, named Cortez, discovered theland, conquered it for Spain, stripped it of its gold and treasure, andkilled or enslaved its brave and intelligent people. 

After meeting this canoe, Columbus steered for the distant shore. Hecoasted up and down looking for a good harbor, and on the seventeenth ofAugust, 1502, he landed as has been told you, near what is now the townof Truxillo, in Honduras. There, setting up the banner of Castile, hetook possession of the country in the name of the king and queen ofSpain. 

For the first time in his life Columbus stood on the real soil of theNew World. All the islands he had before discovered and colonized werebut outlying pieces of America. Now he was really upon the AmericanContinent. 

But he did not know it. To him it was but a part of Asia. And as themain purpose of this fourth voyage was to find a way to sail straight toIndia--which he supposed lay somewhere to the south--he set off on hissearch. The Indians told him of "a narrow place" that he could find bysailing farther south, and of a "great water. " beyond it. This "narrowplace" was the Isthmus of Panama, and the "great water" beyond it was, of course, the Pacific Ocean. But Columbus thought that by a "narrowplace" they meant a strait instead of an isthmus. If he could but findthat strait, he could sail through it into the great Bay of Bengalwhich, as you know and as he had heard, washes the eastern shore ofIndia. 

So he sailed along the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua trying to findthe strait he was hunting for. Just look at your map and see how near hewas to the way across to the Pacific that men are now digging out, andwhich, as the Nicaragua Canal, will connect the Atlantic and the PacificOceans. And think how near he was to finding that Pacific Ocean overwhich, if he could but have got across the Isthmus of Panama, he couldhave sailed to the Cathay and the Indies he spent his life in trying tofind. But if he had been fortunate enough to get into the waters of thePacific, I do not believe it would have been so lucky for him, afterall. His little ships, poorly built and poorly provisioned, could neverhave sailed that great ocean in safety, and the end might have provedeven more disastrous than did the Atlantic voyages of the Admiral. 

He soon understood that he had found a richer land than the islands hehad thus far discovered. Gold and pearls were much more plentifulalong the Honduras coast than they were in Cuba and Hayti, and Columbusdecided that, after he had found India, he would come back by this routeand collect a cargo of the glittering treasures. 

The land was called by the Indians something that sounded very much likeVeragua. This was the name Columbus gave to it; and it was this name, Veragua, that was afterward given to the family of Columbus as itstitle; so that, to-day, the living descendant of Christopher Columbus inSpain is called the Duke of Veragua. 

But as Columbus sailed south, along what is called "the Mosquito Coast, "the weather grew stormy and the gales were severe. His ships were crazyand worm-eaten; the food was running low; the sailors began to grumbleand complain and to say that if they kept on in this way they wouldsurely starve before they could reach India. 

Columbus, too, began to grow uneasy. His youngest son, Ferdinand, abrave, bright little fellow of thirteen, had come with him on thisvoyage, and Columbus really began to be afraid that something mighthappen to the boy, especially if the crazy ships should be wrecked, orif want of food should make them all go hungry. So at last he decidedto give up hunting for the strait that should lead him into the Bay ofBengal; he felt obliged, also, to give up his plan of going back to theHonduras coast for gold and pearls. He turned his ships about and headedfor Hayti where he hoped he could get Governor Ovando to give him betterships so that he could try it all over again. 

Here, you see, was still another disappointing defeat for Columbus. Forafter he had been on the American coast for almost a year; after hehad come so near to what he felt to be the long-looked-for path to theIndies; after most wonderful adventures on sea and land, he turned hisback on it all, without really having accomplished what he set out to doand, as I have told you, steered for Hayti. 

