NARRATIVE INCLOSED IN CASK.
When the chances of weathering the storm had become small indeed, Columbus determined that, if possible, the tidings of his discovery should not perish with him. He wrote a short account of his voyage on parchment, and this he enclosed in wax, and placed in a cask,[14] which he committed to the waves. Thinking, probably, that his crew would interpret this as an abandonment of all hope, he concealed from them the real nature of the contents of the cask, so that they believed that their commander was performing some religious rite which might assuage the fury of the elements.
[Footnote 14: About the year 1852 a paragraph went the round of the English press announcing the discovery of this cask on the African coast, by the barque "Chieftain," of Boston (Mass). Lamartine has accepted this story as correct, but it has never been authenticated, and there is a strong presumption in favour of its having been invented by some ingeniously circumstantial newspaper correspondent.]