THE TRIBUTE OF JOAQUIN MILLER.
Joaquin (Cincinnatus Heine) Miller, "the Poet of the Sierras." Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, November 10, 1842. From a poem in the New York Independent.
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said, "Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Adm'ral, speak; what shall I say?"
"Why say, 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'"
"My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly, wan and weak."
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
"What shall I say, brave Adm'ral, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?"
"Why, you shall say, at break of day,
'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'"
They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said,
"Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Adm'ral, speak and say—"
He said, "Sail on! sail on! and on!"
They sailed. They sailed. Then spoke the mate,
"This mad sea shows its teeth to-night.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth as if to bite.
Brave Adm'ral, say but one good word;
What shall we do when hope is gone?"
The words leapt as a leaping sword,
"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!"
Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! A light! A light! A light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled,
It grew to be Time's burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson—"On! and on!"
ADMIRAL OF MOSQUITO LAND.
D. H. Montgomery, author of "The Leading Facts of American History."
Loud was the outcry against Columbus. The rabble nicknamed him the "Admiral of Mosquito Land." They pointed at him as the man who had promised everything, and ended by discovering nothing but "a wilderness peopled with naked savages."
COLUMBUS AND THE INDIANS.
Gen. Thomas J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs. In an article, "Columbus and the Indians," in the New York Independent, June 2, 1892.
Columbus, when he landed, was confronted with an Indian problem, which he handed down to others, and they to us. Four hundred years have rolled by, and it is still unsolved. Who were the strange people who met him at the end of his long and perilous voyage? He guessed at it and missed it by the diameter of the globe. He called them Indians—people of India—and thus registered the fifteenth century attainments in geography and anthropology. How many were there of them? Alas! there was no census bureau here then, and no record has come down to us of any count or enumeration. Would they have lived any longer if they had been counted? Would a census have strengthened them to resist the threatened tide of invaders that the coming of Columbus heralded? If instead of corn they had presented census rolls to their strange visitors, and exhibited maps to show that the continent was already occupied, would that have changed the whole course of history and left us without any Mayflower or Plymouth Rock, Bunker Hill or Appomattox?