FIRST GLIMPSE OF LAND.
Charles H. Eden, English historical writer and traveler. From "The West Indies."
Nearly four centuries ago, in the year 1492, before the southern point of the great African continent had been doubled, and when the barbaric splendor of Cathay and the wealth of Hindustan were only known to Europeans through the narratives of Marco Polo or Sir John Mandeville—early on the morning of Friday, October 12th, a man stood bareheaded on the deck of a caravel and watched the rising sun lighting up the luxuriant tropical vegetation of a level and beautiful island toward which the vessel was gently speeding her way. Three-and-thirty days had elapsed since the last known point of the Old World, the Island of Ferrol, had faded away over the high poop of his vessel; eventful weeks, during which he had to contend against the natural fears of the ignorant and superstitious men by whom he was surrounded, and by the stratagem of a double reckoning, together with promises of future wealth, to allay the murmuring which threatened to frustrate the project that for so many years had been nearest his heart. Never, in the darkest hour, did the courage of that man quail or his soul admit a single doubt of success. When the terrified mariners remarked with awe that the needle deviated from the pole star, their intrepid Admiral, by an ingenious theory of his own, explained the cause of the phenomenon and soothed the alarm that had arisen. When the steady trade-winds were reached, and the vessels flew rapidly for days toward the west, the commander hailed as a godsend the mysterious breeze that his followers regarded with awe as imposing an insuperable barrier to their return to sunny Spain. When the prow of the caravel was impeded, and her way deadened by the drifting network of the Sargasso Sea, the leader saw therein only assured indications of land, and resolutely shut his ears against those prophets who foresaw evil in every incident.
Now his hopes were fulfilled, the yearnings of a lifetime realized. During the night a light had been seen, and at 2 o'clock in the morning land became, beyond all doubt, visible. Then the three little vessels laid to, and with the earliest streak of dawn made sail toward the coast. A man stood bareheaded on the deck of the leading caravel and feasted his eyes upon the wooded shore; the man was Christopher Columbus, the land he gazed on the "West Indies."