Citation
The true story of Christopher Columbus

Material Information

Title:
The true story of Christopher Columbus called the great admiral ; told for youngest readers
Creator:
Brooks, Elbridge S. (Elbridge Streeter), 1846-1902
D. Lothrop & Company ( Publisher )
A. Zeese & Co. ( engraver )
Place of Publication:
Boston
Publisher:
D. Lothrop Company
Publication Date:
Language:
English
Physical Description:
187, [2] p. : ill., maps, ports ; 24 cm.

Subjects

Subjects / Keywords:
Explorers -- Biography -- Juvenile literature -- Spain ( lcsh )
Explorers -- Biography -- Juvenile literature -- America ( lcsh )
Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature ( lcsh )
Discovery and exploration -- Spanish -- Juvenile literature -- America ( lcsh )
Publishers' advertisements -- 1893 ( rbgenr )
Biographies -- 1893 ( rbgenr )
Bldn -- 1893
Genre:
Publishers' advertisements ( rbgenr )
Biographies ( rbgenr )
individual biography ( marcgt )
Spatial Coverage:
United States -- Massachusetts -- Boston
United States -- Illinois -- Chicago
Target Audience:
juvenile ( marctarget )

Notes

Summary:
A children's biography of Christopher Columbus.
General Note:
Some illustrations engraved by A. Zeese & Co., Chi.
General Note:
Publisher's advertisements follow text.
Statement of Responsibility:
by Elbridge S. Brooks ; profusely illustrated.

Record Information

Source Institution:
University of Florida
Holding Location:
University of Florida
Rights Management:
This item is presumed to be in the public domain. The University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries respect the intellectual property rights of others and do not claim any copyright interest in this item. Users of this work have responsibility for determining copyright status prior to reusing, publishing or reproducing this item for purposes other than what is allowed by fair use or other copyright exemptions. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions may require permission of the copyright holder. The Smathers Libraries would like to learn more about this item and invite individuals or organizations to contact The Department of Special and Area Studies Collections (special@uflib.ufl.edu) with any additional information they can provide.
Resource Identifier:
026609550 ( ALEPH )
ALG3145 ( NOTIS )
214285139 ( OCLC )

Downloads

This item has the following downloads:

processing.instr

UF00082527_00001.pdf

UF00082527_00001.txt

00006.txt

00199.txt

00026.txt

00047.txt

00080.txt

00058.txt

00105.txt

00060.txt

00054.txt

00092.txt

00051.txt

00177.txt

00055.txt

00061.txt

00153.txt

00162.txt

00137.txt

00183.txt

00067.txt

00142.txt

00181.txt

00037.txt

00033.txt

00100.txt

00096.txt

00145.txt

00108.txt

00174.txt

00062.txt

00002.txt

00112.txt

00146.txt

00076.txt

00057.txt

00148.txt

00182.txt

00158.txt

00087.txt

00066.txt

00186.txt

00073.txt

00075.txt

00007.txt

00127.txt

00027.txt

00063.txt

00114.txt

00091.txt

00071.txt

00120.txt

00059.txt

00136.txt

00150.txt

00042.txt

00012.txt

00201.txt

00156.txt

00125.txt

00023.txt

00167.txt

00039.txt

00122.txt

00163.txt

00133.txt

00072.txt

00081.txt

00020.txt

00038.txt

00188.txt

00179.txt

00193.txt

00151.txt

00101.txt

00011.txt

00190.txt

00160.txt

00034.txt

00083.txt

00157.txt

00143.txt

00024.txt

00110.txt

00093.txt

00117.txt

00152.txt

00184.txt

00022.txt

00119.txt

00189.txt

00168.txt

00111.txt

00154.txt

00019.txt

00126.txt

00135.txt

00172.txt

00191.txt

00170.txt

00169.txt

00070.txt

00032.txt

00138.txt

00068.txt

00107.txt

00128.txt

00140.txt

00064.txt

00008.txt

00035.txt

00095.txt

00200.txt

00090.txt

00196.txt

00116.txt

00118.txt

00103.txt

00166.txt

00017.txt

00139.txt

00178.txt

00097.txt

00050.txt

00121.txt

00085.txt

00195.txt

00018.txt

00098.txt

00113.txt

00052.txt

00144.txt

00084.txt

00069.txt

00134.txt

00088.txt

00187.txt

00029.txt

00175.txt

00074.txt

00132.txt

00077.txt

00041.txt

00053.txt

00164.txt

00104.txt

00185.txt

00115.txt

00078.txt

00149.txt

00141.txt

00131.txt

00021.txt

00028.txt

00031.txt

00009.txt

00046.txt

00147.txt

00044.txt

00013.txt

00001.txt

00109.txt

00099.txt

00102.txt

00180.txt

00040.txt

00129.txt

UF00082527_00001_pdf.txt

00094.txt

00159.txt

00014.txt

00086.txt

00130.txt

00049.txt

00079.txt

00048.txt

00165.txt

00123.txt

00065.txt

00106.txt

00015.txt

00056.txt

00192.txt

00045.txt

00161.txt

00171.txt

00176.txt

00173.txt

00030.txt

00089.txt

00082.txt

00155.txt

00036.txt

00124.txt

00043.txt

00025.txt

00003.txt


Full Text






ty |

aw

in
Ur









UVALATAU eae !
Sr ye ceacmens an
VAN LAA TTT ca l
ED SATE ADOT iN nT
Loca ‘i |























|

rene

i. aa
i Ht
E ul ae La i

at

\

\

i



BN co. ui

“THE BOYS, POINTING AFYER HIM, WOULD CALL HIM ‘THE CRAZY EXPLORER.*”
See page 36



Tels TRUE STORY OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CALLED THE GREAT ADMIRAL

TOED FOR VOUNGEST READERS

BY

ELBRIDGE 1S), BROOKS |
i Author of
“The Story of the United States,” “ Historic Boys,” ‘‘ Historic Girls,”
“ Story of the American Indian,” “ Story of the American Sailor,”
“In No Man’s Land,” and others

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED

BOSTON
D LOTHROP COMPANY
1893



Copyricur, 1892,
BY

D. Lorurop Company.



PRE ACr:

Tuis “ True Story of Christopher Columbus” is offered and
inscribed to the boys and girls of America as the opening volume
in a series especially designed for their reading, and to be called
“Children’s Lives of Great Men.” In this series the place of honor,
or rather of position, is given to Columbus the Admiral, because had
it not been for him and for his pluck and faith and perseverance there
might have been no young Americans, such as we know to-day, to
read or care about the world’s great men.

Columbus led the American advance; he discovered the New
World; he left a record of persistence in spite of discouragement and
of triumph over all obstacles, that has been the inspiration and guide
for Americans ever since his day, and that has led them to work on
in faith and hope until the end they strove for was won.

“The True Story of Christopher Columbus” will be followed by
_ the “true story” of others who have left names for us to honor and
revere, who have made the world better because they lived, and who
have helped to make and to develop American freedom, strength and
progress.
~ It will be the endeavor to have all these presented in the simple,
straightforward, earnest way that appeals to children, and shows how

the hero can be the man, and the man the hero.
BaSe Be



CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

A BOY WITH AN IDEA

CHAPTER II.

WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. . . .

CHAPTER III.
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS. FRIEND

CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. : . .

CHAPTER V.
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS :

CHAPTER VI.
WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED . : : : 7

CHAPTER VII.
HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF

CHAPTER VIII.

TRYING IT ‘AGAIN

It

23

34

48

58

66

82

g2



CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN .

CHAPTER X,

FROM PARADISE TO PRISON

CHAPTER XI.

HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN

CHAPTER XII.

HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE

CHAPTER XIII.

THE END OF THE STORY .

CHAPTER XIV.

HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT



103

TI2—-

r24

141

197

173



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.



“The Boys pointing after him would Call him ‘ the crazy Explorer.’”
Sailing to distant Lands

The Birthplace of Columbus . : ‘ : : : o
Bound around Africa

Genoa, the Birthplace of Cee 4 : 5 z ‘i : 5
“ Golden Cathay ” :

First Inspirations of Columbus .

Columbus at Thirty . : i

What Folks Thought Lived in the “ Tomine -off Place ”

The Round Earth

A Dream of Cathay

A Wise Old Scholar

The Room in the Convent of Rabida in which fe Talked it Over
The Treasures of Cathay : ; ‘

The Convent of Rabida where Columbus Found Friends .

Looking toward Cathay 5 ; 5 5 : : : : :
The City Gate of Santa Fé

The Alhambra at Granada

Columbus at Granada Explaining his Ideas to Queen Isabella

The World as Columbus Knew it when he Went to School

The Bridge of Pinos where the Queen’s Messenger found Columbus. °

The Church of St. George at Palos

The Santa Maria, the Flag-ship of Columbus :
What Pedro the Cabin Boy Expected to become in Cathay
The Departure from Palos .

Good-by, Columbus!

The Two Owners

The Three Caravels . é é . : ; . 5 F 2
A City in the Sea Deen ee ets sy Ter clapeal eas Protas een

Watching for Land. : : : . . 6 : i ‘
The Night before the Discovery . : : : : . . .

Columbus Sees a Light : : : . . ee
The Landing of Columbus ‘(vom a German picture) . ; ‘
The Place where Columbus Landed . : , . s 3 :

Frontis.