But it was not at all easy to get to Hayti in those leaky ships of his. In fact it was not possible to get there with them at all; for on thetwenty-third of June, 1503, when he had reached the island of Jamaicahe felt that his ships would not hold out any longer. They were fullof worm-holes; they were leaking badly; they were strained and batteredfrom the storms. He determined, therefore, to find a good harborsomewhere on the island of Jamaica and go in there for repairs. But hecould not find a good one; his ships grew worse and worse; every day'sdelay was dangerous; and for fear the ships would sink and carry thecrews to the bottom of the sea, Columbus decided to run them ashoreanyhow. This he did; and on the twelfth of August, 1503, he deliberatelyheaded for the shore and ran his ships aground in a little bay on theisland of Jamaica still known as Sir Christopher's Cove. And there thefleet was wrecked. 

The castaways lashed the four wrecks together; they built deck-housesand protections so as to make themselves as comfortable as possible, andfor a whole year Columbus and his men lived there at Sir Christopher'sCove on the beautiful island of Jamaica. 

It proved anything but beautiful for them, however. It makes a good dealof difference, you know, in enjoying things whether you are well andhappy. If you are hungry and can't get anything to eat, the sky does notlook so blue or the trees so green as if you were sitting beneath themwith a jolly picnic party and with plenty of lunch in the baskets. 

It was no picnic for Columbus and his companions. That year onthe island of Jamaica was one of horror, of peril, of sickness, ofstarvation. Twice, a brave comrade named Diego Mendez started in anopen boat for Hayti to bring relief. The first time he was nearlyshipwrecked, but the second time he got away all right. And then formonths nothing was heard of him, and it was supposed that he had beendrowned. But the truth was that Governor Ovando, had an idea that theking and queen of Spain were tired of Columbus and would not feel verybad if they never saw him again. He promised to send help, but did notdo so for fear he should get into trouble. And the relief that the poorshipwrecked people on Jamaica longed for did not come. 

Then some of the men who were with Columbus mutinied and ran away. In fact, more things happened during this remarkable fourth voyage ofColumbus than I can begin to tell you about. The story is more wonderfulthan is that of Robinson Crusoe, and when you are older you mustcertainly read it all and see just what marvelous adventures Columbusand his men met with and how bravely the little Ferdinand Columbus wentthrough them all. For when Ferdinand grew up he wrote a life of hisfather, the Admiral, and told the story of how they all played RobinsonCrusoe at Sir Christopher's Cove. 

At last the long-delayed help was sent by Governor Ovando, and one daythe brave Diego Mendez came sailing into Sir Christopher's Cove. AndColumbus forgave the rebels who had run away; and on the twenty-eighthof June, 1504, they all sailed away from the place, that, for a yearpast, had been almost worse than a prison to them all. 

On the fifteenth of August, the rescued crews sailed into the harbor ofSanto Domingo. The governor, Ovando, who had reluctantly agreed to sendfor Columbus, was now in a hurry to get him away. Whether the governorwas afraid of him, or ashamed because of the way he had treated him, orwhether he felt that Columbus was no longer held so high in Spain, andthat, therefore, it was not wise to make much of him, I cannot say. Atany rate he hurried him off to Spain, and on the twelfth of September, 1504, Columbus turned his back forever on the new world he haddiscovered, and with two ships sailed for Spain. 

He had not been at sea but a day or two before he found that the shipin which he and the boy Ferdinand were sailing was not good for much. Asudden storm carried away its mast and the vessel was sent back to SantoDomingo. Columbus and Ferdinand, with a few of the men, went on boardthe other ship which was commanded by Bartholomew Columbus, thebrother of the Admiral, who had been with him all through the dreadfulexpedition. At last they saw the home shores again, and on the seventhof November, 1504, Columbus sailed into the harbor of San Lucar, not farfrom Cadiz. 

He had been away from Spain for fully two years and a half. He hadnot accomplished a single thing he set out to do. He had met withdisappointment and disaster over and over again, and had left the fourships that had been given him a total wreck upon the shores of Jamaica. He came back poor, unsuccessful, unnoticed, and so ill that he couldscarcely get ashore. 

