While Columbus was exploring the coast of Central America, he fell sick of a fever. He had a dream. He tells us of this dream in his own letters.
He dreamed that a compassionate Voice spoke to him, bidding him believe in God, and serve Him who had had him from infancy in His constant and watchful care, and who had chosen him to unlock the barriers of the Ocean Sea.
This Voice said many things to Columbus, adding these words, “Even now He partially shows thee the reward of so many toils and dangers incurred by thee in the service of others. Fear not but trust.”
And even then, Columbus, though he did not know it, was actually seeing the land where his hopes were to come true. For to-day, we Americans know that while Columbus was exploring inlets and river-mouths on the coast of Central America searching for the Western Passage to Asia, he entered Limon Bay of Panama. He even sailed part way up the Chagres River.
And if his melancholy eager eyes might have been opened, what a vision he would have had of the future! He would have beheld the Caribbean Sea beating on civilized shores. He would have seen Twin Cities rising, their pleasant white, palm-shaded houses smiling in the sun, the Twin Cities of Cristobal and Colon—Christopher and Columbus—proud to bear his famous name. He would have seen those Twin Cities guarding a Western Passage to Asia.
He would have perceived in his vision ships, greater than any Spanish caravels, sliding through a Canal the wonder of the world, on their way to and from Asia the Golden.
. . . . . . . . . .
But as it was, in a miserable little caravel, tempest-racked, with masts sprung and sides worm-eaten, the weary disappointed Columbus with the boy Ferdinand, returned at last to Spain.
And about two years later, in the City of Valladolid, “the Grand Old Admiral,” who had given a New World to the Old, died almost in poverty. As he passed away, he murmured, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”