41
43
46
49
51
54

5515

57

59
61

64
65
67

71
74



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Landing of Columbus (From the puinting in the Capitol) : 6 : : 2 : 75
“ They have Come from Heaven,” they Said. a : a : js ° i a A 77
The Tropic Islands. ss 7 2 : . i . : é 7 : : 78
The New Land . : : : : : : : 5 : . : 7 5 : : 79

Captain Alonso Pinzon ‘ z 3 5 2 . S : : 5 : é ss 5 82
Fort La Navidad : 5 3 ‘i : ‘ : . 3 . : 5 : 7 i 84
Columbus Received by Ferdinand and Isabella at Barcelona’ . . : . : : 87
Columbus has Come . : : e 5 . : : . . : : 89
Looking at the Procession . . . 5 : . 7 . : : : 5 go
Columbus Telling his Adventures to Juan Perez at Rabida : : 7 ss . : 5 gt
The Harbor of Cadiz . : : : : A ; : . : 93
“ He saw the Hill-tops of Dominica” . : : é é : : : 5 : : : 94
The Lurking Indian . . 7 : 4 . . r . . i . A : A 95
Caonabo and his Braves. ‘ 2 : . : . . . . - é : é 97

The Tower of the Fort 4 : : 3 . . 5 ‘ * . : i ‘ 98
The Ruins of Isabella : : 2 i : E 5 . 5 . e 2 : i 99°
The Grumblers l
Statue of Leif Ericsson in Boston s
Along the Shore of Cuba . a 4 : : : . : . eagle . . 5 104

Ior

Columbus in the Garb of a Priest . . : Suet ; : 2 . stig tee 2 108
The Queen’s Messengers . : : . . 3 ° . : . . . . : 109
Ferdinand and Isabella A : j . . : : : . . . : 110
In Sight of the mountain Peaks of Trinidad : 5 . ° ° . . 7 : : Ill
The Three Ships of Columbus Leaving “ Paradise” . . . ° : . : : : 113
In the Dragon’s Mouth . i 5 : 5 : S . eines . rs A i IIs
Bartholomew Columbus, Brother of the Admiral x F . és . < : , 117
On the Dock at Cadiz . 8 : ; 2 5 A 5 . i : : ‘ : 5 11g
Paddles and Pots from the Indies : 3 : : : 7 . i . : 120

“ He Listened to the Complaints of all ue Black < Sheep” : : . : . : ° : 121

Feathers and Fruit from the Indies. : : : : . 3 . . 5 : é 123
Columbus in Chains. 7 5 : : . : : . 125
The Man who Wanted “to Set Matters s Steaiaue” a z - . ; . . ° " 5 127
The Alhambra’ . . 2 : : : . . . . . ° . 130
The Court of the Lionsin the Alhambra . ‘ 3 : . . . e . . 131
Tam still the Admiral : ; . : : : ; i : . . . : ° 134
The old Castle and water Batteries at Santo Domingo : é . . . . . : 135
Getting ready the Gold Fleet. : : : : 7 A : 7 2 : 137
Corner of the City Wall and Sentry Box, Santo Doinings : : 5 : < : : A 138
The Wreck of Bobadilla’s Ship. é : : $ . . . : 5 7 , . 139
“ Broken and Shattered” . : ‘ i . ; “ % * ‘ . . A 140

A Fragment of the Alhambra. . . . ‘ 7 . : 3 . . . : 141
Off the Coast of Honduras. : 2 é eee : : : . . . 7 a 142



“The Galley of the Cacique”

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The People of Honduras see the oe of the Admiral

A Gold Hunt in Veragua
On the Mosquito Coast

- Sir Christopher’s Cove on the Island of Jamaica : : 5 &

On the Island of Jamaica
Diego Mendez going for Help
Storm-tossed in the Indies .
Seville the Beautiful

The Arms of Columbus

The Death of Columbus

The House in Valladolid in which Columbus Died : : . 2

A Cloister in the old Cathedral in Santo Domingo . . : :
Americus Vespucius 7 : : s
Map showing the four Voyages of +: Coltmbus : : ; ° .
Ruins of the Palace of Diego in Santo Domingo . . ° .

Spanish Adventurers Exploring the New Land . i . . .

A Medal of Columbus
Two Historic Bridges.

Independence Hall, Philadelphia A 3 . . . ° .

The White City by the Lake

The Discoverer of our Country

The Founder of our Country

The Savior of our Country

The Harbor of New York City and the Statue of Liberty . . °
Looking down the Lagoon on the World’s Fair Grounds . : .
The Old and the New. : :
A Railway Station in Philadelphia : 5 : . ‘ fs .

A Business Street in Chicago
The Dome of the Capitol





143
146
148
149
150
151
154
155
156
158
159
162
163
164
165
168
169
172
174
175
177

179
180
182

183
185

186



Ene TRUE. Ss bORN, OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CHAPTER: J

= A BOY WITH AN IDEA.
——~
es



EN who do great things are men we all
Se like to read about. This is the story
= of Christopher Columbus, the man
who discovered America. He lived
four hundred years ago. When he was a little boy he lived
in Genoa. It was a beautiful city in the northwestern part
of the country called Italy. The mountains were behind it ;
the sea was in front of it, and it was so beautiful a place
that the people who lived there called it “Genoa the Superb.”

Christopher Columbus was born in this beautiful city of
Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He
was a bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear
eye and golden hair. His father’s name was Domenico
Columbus; his mother’s name was Susanna. His father
was a wool-comber. He cleaned and straightened out the

II



12 A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

snarled-up wool that was cut from the sheep so as to make it
ready to be woven into cloth. |

Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong
enough, but he went to school, too, and learned to read and
write and to draw maps and charts. These charts were maps
of the sea, to show the sailors where they could steer without
running on the rocks and sand, and how to sail safely from
one country to another.

This world was not as big then as it is now —or, I
should say, people did not know it was as big. Most of the
lands that Columbus had studied about in school, and
most of the people he had
heard about, were in Europe
and parts of Asia and Africa.

The city of Genoa where
Columbus lived was a very
busy and a very rich city. It



was on the Mediterranean Sea,

SAILING TO DISTANT LANDS.

and many of the people who
lived there were sailors who went in their ships on voyages
to distant lands. They sailed to other places on the Mediter-
ranean Sea, which is a very large body of water, you know,
and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far
away as the cold northern island of Iceland. This was
thought to be a great journey.
The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a
time as is this in which you live. People were always























































































































































































































































































































*«THE BIRTHPLACE OF COLUMBUS.

(The house at the right, with the tablet over the door, is the one in which the great Admiral was
born. The arch in the distance is the old Gate of St. Andrew.)







A BOY WITH AN IDEA. Is

quarreling and fighting about one thing or another, and the
sailors who belonged to one country would try to catch and
steal the ships or the things that belonged to the sailors or
the storekeepers of another country. This is what we call
piracy, and a pirate, you know, is thought to be a very
wicked man.

But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so
very wicked to be a sort of half-way pirate, although they
did know that they would be killed if they were caught.
So almost every sailor was about half pirate. Every boy
who lived near the seashore and saw the ships and the
sailors, felt as though he would like to sail away to far-off
lands and see all the strange sights and do all the brave
things that the sailors told about. Many of them even said
they would like to be pirates and fight with other sailors,
and show how strong and brave and plucky they could be.

Columbus was one of these. He was what is called
an adventurous boy. He did not like to stay quietly at
home with his father and comb out the tangled wool. He
thought it would be much nicer to sail away to sea and be a
brave captain or a rich merchant.

When he was about fourteen years old he really did go
to sea. There was a captain of a sailing vessel that some-
times came to Genoa who had the same last name — Colum-
bus. He was norelation, but the little Christopher somehow
got acquainted with him among the wharves of Genoa.
Perhaps he had run on errands for him, or helped him with



16 A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

some of the sea-charts he knew so well how to draw. At
any rate he sailed away with this Captain Columbus as his
cabin boy, and went to the wars with him and had quite an
exciting life for a boy.

Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their
own adventures or about far-off lands and countries. Colum-

























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































GENOA, THE BIRTHPLACE OF COLUMBUS.
(‘1t was so beautiful a place that the people who lived there called it ‘ Genoa the Superb.” )

bus listened to many of these sea-stories, and heard many
wonderful things about a very rich land away to the East
that folks called Cathay.

If you look in your geographies you will not find any
such place on the map as Cathay, but you will find China,
and that was what men in the time of Columbus called



A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 17

Cathay. They told very big stories about this far-off Eastern
land. They said its kings lived in golden houses, that they
were covered with pearls and diamonds, and that everybody
there was so rich that money was as plentiful as the stones
in the street.

This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who
were part pirate, very anxious to go to Cathay and get
some of the gold and jewels and spices and splendor for
themselves. But Cathay was miles and miles away from
Italy and Spain and France and England. It was away
across the deserts and mountains
and seas and rivers, and they had to
give it up because they could not
sail there.

At last a man whose name was



Marco Polo, and who was a very
brave and famous traveler, really did
go there, in spite of all the trouble it

“ GOLDEN CATHAY.”

took. And when he got back his stories were so very sur-
prising that men were all the more anxious to find a way to
sail in their ships to Cathay and see it for themselves.

But of course they could not sail over the deserts and
mountains, and they were very much troubled because they
had to give up the idea, until the son of the king of Port-
ugal, named Prince Henry, said he believed that ships could
sail around Africa and so get to India or “the Indies” as
they called that land, and finally to Cathay.



18 A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

Just look at your map again and see what a long, long
voyage it would be to sail from Spain and around Africa
to India, China and Japan. It is such a long sail that,

as you know, the Suez Canal was dug some twenty years

ago so that ships could sail through the Mediterranean Sea
and out into the Indian Ocean, and not have to go away
around Africa. |

But when Columbus was a boy it was even worse than
now, for no one really knew how long Africa was, or whether
ships really could sail around it. But Prince Henry said

he knew they could, and he sent out ships to try. He

died before his Portuguese sailors,
Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and
Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did
sail around it and got as far as
“the Indies.”

So while Prince Henry was try-
ing to see whether ships could sail
SS around Africa and reach Cathay in
ngs orn ae that way, the boy Columbus was
listening to the stories the sailors



told and was wondering whether some other and easier
way to Cathay might not be found.

When he was at school he had studied about a certain
man named Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands
of years before he was born, and who had said that the earth
was round “like a ball or an orange.” As Columbus grew









- tl

ee | (shee |
\. |

Gur Barns |

FIRST INSPIRATIONS OF COLUMBUS.



(From the statue by Giulio Monteverde, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston )






A BOY. WITH AN IDEA. 20

older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books
and listened to what other people said, he began to believe
that this man named Pythagoras might be right, and that
the earth was round, though everybody declared it was
flat. “If it is round,” he said to himself, “what is the use of
trying to sail around Africa to get to Cathay? Why not
just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going right
around the world until you strike
Cathay? I believe it could be
done,” said Columbus.