And so the fourth voyage of the great Admiral ended. It was his last. His long sickness had almost made him crazy. He said and did many oddthings, such as make us think, nowadays, that people have, as we callit, "lost their minds. " But he was certain of one thing--the king andqueen of Spain had not kept the promises they had made him, and he wasdetermined, if he lived, to have justice done him, and to make them doas they said they would. 

They had told him that only himself or one of his family should beAdmiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the New Lands; they had sentacross the water others, who were not of his family, to govern what hehad been promised for his own. They had told him that he should have acertain share of the profits that came from trading and gold hunting inthe Indies; they had not kept this promise either, and he was poor whenhe was certain he ought to be rich. 

So, when he was on land once more, he tried hard to get to court and seethe king and queen. But he was too sick. 

He had got as far as beautiful Seville, the fair Spanish city by theGuadalquivir, and there he had to give up and go to, bed. And then camea new disappointment. He was to lose his best friend at the court. Forwhen he had been scarcely two weeks in Spain, Queen Isabella died. 

She was not what would be considered in these days either a particularlygood woman, or an especially good queen. She did many cruel things; andwhile she talked much about doing good, she was generally looking outfor herself most of all. But that was not so much her fault as the faultof the times in which she lived. Her life was not a happy one; but shehad always felt kindly toward Columbus, and when he was where he couldsee her and talk to her, he had always been able to get her to side withhim and grant his wishes. 

Columbus was now a very sick man. He had to keep his bed most of thetime, and this news of the queen's death made him still worse, for hefelt that now no one who had the "say" would speak a good word for theman who had done so much for Spain, and given to the king and queen thechance to make their nation great and rich and powerful. 

CHAPTER XIII. THE END OF THE STORY. 

Any one who is sick, as some of you may know, is apt to be anxious andfretful and full of fears as to how he is going to get along, or whowill look out for his family. Very often there is no need for thisfeeling; very often it is a part of the complaint from which the sickperson is suffering. 

In the case of Columbus, however, there was good cause for thisdepressed and anxious feeling. King Ferdinand, after Queen Isabella'sdeath, did nothing to help Columbus. He would not agree to give theAdmiral what he called his rights, and though Columbus kept writingletters from his sick room asking for justice, the king would do nothingfor him. And when the king's smile is turned to a frown, the fashion ofthe court is to frown, too. 

So Columbus had no friends at the king's court. Diego, his eldest son, was still one of the royal pages, but he could do nothing. Withoutfriends, without influence, without opportunity, Columbus began tofeel that he should never get his rights unless he could see the kinghimself. And sick though he was he determined to try it. 

It must have been sad enough to see this sick old man drag himselffeebly to the court to ask for justice from the king whom he hadenriched. You would think that when King Ferdinand really saw Columbusat the foot of the throne, and when he remembered all that this man haddone for him and for Spain, and how brave and persistent and full ofdetermination to do great things the Admiral once had been, he would atleast have given the old man what was justly due him. 

But he would not. He smiled on the old sailor, and said many pleasantthings and talked as if he were a friend, but he would not agree toanything Columbus asked him; and the poor Admiral crawled back to hissick bed again, and gave up the struggle. I have done all that I can do, he said to the few friends who remained faithful to him; I must leave itall to God. He has always helped me when things were at the worst. 

And God helped him by taking him away from all the fret, and worry, andpain, and struggle that made up so much of the Admiral's troubled life. On the twentieth of May, 1506, the end came. In the house now known asNumber 7 Columbus Avenue, in the city of Valladolid; in Northern Spain, with a few faithful friends at his side, he signed his will, lay back inbed and saying trustfully these words: Into thy hands, O Lord, I commitmy spirit! the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of the Indies, the Discoverer of a New World, ended his fight for life. ChristopherColumbus was dead. 

