SIGNS OF LAND.
In the morning of the same day they catch a crab, from which Columbus infers that they cannot be more than eighty leagues distant from land. The 18th, they see many birds, and a cloud in the distance; and that night they expect to see land. On the 19th, in the morning, comes a pelican (a bird not usually seen twenty leagues from the coast); in the evening, another; also drizzling rain without wind, a certain sign, as the diary says, of proximity to land.
The admiral, however, will not beat about for land, as he concludes that the land which these various natural phenomena give token of, can only be islands, as indeed it proved to be. He will see them on his return; but now he must press on to the Indies. This determination shows his strength of mind, and indicates the almost scientific basis on which his great resolve reposed.