By this time Columbus was a
man. He was thirty years old and
was a great sailor. He had been
captain of a number of vessels;
he had sailed north and south and
east; he knew all about a ship and
all about the sea. But, though he
was so good a sailor, when he said
that he believed the earth was
round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy.
“Why, how can the earth be round?” they cried. “ The water
would all spill out if it were, and the men who live on the
other side would all be standing on their heads with their feet
waving in the air.” And then they laughed all the harder.

But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh
at. He believed it so strongly, and felt so sure that he was
right, that he set to work to find some king or prince or great



COLUMBUS AT THIRTY.





22 4A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

lord to let him have ships and sailors and money enough to
try to find a way to Cathay by sailing out into the West
and across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which
break upon our rocks and beaches, was thought in Colum-
bus’s day to be a dreadful place. People called it the Sea of
Darkness, because they did not know what was on the other
side of it, or what dangers lay beyond that distant blue rim
where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we call
the horizon. They thought the ocean stretched to the end
of a flat world, straight away to a sort of “jumping-off
place,” and that in
this horrible Jump-
ing-off place were
giants and goblins




and dragons and Qe
monsters and all sorts of terrible Oe
things that would catch the »
ships and destroy them and the sailors.

So when Columbus said that Wee ieee! Eee
wanted to sail away toward this dreadful Tee
jumping-off place, the people said that he was worse than crazy.
They said he was a wicked man and ought to be punished.

But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on
trying. He went from place to place trying to get the ships
and sailors he wanted and was bound to have. As you will
see in the next chapter, he tried to get help wherever he



WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 23

thought it could be had. He asked the people of his own
home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and played
when a boy; he asked the people of the beautiful city that
is built in the sea— Venice; he tried the king of Portugal,
the king of England, the king of France, the king and queen
of Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listen to
such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan — to go to Cathay
by the way of the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off
place. You would never get there alive, they said.

And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white
while he waited, though he was not yet an old man. He
had thought and worked and hoped so much that he began
to look like an old man when he was forty years old. But
still he would never say that perhaps he was wrong, after all.
He said he knew he was right, and that some day he should
find the Indies and sail to Cathay.

Once Gee

CHAPTER II.
WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

DO not wish you to think that Columbus was the first
man to say that the earth was round, or the first to sail
to the West over ‘the Atlantic Ocean. He was not. Other
men had said that they believed the earth was round; other



24 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor
who believed the earth was round had ever yet tried to prove
that it was by crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus
was really the first man to say, I believe the earth is round
and I will show you that it is by sailing to the lands that
are on the other side of the earth.

He even figured out how far it was around the world.
Your geography, you know, tells you now
that what is called the circumference of the
earth — that is, a straight line drawn right
around it—is nearly twenty-five thousand
miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty
carefully and he thought it was about twenty
; thousand miles. If-I could start from
‘Genoa, he said, and walk straight ahead until I got back
to Genoa again, I should walk about twenty thousand miles.
Cathay, he thought, would take up so much land on the
other side of the world that, if he went west instead of east,
he would only need to sail about twenty-five hundred or
three thousand miles.





















‘THE ROUND EARTH.

If you have studied your geography carefully you will
see what a mistake he made.

It is really about twelve thousand miles from Spain to
China (or Cathay as he called it). But America is just about
three thousand miles from Spain, and if you read all this
story you will see how Columbus’s mistake really helped him
to discover America.







A DREAM OF CATHAY.
(Zvery boy of spirit in those days of adventure felt certain that he could find and conquer that
: land of fable.)







WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 27

I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do some-
thing great from the time when, as a little boy, he had hung
around the wharves in Genoa and looked at the ships sailing
east and west and talked with the sailors and wished that he
could go to sea. Perhaps what he had learned at school —
how some men said that the earth was round — and what he
had heard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set
him to thinking and to dreaming that it might be possible
for a ship to sail around the world without falling off. At
any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming and longing until,
at last, he began doing.

Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portu-
gal, of whom I have told you, in their trying to sail around
Africa discovered two groups of islands out in the Atlantic that
they called the Azores, or Isles of Hawks, and the Canaries,
or Isles of Dogs. When Columbus was in Portugal in
1470 he became acquainted with a young woman whose
name was Philippa Perestrelo. In 1473 he married her.

Now Philippa’s father, before his death, had been governor
of Porto Santo, one of the Azores, and Columbus and his
wife went off there to live. In the governor’s. house Colum-
bus found a lot of charts and maps that told him about
parts of the ocean that he had never before seen, and made
him feel certain that he was right in saying that if he sailed
away to the West he should find Cathay.

At that time there was an old man who lived in Flor-
ence, a city of Italy. His name was Toscanelli. He was a



28 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

great scholar and studied the stars and made maps, and was
a very wise man. Columbus knew what a wise old scholar
Toscanelli was, for Florence is not very far from Genoa. So
while he was living in the Azores he wrote to this old
scholar asking him what he thought about his idea that a
man could sail around the world until he reached the land
called the Indies and at last found Cathay.

Toscanelli wrote to Columbus saying that he
=<, believed his idea was the right one, and he
| said it would be a grand thing to do, if Co-
lumbus dared to try it. Perhaps, he said,
Re } you can find all those splendid things that I

awiseoxn know are in Cathay — the great cities with

vc oe marble bridges, the houses of marble covered
with gold, the jewels and the spices and the precious stones,
and all the other wonderful and magnificent things. I do
not wonder you wish to try, he said, for if you find Cathay
it will be a wonderful thing for you and for Portugal.

That settled it with Columbus. If this wise old scholar
said he was right, he must be right. So he left his home
in the Azores and went to Portugal. This was in 1475, and
from that time on, for seventeen long years he was trying to
get some king or prince to help him sail to the West to
find Cathay.

But not one of the people who could have helped him, if
they had really wished to, believed in Columbus. As I told
you, they said that he was crazy. The king of Portugal,





WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. “29

whose name was John, did a very unkind thing —I am sure
you would call it a mean trick. Columbus had gone to him
with his story and asked for ships and sailors. The king
and his chief men refused to help him; but King John said
to himself, perhaps there is something in this worth looking
after and, if so, perhaps I can have my own people find
Cathay and save the money that Columbus will want to keep
for himself as his share of what he finds. So one day he
copied off the sailing directions that Columbus had left with
him, and gave them to one of his own captains without letting
Columbus know anything about it. The Portuguese cap-
tain sailed away to the West in the direction Columbus had
marked down, but a great storm came up and so frightened
the sailors that they turned around in a hurry. Then they
hunted up Columbus and began to abuse him for getting
them into such a scrape. You might as well expect to find
land in the sky, they said, as in those terrible waters.

And when, in this way, Columbus found out that King
John had tried to use his ideas without letting him know
anything about it, he was very angry. His wife had died in
the midst of this mean trick of the Portuguese king, and so,
taking with him his little five-year-old son, Diego, he left
Portugal secretly and went over into Spain.

Near the little town of Palos, in western Spain, is agreen
hill looking out toward the Atlantic. Upon this hill stands
an old building that, four hundred years ago, was used as a
a convent or home for priests. It was called the Convent of



30 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

Rabida, and the priest at the head of it was named the Friar
Juan Perez. One autumn day, in the year 1484, Friar Juan
Perez saw a dusty traveler with a little boy talking with the
gate-keeper of the convent. The stranger was so tall and
fine-looking, and seemed such an interesting man, that Friar
Juan went out and began to talk with him. This man was
Columbus.

As they talked, the priest grew more and more interested
in what Columbus said. He invited him into the convent to -
stay for a few days, and he asked some other people — the
doctor of Palos and some of the sea captains and sailors of
the town—to come and talk with this stranger who had
such a singular idea about sailing across the Atlantic.

It ended in Columbus’s staying some months in Palos,
waiting for a chance to go and see the king and queen.
At last,in 1485, he set out for the Spanish court with a letter
to a priest who was a friend of Friar Juan’s, and who could
help him to see the king and queen.

At that time the king and queen of Spain were fighting
to drive out of Spain the people called the Moors. These
people came from Africa, but they had lived in Spain for
many years and had once been a very rich and powerful
nation. They were not Spaniards; they were not Christians.
So all Spaniards and all Christians hated them and tried to
drive them out of Europe.

The king and queen of Spain who were fighting the
Moors were named Ferdinand and Isabella. They were





THE ROOM IN THE CONVENT OF RABIDA IN WHICH THEY TALKED I'l! OVER,
(As it looks today.)



a rear!





WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 33

pretty good people as kings and queens went in those days,
but they did a great many very cruel and very mean things,
just as the kings and queens of those days were apt to do.
I am afraid we should not think they were very nice people
nowadays. Wecertainly should not wish our American boys
and girls to look up to them as good and true and noble.

.When Columbus first came to them, they were with the
army in the camp near the city of Cordova. The king and
queen had no time to listen to what they thought were crazy
plans, and poor Columbus could get no one to talk with him
who could be of any help. So he was obliged to go back to
drawing maps and selling books to make enough money to
support himself and his little Diego.

But at last, through the friend of good Friar Juan Perez
of Rabida, who was a priest at the court,and named Talavera,
and to whom he had a letter of introduction, Columbus found
a chance to talk over his plans with a number of priests and
scholars in the city of Salamanca where there was a famous
college and many learned men.

Columbus told his story. He said what he ened to do,
and asked these learned men to say a good word for him to
Ferdinand and Isabella so that he could have the ships and
sailors to sail to Cathay. But it was of no use.

What! sail away around the world? those wise men cried
in horror. Why, you are crazy. The world is not round; it
is flat. Your ships would tumble off the edge of the world
and all the king’s money and all the king’s men would be



34 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

lost. No, no; go away; you must not trouble the queen or
even mention such a ridiculous thing again.

So the most of them said. But one
or two thought it might be worth try-
ing. Cathay was a very rich country,
and if this foolish fellow were willing to
run the risk and did succeed, it would
be a good thing for Spain, as the king
and queen would need a great deal of
money after the war with the Moors



was over. At any rate,it was a chance worth
thinking about.