He was but sixty years old. With Tennyson, and Whittier, and Gladstone, and De Lesseps living to be over eighty, and with your own goodgrandfather and grandmother, though even older than Columbus, by nomeans ready to be called old people, sixty years seems an early age tobe so completely broken and bent and gray as was he. But trouble, and care, and exposure, and all the worries and perils of his life ofadventure, had, as you must know, so worn upon Columbus that when hedied he seemed to be an old, old man. He was white-haired, you remember, even before he discovered America, and each year he seemed to grow olderand grayer and more feeble. 

And after he had died in that lonely house in Valladolid, the worldseems for a time to have almost forgotten him. A few friends followedhim to the grave; the king, for whom he had done so much, did nottrouble himself to take any notice of the death of his Admiral, whomonce he had been forced to honor, receive and reward. The city ofValladolid, in which Columbus died, was one of those fussy little townsin which everybody knew what was happening next door, and talked andargued about whatever happened upon its streets and in its homes; andyet even Valladolid hardly seemed to know of the presence within itsgates of the sick "Viceroy of the Indies. " Not until four weeks afterhis death did the Valladolid people seem to realize what had happened;and then all they did was to write down this brief record: "The saidAdmiral is dead. "

To-day, the bones of Columbus inclosed in a leaden casket lie in theCathedral of Santo Domingo. People have disputed about the place wherethe Discoverer of America was born; they are disputing about the placewhere he is buried. But as it seems now certain that he was born inGenoa, so it seems also certain that his bones are really in the tombin the old Cathedral at Santo Domingo, that old Haytian city which hefounded, and where he had so hard a time. 

At least a dozen places in the Old World and the New have builtmonuments and statues in his honor; in the United States, alone, oversixty towns and villages bear his name, or the kindred one of Columbia. The whole world honors him as the Discoverer of America; and yet thevery name that the Western Hemisphere bears comes not from the man whodiscovered it, but from his friend and comrade Americus Vespucius. 

Like Columbus, this Americus Vespucius was an Italian; like him, he wasa daring sailor and a fearless adventurer, sailing into strange seasto see what he could find. He saw more of the American coast than didColumbus, and not being so full of the gold-hunting and slave-gettingfever as was the Admiral, he brought back from his four voyages so muchinformation about the new-found lands across the sea, that scholars, whocared more for news than gold, became interested in what he reported. And some of the map-makers in France, when they had to name the newlands in the West that they drew on their maps--the lands that were notthe Indies, nor China, nor Japan--called them after the man who had toldthem so much about them--Americus Vespucius. And so it is that to-dayyou live in America and not in Columbia, as so many people have thoughtthis western world of ours should be named. 

And even the titles, and riches, and honors that the king and queen ofSpain promised to Columbus came very near being lost by his family, as they had been by himself. It was only by the hardest work, and bykeeping right at it all the time, that the Admiral's eldest son, DiegoColumbus, almost squeezed out of King Ferdinand of Spain the things thathad been promised to his father. 

But Diego was as plucky, and as brave, and as persistent as his fatherhad been; then, too, he had lived at court so long--he was one of thequeen's pages, you remember that he knew just what to do and how to actso as to get what he wanted. And at last he got it. 

He was made Viceroy over the Indies; he went across the seas to Hayti, and in his palace in the city of Santo Domingo he ruled the lands hisfather had found, and which for centuries were known as the SpanishMain; he was called Don Diego; he married a high-born lady of Spain, theniece of King Ferdinand; he received the large share of "the riches ofthe Indies" that his father had worked for, but never received. And thefamily of Christopher Columbus, the Genoese adventurer--under the titleof the Dukes of Veragua--have, ever since Don Diego's day, been of whatis called "the best blood of Spain. "

If you have read this story of Christopher Columbus aright, you musthave come to the conclusion that the life of this Italian sea captainwho discovered a new world was not a happy one. From first to last itwas full of disappointment. Only once, in all his life, did he know whathappiness and success meant, and that was on his return from his firstvoyage, when he landed amid cheers of welcome at Palos, and marched intoBarcelona in procession like a conqueror to be received as an equal byhis king and queen. 

