COLUMBUS NEITHER A VISIONARY NOR AN IMBECILE.
Charles P. Mackie, an American author. From his "With the Admiral of the Ocean Sea." Published by Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago.
Whatever were his mistakes and shortcomings, Colon was neither a visionary nor an imbecile. Had he been perfect in all things and wise to the point of infallibility, we could not have claimed him as the glorious credit he was to the common humanity to which we all belong. His greatness was sufficient to cover with its mantle far more of the weaknesses of frail mortality than he had to draw under its protection; and it becomes us who attempt to analyze his life in these later days, to bear in mind that, had his lot befallen ourselves, the natives of the western world would still, beyond a peradventure, be wandering in undraped peace through their tangled woods, and remain forever ignorant of the art of eating meat. In his trials and distresses the Admiral encountered only the portion of the sons of Adam; but to him was also given, as to few before or since, to say with the nameless shepherd of Tempe's classic vale, "I, too, have lived in Arcady."
Colon did not merely discover the New World. He spent seven years and one month among the islands and on the coasts of the hemisphere now called after the ship-chandler who helped to outfit his later expeditions. For the greater part of that time he was under the constant burden of knowing that venomous intrigue and misrepresentation were doing their deadly work at home while he did what he believed was his Heaven-imposed duty on this side the Atlantic.