And so, although Columbus was dread-
fully disappointed, he thought that if he had
only a few friends at Court who were ready

THE ‘TREASURES OF ;
CATHAY. to say a good word for him he must not

give up, but must try, try again. And so he staid in Spain.

CHAE hE:
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.
\ HEN you wish very much to do a certain thing it is

dreadfully hard to be patient; it is harder still to
have to wait. Columbus had to do both. The wars against



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 35

the Moors were of much greater interest to the king and
queen of Spain than was the finding of a new and very un-
certain way to get to Cathay. If it had not been ‘for the
patience and what we call the persistence of Columbus,
America would never have been discovered —at least not
in his time.

He staid in Spain. He grew poorer and poorer. He





THE CONVENT OF RABIDA WHERE COLUMBUS FOUND FRIENDS.

was almost friendless. It seemed as if his great enterprise
must be given up. But he never lost hope. He never
stopped trying. Even when he failed he kept on hoping
and kept on trying. He felt certain that sometime he should
succeed.

As we have seen,he tried to interest the rulers of different
countries, but with no success. He tried to get help from



36 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

his old home-town of Genoa and failed; he tried Portugal
and failed; he tried the Republic of Venice and failed; he
tried the king and queen of Spain and failed; he tried some
of the richest and most powerful of the nobles of Spain and
failed; he tried the king of England (whom he got his
brother, Bartholomew Columbus, to go and see) and failed.
There was still left the king of France. He would make
one last attempt to win the king and queen of Spain to his
side and if he failed with them he would try the last of the
rulers of Western Europe, the king of France.

He followed the king and queen of Spain as they went
from place to place fighting the Moors. He hoped that
some day, when they wished to think of something besides
fighting, they might think of him and the gold and jewels
and spices of Cathay.

The days grew into months, the months to years, and
still the war against the Moors kept on; and still Columbus
waited for the chance that did not come. People grew to
know him as “the crazy explorer” as they met him in
the streets or on the church steps of Seville or Cordova, and
even ragged little boys of the town, sharp-eyed and shrill-
voiced as all such ragged little urchins are, would run after
this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered
cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown little fore-
heads with their dirty fingers to show that even they knew
that he was “as crazy as a loon.” |

At last he decided to make one more attempt before giving



















































































































































































LOOKING TOWARD CATHAY.







HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 39

it up in Spain. His money was gone; his friends were few;
but he remembered his acquaintances at Palos and so he
journeyed back to see once more his good friend Friar Juan
Perez at the Convent of Rabida on the hill that looked out
upon the Atlantic he was so anxious to cross.

It was in the month of November, 1491, that he went
back to the Convent of Rabida. If he could not get any
encouragement there, he was determined to stay in Spain no
longer but to go away and try the king of France.

Once more he talked over the finding of Cathay with the
priests and the sailors of Palos. They saw how patient he
was; how persistent he was; how he would never give up
his ideas until he had tried them. They were moved by his
determination. They began to believe in him more and
more. They resolved to help him. One of the principal sea
captains of Palos was named Martin Alonso Pinzon. He
became so interested that he offered to lend Columbus
money enough to make one last appeal to the king and
queen of Spain, and if Columbus should succeed with them,
this Captain Pinzon said that he would go into partnership
with Columbus and help him out when it came to getting
ready to sail to Cathay.

This was a move in the right direction. At once a mes-
senger was sent to'the splendid Spanish camp before the
city of Granada, the last unconquered city of the Moors of
Spain. The king and queen of Spain had been so long try-
ing to capture Granada that this camp was really a city,



49 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

with gates and walls and houses. It was called Santa Fé.
Queen Isabella, who was in Santa Fé, after some delay,
agreed to hear more about the crazy scheme of this persistent

Genoese sailor, and the Friar
Juan Perez was sent for.
He talked so well in be-
half of his friend Columbus
that the queen became still
more interested. She ordered
Columbus to come and see



her, and sent him sixty-five

THE CITY GATE OF SANTA FE.

dollars to pay for a mule, a
new suit of clothes and the journey to court.

About Christmas time, in the year 1491, Columbus,
mounted upon his mule, rode into the Spanish camp before
the city of Granada. But even now, when he had been told
to come, he had to wait. Granada was almost captured; the
Moors were almost conquered At last the end came. On
the second of January, 1492, -_--:
the Moorish king gave up the )
keys of his beloved city, and
the great Spanish banner was
hoisted on the highest tower
of the Alhambra — the hand-
somest building in Granada
and one of the most beautiful in the world. The Moors
were driven out of Spain and Columbus’s chance had come.



THE ALHAMBRA AT GRANADA.



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 41

So he appeared before Queen Isabella and her chief men
and told them again of all his plans and desires. The
queen and her advisers sat in a great room in that splendid
Alhambra I have told you of. King Ferdinand was not
there. He did not believe in Columbus and did not wish to
let him have either money, ships or sailors to lose in such a



COLUMBUS AT GRANADA EXPLAINING HIS IDEAS TO QUEEN ISABELLA.

foolish way. But as Columbus stood before her and talked
so earnestly about how he expected to find the Indies and
Cathay and what he hoped to bring away from there, Queen
Isabella listened and thought the plan worth trying.

Then a singular thing happened. You would think if
you wished for something very much that you would be



42 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

willing to give up a good deal for the sake of getting it.
Columbus had worked and waited for seventeen years. He
had never got what he wanted. He was always being disap-
pointed. And yet, as he talked to the queen and told her
what he wished to do, he said he must have so much as a
reward for doing it that the queen and her chief men were
simply amazed at his —well, what the boys to-day call
“ cheek” — that they would have nothing to do with him.
This man really is crazy, they said. This poor Genoese
sailor comes here without a thing except his very odd ideas
and almost “wants the earth” as a reward. This is not
exactly what they said, but it is what they meant.

His few friends begged him to be more modest. Do not
ask so much, they said, or you will get nothing. But Colum-
bus was determined. I have worked and waited all these
years, he replied. I know just what I can do and just how
much I'can do for the king and queen of Spain. They must
pay me what I ask and promise what I say, or I will go some-
where else. Go,then! said the queen and her advisers. And
Columbus turned his back on what seemed almost his last
hope, mounted his mule and rode away.

Then something else happened. As Columbus rode off
to find the French king, sick and tired of all his long and
" useless labor at the Spanish court, his few firm friends there
saw that, unless they did something right away, all the glory
and all the gain of this enterprise Columbus had taught them
to believe in would be lost to Spain. So two of them, whose





—_ = +

SS

CAPE DE VERDE
- 2 z A 1
Bs j

ln



AFRICA.



CANARIES 2

a
Be




THE WORLD AS COLUMBUS KNEW IT WHEN HE WENT TO SCHOOL,










HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 45

names were Santangel and Quintanilla, rushed into the
queen’s room and begged her, if she wished to become the
greatest queen in Christendom, to call back this wandering
sailor, agree to his terms and profit by his labors.

What if he does ask a great deal? they said. He has
spent his life thinking his plan out; no wonder he feels
that he ought to have a good share of what he finds. What
he asks is really small compared with what Spain will gain.
The war with the Moors has cost you ever so much; your
money-chests are empty; Columbus will fill them up. The
people of Cathay are heathen; Columbus will help you
make them Christian men. The Indies and Cathay are
full of gold and jewels; Columbus will bring you home
shiploads of treasures. Spain has conquered the Moors;
Columbus will help you conquer Cathay.

In fact, they talked to Queen Isabella so strongly and so
earnestly, that she, too, became excited over this chance for
glory and riches that she had almost lost. Quick! send for
Columbus. Call him back! she said. I agree to his terms.
If King Ferdinand cannot or will not take the risk, I, the
queen, will do it all. Quick! do not let the man get into
France. After him. Bring him back!

And without delay a royal messenger, mounted on a swift.
horse, was sent at full gallop to bring Columbus back.

All this time poor Columbus felt bad enough. Every-
thing had gone wrong. Now he must go away into a new
land and do it all over again. Kings and queens, he felt,



46. HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

were not to be depended upon, and he remembered a place
in the Bible where it said: “ Put not your trust in princes.”
Sad, solitary and heavy-hearted, he jogged slowly along
toward the mountains, wondering what the king of France
would say to him, and whether it was really worth trying.
Just as he was riding across the little bridge called the
Bridge of Pinos, some six miles from Granada, he heard the
quick hoof-beats of a horse behind him. It wasa great spot

.



THE BRIDGE OF PINOS WHERE THE QUEEN’S MESSENGER FOUND COLUMBUS.

for robbers, and Columbus felt of the little money he had in
his traveling pouch, and wondered whether he must lose it
all. The hoof-beats came nearer. Then a voice hailed him.
Turn back, turn back! the messenger cried out. The queen
bids you return to Granada. She grants you all you ask.
Columbus hesitated. Ought he to trust this promise, he



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 47

‘wondered. Put not your trust in princes, the verse in the
Bible had said. If I go back I may only be put off and
worried as I have been before. And yet, perhaps she means
what she says. At any rate, I will go back and try once
more.

So, on the little Bridge of Pinos, he turned his mule
around and rode back to Granada... And, sure enough, when
he saw Queen Isabella she agreed:to all that heasked. If he
found Cathay, Columbus was to be made admiral for life of
all the new seas and oceans into which he might sail; he
was to be chief ruler of all the lands he might find; he was
to keep one tenth part of all the gold and jewels and treasures
he should bring away, and was to have his “say” in all
questions about the new lands. For his part (and this was
because of the offer of his friend at Palos, Captain Pinzon)
he agreed to pay one eighth of all the expenses of this expe-
‘dition and of all new enterprises, and was to have one eighth
of all the profits from them.

So Columbus had his wish at last. The queen’s men
figured up how much money they could let him have; they
called him “ Don Christopher Columbus,” “ Your Excellency”
and “ Admiral,” and at once he set about getting ready for
this voyage.