Except for that little taste of glory, how full of trouble was his life!He set out to find Cathay and bring back its riches and its treasures. He did not get within five thousand miles of Cathay. He returned fromhis second voyage a penitent, bringing only tidings of disaster. Hereturned from his third voyage in disgrace, a prisoner and in chains, smarting under false charges of theft, cruelty and treason. Hereturned from his fourth voyage sick unto death, unnoticed, unhonored, unwelcomed. 

From first to last he was misunderstood. His ideas were made fun of, his efforts were treated with contempt, and even what he did was notbelieved, or was spoken of as of not much account. A career that beganin scorn ended in neglect. He died unregarded, and for years no onegave him credit for what he had done, nor honor for what he had broughtabout. 

Such a life would, I am sure, seem to all boys and girls, but a drearyprospect if they felt it was to be theirs or that of any one theyloved. And yet what man to-day is more highly honored than ChristopherColumbus? People forget all the trials and hardships and sorrows ofhis life, and think of him only as one of the great successes of theworld--the man who discovered America. 

And out of his life of disaster and disappointment two things standforth that all of us can honor and all of us should wish to copy. Theseare his sublime persistence and his unfaltering faith. Even as a boy, Columbus had an idea of what he wished to try and what he was bound todo. He kept right at that idea, no matter what might happen to annoy himor set him back. 

It was the faith and the persistence of Columbus that discovered Americaand opened the way for the millions who now call it their home. It isbecause of these qualities that we honor him to-day; it is because thisfaith and persistence ended as they did in the discovery of a new world, that to-day his fame is immortal. 

Other men were as brave, as skillful and as wise as he. Following inhis track they came sailing to the new lands; they explored its coasts, conquered its red inhabitants, and peopled its shores with the life thathas made America today the home of millions of white men and millions offree men. But Columbus showed the way. 

CHAPTER XIV. HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 

Whenever you start to read a story that you hope will be interesting, you always wonder, do you not, how it is going to turn out? Yourfavorite fairy tale or wonder story that began with "once upon a time, "ends, does it not, "so the prince married the beautiful princess, andthey lived happy ever after?"

Now, how does this story that we have been reading together turn out?You don't think it ended happily, do you? It was, in some respects, moremarvelous than any fairy tale or wonder story; but, dear me! you say, why couldn't Columbus have lived happily, after he had gone through somuch, and done so much, and discovered America, and given us who cameafter him so splendid a land to live in?

Now, just here comes the real point of the story. Wise men tell us thatmillions upon millions of busy little insects die to make the beautifulcoral islands of the Southern seas. Millions and millions of men andwomen have lived and labored, died and been forgotten by the world theyhelped to make the bright, and beautiful, and prosperous place to livein that it is to-day. 

Columbus was one of these millions; but he was a leader among them andhas not been forgotten. As the world has got farther away from the timein which he lived, the man Columbus, who did so much and yet died almostunnoticed, has grown more and more famous; his name is immortal, andto-day he is the hero Columbus--one of the world's greatest men. 

We, in America, are fond of celebrating anniversaries. I suppose theyears that you boys and girls have thus far lived have been the mostremarkable in the history of the world for celebrating anniversaries. For fully twenty years the United States has been keeping its birthday. The celebration commenced long before you were born, with the onehundredth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington (in 1875). It hasnot ended yet. But in 1892, We celebrated the greatest of all ourbirthdays--the discovery of the continent that made it possible for usto be here at all. 

