His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a new world; the New World is his monument.
ON A PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS.
George E. Woodberry, in the Century Magazine, May, 1892. By permission of the author and the Century Company.
Was this his face, and these the finding eyes
That plucked a new world from the rolling seas?
Who, serving Christ, whom most he sought to please,
Willed his one thought until he saw arise
Man's other home and earthly paradise—
His early vision, when with stalwart knees
He pushed the boat from his young olive trees
And sailed to wrest the secret of the skies?
He on the waters dared to set his feet,
And through believing planted earth's last race.
What faith in man must in our new world beat,
Thinking how once he saw before his face
The west and all the host of stars retreat
Into the silent infinite of space.
GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT.
Joseph Emerson Worcester, a celebrated American lexicographer. Born at Bedford, N. H., 1758; died, 1865.
The discovery of America was the greatest achievement of the kind ever performed by man; and, considered in connection with its consequences, it is the greatest event of modern times. It served to wake up the unprecedented spirit of enterprise; it opened new sources of wealth, and exerted a powerful influence on commerce by greatly increasing many important articles of trade, and also by bringing into general use others before unknown; by leading to the discovery of the rich mines of this continent, it has caused the quantity of the precious metals in circulation throughout the world to be exceedingly augmented; it also gave a new impulse to colonization, and prepared the way for the advantages of civilized life and the blessings of Christianity to be extended over vast regions which before were the miserable abodes of barbarism and pagan idolatry.
The man to whose genius and enterprise the world is indebted for this discovery was Christopher Columbus of Genoa. He conceived that in order to complete the balance of the terraqueous globe another continent necessarily existed, which might be reached by sailing to the west from Europe; but he erroneously connected it with India. Being persuaded of the truth of his theory, his adventurous spirit made him eager to verify it by experiment.