48 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

[ee agreement made. between Columbus and the king

and queen of Spain was signed on the seventeenth of
April, 1492. But it was four months before he was quite
ready to sail away. |

He selected the town of Palos as the place to sail from,
because there, as you know, Captain Pinzon lived; there,
too, he had other acquaintances, so that he supposed it would
be easy to get the sailors he needed for his ships. But in
this he was greatly mistaken.

As soon as the papers had been signed that held the
queen to her promise, Columbus set off for Palos. He
stopped at the Convent of Rabida to tell the Friar Juan Perez
how thankful he was to him for the help the good priest
had given him, and how everything now looked promising
and successful.

The town of Palos, as you can see from your map of
Spain, is situated at the mouth of the river Tinto on a little
bay in the southwestern part of Spain, not far from the
borders of Portugal. To-day the sea has gone away from it
so much that it is nearly high and dry; but four hundred



_HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 49

years ago it was quite a seaport, when Spain did not have
a great many sea towns on the Atlantic coast.

At the time of Columbus’s voyage the king and queen of
Spain were angry with the port of Palos for something its
people had done that was wrong — just what this was we do
not know. But to punish the town, and because Columbus
wished to sail from there, the king and queen ordered that
Palos should pay them’a fine for their wrong-doing. And
this fine was to lend the king and queen of Spain, for one
year, without pay, two sailing vessels of the kind called cara-
vels, armed and equipped “for the service of the crown” —
that is, for the use of the king and queen of Spain, in the
western voyage that Columbus was to make.

When Columbus called together the leading people of
Palos to meet him in the church
of St. George and hear the royal
commands, they came; but at first
they did not understand just
what they must do. But when
they knew that they must send



two of their ships and some of

THE CHURCH OF ST. GEORGE AT PALOS.

their sailing men on this dreadful

voyage far out upon the terrible Sea of Darkness, they were
terribly distressed. Nobody was willing to go. They would
obey the commands of the king and queen and furnish the
two ships, but as for sailing off with this crazy sea captain
— that they would not do.



50 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

Then the king’s officers went to work. They seized some
sailors (impressed is the word for this), and made them go;
they took some from the jails, and gave them their freedom
as a reward for going; they begged and threatened and paid
in advance, and still it was hard to get enough men for the
two ships. Then Captain Pinzon, who had promised Colum-
bus that he would join him, tried his hand. He added a
third ship to the Admiral’s “ fleet.” He made big promises
to the sailors, and worked for weeks, until at last he was able
to do what even the royal commands could not do, and a
_ crew of ninety men was got together to man the three vessels.

The names of these three vessels were the Capitana
(changed before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and
the Vina or Baby. Captain dela Cosa commanded the Santa
Maria, Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon the Pinta and his
brother, Captain Vincent Pinzon, the Mina. The Santa
Maria was the largest of the three vessels; it was therefore
selected as the leader of the fleet —the flag-ship, as it is
called — and upon it sailed the commander of the expedition,
the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus.

When we think of a voyage across the Atlantic nowa-
days, we think of vessels as large as the big three-masted
ships or the great ocean steamers — vessels over six hundred
feet long and fifty feet wide. But these « ships” of Colum-
bus were not really ships. They were hardly larger than
the “ fishing smacks ” that sail up and down our coast to-day.
Some of them were not so large. The Santa Maria was, aS.









































































THE SANTA MARIA, THE FLAG-SHIP OF COLUMBUS.

(The ship in the picture is an exact copy in every way of the original Santa Maria, and was built
in Spain in 1892 to come to America to take part in the Columbian anniversaries.)







HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 53

I have told you, the largest of the three, and she was only
sixty-three feet long, twenty feet wide and ten and a half
feet deep. Just measure this out on the ground and see
how small, after all, the Admiral’s “flag-ship” really was.
The Pinta was even smaller than this, while the little Vzxa
was hardly anything more than a good-sized sail boat. Do
you wonder that the poor people of Palos and the towns
round about were frightened when they thought of their
fathers and brothers and sons putting out to sea, on the
great ocean they had learned to dread so much, in such shaky
little boats as these? »

But finally the vessels were ready. The crews were se-
lected. The time had come to go. Mostof the sailors were
Spanish men from the towns near to the sea, but somehow
a few who were not Spaniards joined the crew.

One of the first men to land in America from one of the
ships of Columbus was an Irishman named William, from
the County Galway. And another was an Englishman
named either Arthur Laws or Arthur Larkins. The Spanish
names for both these men look very queer, and only a wise
scholar who digs among names and words could have found
out what they really were. But such a one did find it out,
and it increases our interest in the discovery of America to
know that some of our own northern blood — the Irishman
and the Englishman — were in the crews of Columbus.

The Admiral Columbus was so sure he was going to
find a rich and civilized country, such as India and Cathay



$4 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

were said to be, that he took along on his ships the men he
would need in such places as he expected to visit and among
such splendid people as he was sure he should meet. He
took along a lawyer to make out all the forms and proclama-
tions and papers that would have to be sent by the Admiral
to the kings and princes he expected to visit; he had a secre-
tary and historian to write out the story of what he should
find and what he should do. There was a learned Jew,
named Louis, who could speak almost a dozen languages,
and who could, of course, tell him what
the people of Cathay and Cipango and the
Indies were talking about. There was a
jeweler and silversmith who knew all
about the gold and silver and precious
stones that Columbus was going to load
the ships with; there was a doctor and a
surgeon ; there were cooks and pilots, and
even a little fellow, who sailed in the
Santa Maria as the Admiral’s cabin boy,
-and whose name was Pedro de Acevedo.



Some scholars have said that it cost —
about two hundred and thirty thousand so eeenmrasite anon
dollars to fit out this expedition. I do aes

not think it cost nearlyso much. We do know that Queen
Isabella gave sixty-seven thousand dollars to help pay
for it. Some people, however, reckoning the old Spanish

money ina different way, say that what Queen Isabella gave



HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 55

toward the expedition was not over three or four thousand
dollars of our money. Perhaps as much more was _ bor-
rowed from King Ferdinand, although he was to have no
share in the enterprise in which Queen Isabella and Colum-
bus were partners.

It was just an hour before sunrise on Friday, the third





: THE DEPARTURE FROM PALOS.
(Zhe Friar Juan Peres bidding Columbus good-by. The building on the hill is the Convent of Rabida.)

of August, 1492, that the three little ships hoisted their
anchors and sailed away from the port of Palos. I suppose
it was a very sorry and a very exciting morning in Palos.
The people probably crowded down on the docks, some of



56 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

them sad and sorrowful, some of them restless and curious.
Their fathers and brothers and sons and acquaintances were
geing—no one knew where, dragged off to sea by a crazy
old Italian sailor who thought there was land to be found
somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place. They all knew
he was wrong. ‘They were certain that nothing but dreadful
goblins and horrible monsters lived off there to the West,
just waiting to devour or destroy the poor sailors when
these three little ships should tumble over the edge.

But how different Columbus must have felt as he stepped
into the rowboat that took him off to his “ flag-ship,” the ~
Santa Maria. His dreams had come true. He had ships
and sailors under his command, and was about to sail away
_ to discover great and wonderful things. . He who had been
so poor that he could hardly buy his own dinner, was now
called Don and Admiral. He had a queen for his friend
and helper. He was given a power that only the richest and
noblest could hope for. But more than all, he was to have
the chance he had wished and worked for so long. He was
to find the Indies; he was to see Cathay; he was to have
his share in all the wealth he should discover and bring
away. The son of the poor wool-weaver of Genoa was to
be the friend of kings and princes; the cabin boy of a pirate
was now Admiral of the Seas and Governor of the Colonies
of Spain! Do you wonder that he felt proud ?

So, as I have told you, just before sunrise on a Friday
morning in August, he boarded the Santa Maria and gave



HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWA ¥.

crt
NI

orders to his captains “to get under way.” The sailors with

a “yo heave ho!” (or whatever the Spanish for that is)

tugged at the anchors,
breeze, and while the
people of Palos watched
them from the _ shore,
while the good friar,
Juan Perez, raised his
hands to Heaven calling
down a blessing on the
enterprise, while the chil-
dren waved a last good-
by from the water-stairs,
the three vessels steered
out from Palos Harbor,
and before that day’s sun
had set, Columbus and
his fleet were full fifty
miles on their way across

the sails filled with the morning .



GOOD-BY, COLUMBUS!

the Sea of Darkness. The westward voyage to those won-

derful lands, the Indies and Cathay, had at last begun.









58 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

CHAE DER wv.
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

Ee you ever set out, in the dark, to walk with your little
brother or sister along a road you did not know much
about or had never gone over before? It was not an easy
thing to do, was it? And how did your little brother or
sister feel when it was known that you were not just certain
whether you were right or not? Do you remember what the
Bible says about the blind leading the blind ?

It was much the same with Columbus when he set out
from Palos to sail over an unknown sea to find the uncertain
land of Cathay. He had his own idea of the way there, but
no one in all his company had ever sailed it, and he himself
was not sure about it. He was very much in the dark.
And the sailors in the three ships were worse than little
children. They did not even have the confidence in their
leader that your little brother or sister would probably have
in you as you traveled that new road ona dark night. It
was almost another case of the blind leading the blind,
was it not?

Columbus first steered his ships to the south so as to
reach the Canary Islands and commence his real westward



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 59

voyage from there. The Canary Islands, as you will see by
looking in your geography, are made up of seven islands and
lie off the northern corner of Africa, some sixty miles or
so west of Morocco. They were named Canaria by the Ro-
mans from the Latin canis, a dog, “ because of the multitude
of dogs of great size” that were found there. The canary
birds that sing so sweetly in your home come from these
islands. They had been known to the Spaniards and other
European sailors of Columbus's day about a hundred years.

At the Canaries the troubles of Columbus commenced.
And he did have a lot of trouble before his voyage was
over. While near the island called the Grand Canary the
rudder of the Pinta, in which Captain Alonso Pinzon sailed,
somehow got loose, then broke and finally came off. It was
said that two of the Pznta’s crew, who were really the
owners of the vessel, broke the rudder on purpose, because
they had become frightened at the thoughts
of the perilous voyage, and hoped by dam-
aging their vessel to be left behind.