Now this has not always been so with us. I suppose that in 1592 andin 1692 no notice whatever was taken of the twelfth day of October, onwhich--one hundred and two hundred years before--Columbus had landedon that flat little "key" known as Watling's Island down among the WestIndies, and had begun a new chapter in the world's wonderful story. In1592, there was hardly anybody here to celebrate the anniversary--infact, there was hardly anybody here at all, except a few Spanishsettlers in the West Indies, in Mexico, and in Florida. In 1692, therewere a few scattered settlements of Frenchmen in Canada, of Englishmenin New England, Dutchmen in New York, Swedes in Delaware, and Englishmenin Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. But none of these peopleloved the Spaniards. They hated them, indeed; for there had been fiercefighting going on for nearly a hundred years between Spain and England, and you couldn't find an Englishman, a Dutchman or a Swede who waswilling to say a good word for Spain, or thank God for the man whosailed away in Spanish ships to discover America two hundred yearsbefore. 

In 1792, people did think a little more about this, and there were a fewwho did remember that, three hundred years before, Columbus had foundthe great continent upon which, in that year 1792, a new republic, called the United States of America, had only just been started after along and bloody war of rebellion and revolution. 

We do not find, however, that in that year of 1792 there were many, ifany, public celebrations of the Discovery of America, in America itself. A certain American clergyman, however, whose name was the Rev. ElhananWinchester, celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the Discoveryof America by Columbus. And he celebrated it not in America, but inEngland, where he was then living. On the twelfth of October, 1792, Winchester delivered an address on "Columbus and his Discoveries, "before a great assembly of interested listeners. In that address he saidsome very enthusiastic and some very remarkable things about the Americathat was to be:

"I see the United States rise in all their ripened glory before me, "he said. "I look through and beyond every yet peopled region of theNew World, and behold period still brightening upon period. Where onecontiguous depth of gloomy wilderness now shuts out even the beams ofday, I see new States and empires, new seats of wisdom and knowledge, new religious domes spreading around. In places now untrod by any butsavage beasts, or men as savage as they, I hear the voices of happylabor, and see beautiful cities rising to view. I behold the wholecontinent highly cultivated and fertilized, full of cities, towns andvillages, beautiful and lovely beyond expression. I hear the praisesof my great Creator sung upon the banks of those rivers now unknown tosong. Behold the delightful prospect! See the silver and gold of Americaemployed in the service of the Lord of the whole earth! See slavery, with all its train of attendant evils, forever abolished! See acommunication opened through the whole continent, from North to Southand from East to West, through a most fruitful country. Behold the gloryof God extending, and the gospel spreading through the whole land!"

Of course, it was easy for a man to see and to hope and to say all this;but it is a little curious, is it not, that he should have seen thingsjust as they have turned out?

In Mr. Winchester's day, the United States of America had not quite fourmillions of inhabitants. In his day Virginia was the largest State--inthe matter of population--Pennsylvania was the second and New Yorkthe third. Philadelphia was the greatest city, then followed New York, Boston, Baltimore and Charleston. Chicago was not even thought of. 

To-day, four hundred years after Columbus first saw American shores, onehundred and sixteen years after the United States were started in lifeby the Declaration of American Independence, these same strugglingStates of one hundred years ago are joined together to make the greatestand most prosperous nation in the world. With a population of more thansixty-two millions of people; with the thirteen original States growninto forty-four, with the population of its three largest cities--NewYork; Philadelphia and Chicago--more than equal to the population of thewhole country one hundred years ago; with schools and colleges and happyhomes brightening the whole broad land that now stretches from ocean toocean, the United States leads all other countries in the vast continentColumbus discovered. Still westward, as Columbus led, the nationadvances; and, in a great city that Columbus could never have imagined, and that the prophet of one hundred years ago scarcely dreamed of, themighty Republic in 1892 invited all the rest of the world to join withit in celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the Discovery ofAmerica by Columbus the Admiral. And to do this celebrating fittinglyand grandly, it built up the splendid White City by the great FreshWater Sea. 

