[2] Pronounced Hoon-tah.
III.
COLUMBUS, THE FINDER.
Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain, on Friday, August 3, 1492, at 8 a. m., with one hundred and twenty Spaniards under his command. You know how he and his brave comrade Pinzon held up the spirits of his weakening crew; and how, on the morning of October 12, they sighted land at last. It was not the mainland of America,—which Columbus never saw until nearly eight years later,—but Watling's Island. The voyage had been the longest west which man had yet made; and it was very characteristically illustrative of the state of the world's knowledge then. When the variations of the magnetic needle were noticed by the voyagers, they decided that it was not the needle but the north star that varied. Columbus was perhaps as well informed as any other geographer of his day; but he came to the sober conclusion that the cause of certain phenomena must be that he was sailing over a bump on the globe! This was more strongly brought out in his subsequent voyage to the Orinoco, when he detected even a worse earth-bump, and concluded that the world must be pear-shaped! It is interesting to remember that but for an accidental change of course, the voyagers would have struck the Gulf Stream and been carried north,—in which case what is now the United States would have become the first field of Spain's conquest.
The first white man who saw land in the New World was a common sailor named Rodrigo de Triana, though Columbus himself had seen a light the night before. Although it is probable—as you will see later on—that Cabot saw the actual continent of America before Columbus (in 1497), it was Columbus who found the New World, who took possession of it as its ruler under Spain, and who even founded the first European colonies in it,—building, and settling with forty-three men, a town which he named La Navidad (the Nativity), on the island of San Domingo (Española, as he called it), in December, 1492. Moreover, had it not been that Columbus had already found the New World, Cabot never would have sailed.
The explorers cruised from island to island, finding many remarkable things. In Cuba, which they reached October 26, they discovered tobacco, which had never been known to civilization before, and the equally unknown sweet potato. These two products, of the value of which no early explorer dreamed, were to be far more important factors in the money-markets and in the comforts of the world than all the more dazzling treasures. Even the hammock and its name were given to civilization by this first voyage.
In March, 1493, after a fearful return voyage, Columbus was again in Spain, telling his wondrous news to Ferdinand and Isabella, and showing them his trophies of gold, cotton, brilliant-feathered birds, strange plants and animals, and still stranger men,—for he had also brought back with him nine Indians, the first Americans to take a European trip. Every honor was heaped upon Columbus by the appreciative country of his adoption. It must have been a gallant sight to see this tall, athletic, ruddy-faced though gray-haired new grandee of Spain riding in almost royal splendor at the king's bridle, before an admiring court.
The grave and graceful queen was greatly interested in the discoveries made, and enthusiastic in preparing for more. Both intellectually and as a woman, the New World appealed to her very strongly; and as to the aborigines, she became absorbed in earnest plans for their welfare. Now that Columbus had proved that one could sail up and down the globe without falling over that "jumping-off place," there was no trouble about finding plenty of imitators.[3] He had done his work of genius,—he was the pathfinder,—and had finished his great mission. Had he stopped there, he would have left a much greater name; for in all that came after he was less fitted for his task.