But Columbus had no thought of doing —
any such thing. He sailed to the island



THE TWO OWNERS.

of Gomera, where he knew some people,

and had the Pinta mended. And while lying here with his
fleet the great mountain on the island of Teneriffe, twelve
thousand feet high, suddenly began to spit out flame and
smoke. It was, as of course you know, a volcano; but the
poor frightened sailors did not know what set this mountain



60 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

on fire, and they were scared almost out of their wits’ and
begged the Admiral to go back home. But Columbus would
not. And as they sailed away from Gomera some sailors
told them that the king of Portugal was angry with Colum-
bus because he had got his ships from the king and queen
of Spain, and that he had sent out some of his war-ships to
worry or capture Columbus.

But these, too, Columbus escaped, although not before
his crews had grown terribly nervous for fear of capture.
At last they got away from the Canaries, and on Sunday, the
ninth of September, 1492, with a fresh breeze filling their
sails, the three caravels sailed away into the West. And as
the shores of Ferro, the very last of the Canary Islands,
faded out of sight, the sailors burst into sighs and murmur-
ings and tears, saying that now indeed they were sailing off
— off —off— upon the awful Sea of Darkness and would
never see land any more.

When Columbus thought that he was sailing too slowly
—he had now been away from Palos a month and was only
about a hundred miles out at sea— and when he saw what
babies his sailors were, he did something that was not just
right (for it is never right to do anything that is not true)
but which he felt he really must do. He made two records
(or reckonings as they are called) of his sailing. One of
these records was a true one; this he kept for himself. The
other was a false one; this he kept to show his sailors. So
while they thought they were sailing slowly and that the



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 61

ocean was not so very wide, Columbus knew from his own
‘true record that they were getting miles and miles away
from home.

Soon another thing happened to worry the sailors. The
pilots were steering by the compass. You know what that is
—a sort of big magnet-needle perfectly balanced and pointing
always to the north. At the time of
Columbus the compass was a new
thing and was only understood by a
few. On the thirteenth of September
they had really got into the middle
of the ocean, and the line of the north
changed. Of course this made the
needle in the compass change its posi-
tion also. Now the sailors had been
taught to believe so fully in the
compass that they thought it could
never change its position. And here Ge cay oe
it was playing acruel trick upon them. Weare trapped! they
cried. The goblins in this dreadful sea are making our com-
pass point wrong so as to drag us to destruction. Go back;



take us back! they demanded.

But Columbus, though he knew that his explanation was
wrong, said the compass was all right. The North Star,
toward which the needle always pointed, had, so he said,
changed its position. This quieted the sailors for a while.

When they had been about forty days out from Palos,



62 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

the ship ran into what is marked upon your maps as the
Sargasso Sea. This is a vast meadow of floating seaweed
and seagrass in the middle of the Atlantic; it is kept drift-
ing about in the same place by the two great sea currents
that flow past it but not through it.

The sailors did not know this, of course, and when the
ships began to sail slower and slower because the seaweed
was so thick and heavy and because there was no current to
carry them along, they were sure that they were somewhere
near to the Jumping-off place, and that the horrible monsters
they had heard of were making ready to stop their ships, and
when they had got them all snarled up in this weed to drag
them all down to the bottom of the sea.

For nearly a week the ships sailed over these vast sea-
meadows, and when they were.out of them they struck what
we call the trade-winds —a never-failing breeze that blew them
ever westward. Then the sailors cried out that they were in
an enchanted land where there was but one wind and never a
breeze to blow the poor sailors home again. Were they not
fearfully “scarey?” But no doubt we should have been so,
too, if we had been with them and knew no more than they did.

And when they had been over fifty days from home
on the twenty-fifth of September, some one suddenly cried
Land! Land! And all hands crowded to the side. Sure
enough, they all saw it, straight ahead of them — fair green
islands and lofty hills and a city with castles and temples
and palaces that glittered beautifully in the sun.



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS, 63

Then they all cried for joy and sang hymns of praise and
shouted to each other that their troubles were over. Cathay,
it is Cathay! they cried; and they steered straight for the

shining city. But, worst of all their troubles, even as they
sailed toward the land they thought to be Cathay, behold!
it all disappeared — island and castle and palace and temple
and city, and nothing but the tossing sea lay all about them.









































































































































A CITY IN THE SEA.

For this that they had seen was
what is called a mirage—a
aa ay trick of the clouds and the sun
and the sea that makes people imagine they see what they
would like to, but really do not. But after this Columbus
had a harder time than ever with his men, for they were sure
he was leading them all astray.



64 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

And so with frights and imaginings and mysteries like
these, with strange birds flying about the ships and floating
things in the water that told of land somewhere about them,
with hopes again and again disappointed, and with the
sailors growing more and more restless and discontented,
and muttering threats against this Italian adventurer who
was leading the ships and sailors of the Spanish king to sure
destruction, Columbus ‘still
sailed on, as full of patience
and of faith, as certain of
success as he had ever been.

On the seventh of Octo-
ber, 1492, the true record
that Columbus was keeping
showed that he had sailed
twenty-seven hundred miles
from the Canaries; the false
record that the sailors saw
said they had sailed twenty-
two hundred miles. Had
Columbus kept straight on,
he would have landed very soon upon the coast of Florida
or South Carolina, and would really have discovered the
mainland of America. But Captain Alonso Pinzon saw
what looked like a flock of parrots flying south. This made
him think the land lay that way; so he begged the Admiral
to change his course to the southward as he was sure there



WATCHING FOR LAND.



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 65

was no land to the west. Against his will, Columbus at last
consented, and turning to the southwest headed for Cuba.
But he thought he was steering for Cathay. The islands
of Japan, were, he thought, only a few leagues away to the
west. They were really, as you know, away across the























































‘THE NIGHT BEFORE THE DISCOVERY.

United States and then across the Pacific Ocean, thousands:
of miles farther west than Columbus could sail. But accord-
ing to his reckoning he hoped within a day or two to see the
cities and palaces of this wonderful land. |

When they sailed from the Canaries a reward had been
offered to whomsoever should first see land. This reward
was to be a silken jacket and nearly five hundred dollars
in money; so all the sailors were on the watch.



66 WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

At about ten o'clock on the evening of the eleventh of
October, Columbus, standing on the high raised stern of the
Santa Maria, saw a moving light, as if some one on the
shore were running with a flaming torch. At two o’clock
the next morning — Friday, the twelfth of October, 1492 —
the sharp eyes of a watchful sailor on the Pizza (his name
was Rodrigo de Triana) caught sight of a long low coast-
line not far away. He raised the joyful shout Land, ho!
The ships ran in as near to the shore as they dared, and
just ten weeks after the anchors had been hauled up in
Palos Harbor they were dropped overboard, and the ships of
Columbus were anchored in the waters of a new world.

Where was it? What was it? Wasit Cathay? Colum-
bus was sure that it was. He was certain that the morning
sun would shine for him upon the marble towers and golden
roofs of the wonderful city of the kings of Cathay.

a pny
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

LITTLE over three hundred years ago there was a
Pope of Rome whose name was Gregory XIII. He

was greatly interested in learning and science, and when the
scholars and wise men of his day showed him that a mis-







A

SEES

Ss

OLUMBU

Cc







WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. . 69

take in reckoning time had long before been made he set
about to make it right. At that time the Pope of Rome
had great influence with the kings and queens of Europe,
and whatever he wished them to do they generally did.

So they all agreed to his plan of renumbering the days
of the year, and a new reckoning of time was made upon
the rule that most of you know by heart in the old rhyme:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November ;

All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February which alone
Hath twenty-eight — and this, in fine,

One year in four hath twenty-nine.

And the order of the days of the months and the year is
what is called, after Pope Gregory, the Gregorian Calendar.

This change in reckoning time made, of course, all past
dates wrong. The old dates, which were called Old Style,
had to be made to correspond with the new dates which were
called New Style.

Now, according to the Old Style, Columbus discovered
the islands he thought to’ be the Indies (and which have
ever since been called the West Indies) on the twelfth of
October, 1492. But, according to the New Style, adopted
nearly one hundred years after his discovery, the right date
would be the twenty-first of October. And this is why, in
the Columbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated



?

7o WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America
on the twenty-first of October; which, as you see, is the same
as the twelfth under the Old Style of reckoning time,

But did Columbus discover America? What was this
land that greeted his eyes as the daylight came on that
Friday morning, and he saw the low green shores that lay
ahead of his caravels ?

As far as Columbus was concerned he was sure that he
had found some one of the outermost islands of Cipango or
Japan. So he dropped his anchors, ordered out his row-
boat, and prepared to take possession of the land in the
name of the queen of Spain, who had helped him in his
enterprise.

Just why or by what right a man from one country could
sail up to the land belonging to another country and, planting
in the ground the flag of his king, could say, “ This land be-
longs to my king!” is a hard question to answer. But there
is an old saying that tells us, Might makes right; and the
servants of the kings and queens — the adventurers and ex-
plorers of old——used to go sailing about the world with this
idea in their heads, and as soon as they came to a land they
had never seen before, up would go their flag, and they
would say, This land is mine and my king’s! They would
not of course do this in any of the well-known or “ Christian
lands” of Europe; but they believed that all “ pagan lands ”
belonged by right to the first European king whose sailors
should discover and claim them.





F COLUMBU

ANDING O

HE L

ay

)

tteart.

by Closs of Stui

rawing

a

(From a







WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 73

So Columbus lowered a boat from the Sanxfa Maria,
and with two of his chief men and some sailors for rowers
he pulled off toward the island.

But before he did so, he had to listen to the cheers and
congratulations of the very sailors who, only a few days _be-
fore, were ready to kill him. But, you see, this man whom
they thought crazy had really brought them to the beautiful
land, just as he had promised. It does make such a differ-
ence, you know, in what people say whether a thing turns
out right or. not.