Columbus was a dreamer; he saw such wonderful visions of what was tobe, that people, as we know, tapped their foreheads and called him "thecrazy Genoese. " But not even the wildest fancies nor the most wonderfuldreams of Columbus came anywhere near to what he would really have seenif--he could have visited the Exposition at Chicago, in the great WhiteCity by the lake--a "show city" specially built for the World's Fair of1893, given in his honor and as a monument to his memory. 

Why, he would say, the Cathay that I spent my life trying to find wasbut a hovel alongside this! What would he have seen? A city stretching amile and a half in length, and more than half a mile in breadth; a spacecovering over five hundred acres of ground, and containing seventeenmagnificent buildings, into any one of which could have been put thepalaces of all the kings and queens of Europe known to Columbus's day. And in these buildings he would have seen gathered together, all themarvelous and all the useful things, all the beautiful and all thedelightful things that the world can make to-day, arranged and displayedfor all the world to see. He would have stood amazed in that wonderfulcity of glass and iron, that surpassingly beautiful city, all of purestwhite, that had been built some eight miles from the center of big andbusy Chicago, looking out upon the blue waters of mighty Lake Michigan. It was a city that I wish all the boys and girls of America--especiallyall who read this story of the man in whose honor it was built, mighthave visited. For as they saw all its wonderful sights, studied itsmarvelous exhibits, and enjoyed its beautiful belongings, they wouldhave been ready to say how proud, and glad, and happy they were tothink that they were American girls and boys, living in this wonderfulnineteenth century that has been more crowded with marvels, andmysteries, and triumphs than any one of the Arabian Nights evercontained. 

But, whether you saw the Columbian Exhibition or not, you can say that. And then stop and think what a parrot did. That is one of the mostsingular things in all this wonder story you are reading. Do you notremember how, when Columbus was slowly feeling his way westward, CaptainAlonso Pinzon saw some parrots flying southward, and believing from thisthat the land they sought was off in that direction, he induced Columbusto change his course from the west to the south? If Columbus had notchanged his course and followed the parrots, the Santa Maria, with thePinta and the Nina, would have sailed on until they had entered theharbor of Savannah or Charleston, or perhaps the broad waters ofChesapeake Bay. Then the United States of to-day would have beendiscovered and settled by Spaniards, and the whole history of the landwould have been quite different from what it has been. Spanish bloodhas peopled, but not uplifted, the countries of South America and theSpanish Main. English blood, which, following after--because Columbushad first shown the way--peopled, saved and upbuilt the wholemagnificent northern land that Spain missed and lost. They have foundin it more gold than ever Columbus dreamed of in his never-found Cathay;they have filled it with a nobler, braver, mightier, and more numerouspeople than ever Columbus imagined the whole mysterious land of theIndies contained; they have made it the home of freedom, of peace, of education, of intelligence and of progress, and have protected andbettered it until the whole world respects it for its strength, honorsit for its patriotism, admires it for its energy, and marvels at it forits prosperity. 

And this is what a flying parrot did: It turned the tide of lawlessadventure, of gold-hunting, of slave-driving, and of selfish strife forgain to the south; it left the north yet unvisited until it was readyfor the strong, and sturdy, and determined men and women who, huntingfor liberty, came across the seas and founded the colonies that becamein time the free and independent republic of the United States ofAmerica. 

And thus has the story of Columbus really turned out. Happier than anyfairy tale, more marvelous than any wonder book, the story of the UnitedStates of America is one that begins, "Once upon a time, " and has cometo the point where it depends upon the boys and girls who read it, tosay whether or not they shall "live happily ever after. "

The four hundred years of the New World's life closed its chapter ofhappiness in the electric lights and brilliant sunshine of the marvelousWhite City by Lake Michigan. It is a continued story of daring, devotionand progress, that the boys and girls of America should never tireof reading. And this story was made possible and turned out so well, because of the briefer, but no less interesting story of the daring, thedevotion and the faith of the determined Genoese sailor of four hundredyears ago, whom men knew as Don Christopher Columbus, the Admiral of theOcean Seas.