Columbus, as I say, got into his rowboat with his chief
inspector and his lawyer. He wore a crimson cloak over
his armor, and in his hand he held the royal banner of Spain.
Following him came Captain Alonso Pinzon in a rowboat
from the Pizfa, and in a rowboat from the Mixa Captain
Vincent Pinzon. Each of these captains carried the “ banner
of the green cross” on which were to be seen the initials of
the king and queen of Spain.

As they rowed toward the land they saw some people on
the shore. They were not dressed in the splendid clothes
the Spaniards expected to find the people of Cathay wearing.
In fact, they did not have on much of anything but grease
and paint. And the land showed no signs of the marble
temples and gold-roofed palaces the sailors expected to find.
It was a little, low, flat green island, partly covered with
trees and with what looked like a lake in the center.

This land was, in fact, one of the three thousand keys or



74 WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

coral islands that stretch from the capes of Florida to the
island of Hayti, and are known as the Bahama Islands.
The one upon which Columbus landed was called by the
natives Guanahani, and was either the little island now marked
on the map as Cat Island or else the one called Watling’s
Island. Just which of these it was has been discussed over
and over again, but careful scholars have now but little
doubt that it was the one known to-




day as Watling’s Island.

To see no sign of glittering
palaces and gayly
dressed people
was quite a dis-
appointment to
Columbus. But
then, he said, this
is probably the

THE PLACE WHERE COLUMBUS LANDED.

island farthest out
to sea, and the people who live here are not the real Cathay
folks. We shall see them very soon. |

So with the royal banner and the green-cross standards
floating above him, with his captains and chief officers and
some of the sailors gathered about him, while all the others
watched him from the decks of his fleet, Columbus stepped
upon the shore. Then he took off his hat, and holding the
royal banner in one hand and his sword in the other he said
aloud: I take possession of this island, which I name





‘THE LANDING OF COLUMBUS.
(from a painting by John van der Lyn in the Capitol at Washington.)







WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 17

San Salvador,* and of all the islands and lands about it in
the name of my patron and sovereign lady, Isabella, and her
kingdom of Castile. This, or something like it, he said, for
the exact words are not known to us.

And when he had done this the captains and sailors fell
at his feet in wonder and admiration,
begging him to forgive them for all the
hard things they had said about him.
For you have found Cathay, they cried.
You are our leader. You will make us



rich and powerful. Hurrah for the great
Admiral ! © nHEY HAVE COME FROM
And when the naked and astonished aL pe
people of the island saw all this—the canoes with wings,
as they called the ships, the richly-dressed men with white
and bearded faces, the flags and swords, and the people
kneeling about this grand-looking old man in the crimson
cloak — they said to one another: These men are gods;
they have come from Heaven to see us. And then they,
too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from
Heaven, as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.
And when they found that the men from Heaven did not
offer to hurt them, they came nearer; and the man in the
crimson cloak gave them beads and pieces of bright cloth
and other beautiful things they had never seen before. And

* The island of San Salvador means the island of the Holy Saviour. Columbus and the Spanish
explorers who followed him gave Bible or religious names to very much of the land they discovered.



78 WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

this made them feel all the more certain that these men who
had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be

fo

hi
"i
a
yp
Us

' fi p f

y " fap tins i
4 “aN a

ih
Ws
|

THE TROPIC ISLANDS.







from Heaven. So they brought them fruits
and flowers and feathers and birds as pres-
ents ; and both parties, the men with clothes
and the men without clothes, got on very
well together.

But Columbus, as we know, had come
across the water for one especial reason.
He was to find Cathay, and he was to find
it so that he could carry back to Spain the
gold and jewels and spices of Cathay. The
first thing, therefore, that he tried to find
out from the people of the island — whom
he called “ Indians,” because he thought he
had come to a part of the coast of India —
was where Cathay might be.

Of course they did not understand him.
Even Louis, the interpreter, who knew a
dozen languages and who tried them all,
could not make out what these “ Indians”
said. But from their signs and actions
and from the sound of the words they
spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay
was off somewhere to the southwest, and
that the gold he was bound to find came
from there. The “Indians” had little bits









THE NEW LAND.

try excels all others,” wrote Columbus, “ as the day surpasses the night.”)

2S coun.

(“ Th

&









WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 8:

of gold hanging in their ears and noses. So Columbus sup-
posed that among the finer people he hoped soon to meet in
the southwest, he should find great quantities of the yellow
metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was not far off.
Japan was near, China was near, Indiawas near. Of this he
was certain; and even until he died Columbus did not have
any idea that he had found a new world — such as America
teally was. He was sure that he had simply landed upon
the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set
out to discover — the nearest route to the Indies.

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and _hav-
ing seized and carried off to his ships some of the poor
natives who had welcomed him so gladly, he commenced a
cruise among the islands of the group he had discovered.

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic
islands, and of them and of the people who lived upon them
he wrote to the king and queen of Spain: “ This country excels
all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor.
The natives love their neighbors as themselves; their con-
versation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces smiling ;
and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to
Your Highness there is not a better people in the world.”

Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have
acted so meanly toward these innocent people who loved
and trusted him so? For it was Columbus who first stole
them away from their island homes and who first thought
of making them slaves to the white men.



82 HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

CharT ER Wilk
HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

OLUMBUS kept sailing on from one island to another.

Each new island he found would, he hoped, bring him

nearer to Cathay and to the marble temples and golden
palaces and splendid cities he was looking for.

But the temples and palaces and cities did not appear.
When the Admiral came to the coast of

Cuba he said: This, I know, is the main-
land of Asia. So he sent off Louis, the
interpreter, with a letter to the “great
Emperor of Cathay.” Louis was gone
several days; but he found no emperor,
no palace, no city, no gold, no jewels, no
spices, no Cathay — only frail houses of
bark and reeds, fields of corn and grain,
with simple people who could tell him nothing about Cathay
or Cipango or the Indies.

So day after day Columbus kept on his search, sailing
from island to island, getting a little gold here and there,
or some pearls and silver and a lot of beautiful bird skins,
feathers and trinkets.



CAPTAIN ALONSO PINZON.



HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 83

Then Captain Alonso Pinzon, who was sailing in the
Pinta, believed he could do better than follow the Admiral's
lead. I know, he said, if I could go off on my own hook I
could find plenty of gold and pearls, and perhaps I could
find Cathay. So one day he sailed away and Columbus did
not know what had become of him.

_ At last Columbus, sailing on and troubled at the way
Captain Alonso Pinzon had acted, came one day to the
island of Hayti. If Cuba was Cathay (or China), Hayti, he
felt sure, must be Cipango(or Japan). So he decided to sail
into one of its harbors to spend Christmas Day. But just
before Christmas morning dawned, the helmsman of the
Santa Maria, thinking that everything was safe, gave the
tiller into the hands of a boy — perhaps it was little Pedro
the cabin boy —and went to sleep. The rest of the crew
also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt quite
big to think that he was really steering the Admiral’s flag-
ship, was a little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had
driven the Saxta Maria plump upon a hidden reef. And
there she was wrecked. They worked hard to get her off
but it was no use. She keeled over on her side, her seams
opened, the water leaked in, the waves broke over her, the
masts fell out and the Saxta Maria had made her last voyage.

Then Columbus was in distress. The Pinta had deserted
him, the Santa Maria was a wreck, the Vina was not nearly
. large enough to carry all his men back to Spain. And to
Spain he must return at once. What should he do?



84 HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

Columbus was quick at getting out of a fix. So in this
case he speedily decided what to do. He set his men at
work tearing the wreck of the Saxta Maria to pieces. Out
of her timbers and woodwork, helped out with trees from the
woods and a few stones from the shore, he made quite a fort.
It had a ditch and a watch-tower and a drawbridge. It
proudly floated the
flag of Spain. It was
the first European fort
in the new world. On
its ramparts Colum-
bus mounted the can-
nons he had saved
from the wreck and
named the fort La
Navidad — that is,
Fort Nativity, be-
cause it was made

DORA ED: out of the ship that
was wrecked on Christmas Day —the day of Christ's nativ-
ity, his birthday. _

He selected forty of his men to stay in the fort until he
should return from Spain. The most of them were quite
willing to do this as they thought the place was a beautiful one
and they would be kept very busy filling the fort with gold.
Columbus told them they must have at least a ton of gold
before he came back. He left them provisions and powder





HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 85

for a year, he told them to be careful and watchful, to be
kind to the Indians and to make the year such a good one
that the king and queen of Spain would be glad to reward
them. And then he said good-by and sailed away for Spain.

It was on the fourth of January, 1493, that Columbus
turned the little Wzwa homeward. He had not sailed very
far when what should he come across but the lost Pzzfa.
Captain Alonso Pinzon seemed very much ashamed when he
saw the Admiral, and tried to explain his absence. Colum-
bus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon had gone off
gold hunting and had not found any gold. But he did not
scold him, and both the vessels sailed toward Spain. _

The homeward voyage was a stormy and seasick one.
Once it was so rough that Columbus thought surely the
Nina would be wrecked. So he copied off the story of what
he had seen and done, addressed it to the king and queen of
Spain, put it into a barrel and threw the barrel overboard.

But the Viza was not shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth
of February Columbus reached the Azores. The Portuguese
governor was so surprised when he heard this crazy Italian
really had returned, and was so angry to think it was Spain
and not Portugal that was to profit by his voyage that he
tried to make Columbus a prisoner. But the Admiral gave
this inhospitable welcomer the slip and was soon off the
coast of Portugal. ,

Here he was obliged to land and meet the king of Portu-
gal —that same King John who had once acted so meanly



86 HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

toward him. King John would have done so again had he
dared. But things were quite different now. Columbus
was a great man. He had made a successful voyage, and
the king and queen of Spain would have made it go hard
with the king of Portugal if he dared trouble their admiral.
So King John had to give a royal reception to Columbus,
and permit him to send a messenger to the king and queen
of Spain with the news of his return from Cathay.

Then Columbus went on board the Mina again and
sailed for Palos. But his old friend Captain Alonso Pinzon
had again acted badly. For he had left the Admiral in one
of the storms at sea and had hurried homeward. Then he
sailed into one of the northern ports of Spain, and hoping to
get all the credit for his voyage, sent a messenger post-haste
to the king and queen with the word that he had returned
from Cathay and had much to tell them. And then he, too,
sailed for Palos. i

On the fifteenth of March, 1493, just seven months after
he had sailed away to the West, Columbus in the Vina
sailed into Palos Harbor. The people knew the little vessel
at once. And then what a time they made! Columbus has
come back, they cried. He has found Cathay. Hurrah!
hurrah! And the bells rang and the cannons boomed and
the streets were full of people. The sailors were welcomed
with shouts of joy, and the big stories they told were listened
to with open mouths and many exclamations of surprise.
So Columbus came back to Palos. And everybody pointed





LO ae
on pele i \ in

ia





NS



























“fg Fs
ae vA 4 f i 4 GY | ! i Liat
, i INA pt el,






























































WU COG) (
| |
| |
i y 2 i
Bs
~
oe al
Ae i FN ad ; ! di Z|
IN AZ /* Sn) il
‘i x. : ff i “4 UCC :
o% Z é
Fp a CS
\ re ZS | Ul ae
WI EN ne eee, rie
Uh é ‘ Mia URI CR epe ee eS Se eam ie i Mt.
Zk. ‘ whe ae

Hiss at = 4
wa kid
a ive

ae Sacha MMM acs 1. ie ie
y Fag J Ay li ons
ytd SRS
Mh te “ae eat mM
8 gt ae Dl eS

DEM eye



. ve sas Se

wia ly

-- re

COLUMBUS RECEIVED BY FERDINAND AND ISABELLA AT BARCELONA.

(“ The king and queen said he had done weli.”







HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 89

him out and cheered him and he was no longer eG of as
“that crazy Italian who dragged away the men of Palos to
the Jumping-off place.”

And in the midst of all this rejoicing what should sail
into the harbor of Palos but the Px/a, just a few hours late!
And when Captain Alonso Pinzon heard the sounds of re.
joicing, and knew that his plans to take away from Columbus
all the glory of what had been done had all gone
wrong, he did not even go to see his old friend and
ask his pardon. He went away to his own house
without seeing any one. And there he found a
stern letter from the king and queen of Spain
scolding him for trying to get the best of Colum-



bus, and refusing to hear or see him. The Way COLUMBUS Has —

COME.

things had turned out made Captain Alonso Pin-
zon feel so badly that he fell sick; and in a few days he died.
But Columbus, after he had seen his good friend Juan
Perez, the friar at Rabida, and told him all his adventures,
went on to Barcelona where King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella were waiting for him. They had already sent him
letters telling him how pleased they were that he had found
Cathay, and ordering him to get ready fora second expedition
at once. Columbus gave his directions for this, and then, in
a grand procession that called everybody to the street or
_ window or housetop, he set off for Barcelona. He reached
the court on a fine April day and was at once received with
much pleasure by the king and queen of Spain.



go HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

Columbus told them where he had been and what he
had seen; he showed them the gold and the pearls and the
birds and curiosities he had brought to Spain as specimens
of what was to be found in Cathay; he showed them the ten
painted and “fixed-up” Indians he had stolen and brought
back with him.

And the king and queen of Spain said he had done well.
They had him sit beside them while he told his story, and
treated this poor Italian wool-weaver as they would one of
their great princes or mighty lords. They told him he could
put the royal arms alongside his own on his shield or crest,
and they bade him get together at once
ships and sailors for a second expedition
to Cathay— ships and sailors enough,
they said, to get away up to the great



cities of Cathay, where the marble temples



and the golden palaces must be. It was



their wish, they said, to gain the friend-
Shae ship of the great Emperor of Cathay, to
EECUESSION trade with him and get a good share of
his gold and jewels and spices. For, you see, no one as
yet imagined that Columbus had discovered America. They
did not even know that there was such a continent. They
thought he had sailed to Asia and found the rich countries
that Marco Polo had told such big stories about. :
Columbus, you may be sure, was “ all the rage” now.
Wherever he went the people followed him, cheering and



HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL IO GRIEF. gt

shouting, and begging him to take them with him on his
next voyage to Cathay.

He was as anxious as any one to get back to those beau-
tiful islands and hunt for gold and jewels. He set to work
at once, and on the twenty-fifth of September, 1493, with a
fleet of seventeen ships and a company of fifteen hundred





COLUMBUS TELLING HIS ADVENTURES TO JUAN PEREZ AT RABIDA.

men, Columbus the Admiral set sail from Cadiz on_ his
second voyage to Cathay and Cipango and the Indies. And
this time he was certain he should find all these wonderful
places, and bring back from the splendid cities unbounded
wealth for the king and queen of Spain.



g2 2ZRYING IT AGAIN.

CHAPTER Vill >
TRYING IT AGAIN.

[)° you not think Columbus must have felt very fine as
he sailed out of Cadiz Harbor on his second voyage to
the West? It was just about a year before, you know, that
his feeble fleet of three little ships sailed from Palos port.
His hundred sailors hated to go; his friends were few;
everybody else said he was crazy; his success was very
doubtful. Now, as he stood on the high quarter-deck of his
big flag-ship, the Maria Galante, he was a great man. By
appointment of his king and queen he was “ Admiral of the
Ocean Seas” and “ Viceroy of the Indies.” He had servants
to do as he directed; he had supreme command over the
seventeen ships of his fleet, large and small; fifteen hundred
men joyfully crowded his decks, while thousands left at
home wished that they might go with him, too. He had
soldiers and sailors, horsemen and footmen ; his ships were
filled with all the things necessary fer trading with the
Indians and the great merchants of Cathay, and for building
the homes of those who wished to live in the lands beyond
the sea.
Everything looked so well and everybody was so full of



TRYING IT AGAIN. 93

hope and expectation that the Admiral felt that now his
fondest dreams were coming to pass and that he was a
great man indeed. ©

This was to be a hunt for gold. And so sure of success
was Columbus that he promised the king and queen of








zs . e
rif —

n ee “U0 eS ae

5

Y E>.

as pm cn LT Mt 5
ine

| ———o ie malt) eee
aS Se a ee Se
















THE HARBOR OF CADIZ.

Spain, out of the money he should make on this voyage, to
himself pay for the fitting out of a great army of fifty thou-
sand foot soldiers and four thousand horsemen to drive away
the pagan Turks who had captured and held possession of
the city of Jerusalem and the sepulcher of Christ. For this
had been the chief desire, for years and years, of the Chris-





94 TRYING IT AGAIN.

tian people of Europe. To accomplish it many brave
knights and warriors had fought and failed. But now
Columbus was certain he could do it.

So, out into the western ocean sailed the great expedi-
tion of the Admiral. He sailed first to the Canary Isles,
where he took aboard wood and water and many cattle,
sheep and swine. Then, on the seventeenth of October, he















steered straight

























out into the broad
Atlantic, and on
Sunday, the third
of November, he
saw the hill-tops
of one of the
West India Isl-
ans that he
named Dominica.
You can find it
on your map of
the West Indies.

For days he
sailed on, passing

“WE SAW THE HILL-TOPS OF DOMINICA.”

island after isl-
and, landing on some and giving them names. Some of
them were inhabited, some of them were not; some were very
large, some were very small. But none of them helped him
in any way to find Cathay, so at last he steered toward Hayti









IRYING IT AGAIN.

(or Hispaniola, as he called it) and the lit-
tle ship-built fortress of La Navidad, where
his forty comrades had been left.

On the twenty-seventh of November,
the fleet of the Admiral cast anchor off the
solitary fort. It was night. No light was
to be seen on the shore; through the dark-
ness nothing could be made out that looked
like the walls of the fort. Columbus fired
a cannon; then he fired another. The
echoes were the only answer. They must
be sound sleepers in our fortress there, said
the Admiral. At last, over the water he
heard the sound of oars — or was it the dip
of a paddle? A voice called for the Ad-
miral; but it was not a Spanish voice.
The interpreter —who was the only one
left of those ten stolen Indians carried by
Columbus to Spain—came to the Ad-
miral’s side; by the light of the ship’s lan-
tern they could make out the figure of an
Indian in his canoe. He brought presents
from his chief. But where are my men at
the fort? asked the Admiral. And then
the whole sad story was told.

The fort of La Navidad was destroyed ;
the Spaniards were all dead; the first at-

95



THE LURKING INDIAN.



96 TRYING IT AGAIN.

tempt of Spain to start a colony in the new world was a
terrible failure. And for it the Spaniards themselves were
to blame.

_ After Columbus had left them, the forty men in the fort
did not do as he told them or as they had solemnly promised.
They were lazy; they were rough; they treated the Indians
badly; they quarreled among themselves; some of them ran
off to live in the woods. Then sickness came; there were
two “sides,” each one jealous of the other; the Indians be-
came enemies. A fiery war-chief from the hills, whose name
was Caonabo, led the Indians against the white men. The
fort and village were surprised, surrounded and destroyed.
And the little band of “conquerors” —as the Spaniards
loved to call themselves — was itself conquered and killed.

It was a terrible disappointment to Columbus. The
men in whom he had trusted had proved false. The gold
he had told them to get together they had not even found.
His plans had all gone wrong.

But Columbus was not the man to stay defeated. His
fort was destroyed, his men were killed, his settlement was
atailure.\ It canst bewhelpedinow,” hei said, \2l will) try,
again.

This time he would not only build a fort, he would
build a city. He had men and material enough to do this
and to do it well. So he set to work.

But the place where he had built from the wreck of the
unlucky Saxta Maria his unlucky fort of La Navidad did



TRVING IT AGAIN. 97

not suit him. It was low, damp and unhealthy. He must
find a better place. After looking about for some time he
finally selected a place on the northern side of the island.
You can find it if you look at the map of Hayti in the West
Indies; it is near to Cape Isabella.

He found here a good harbor for ships, a good place on
the rocks for a fort, and good land for gardens. Here
Columbus laid
out his new town,
and called it after
his friend the
queen of Spain,
the city of Isa-
bella.

He marked
out a central spot
for his park or
square; around
this ran a street,
and along this
street he built
large stone build-



ings for a store-

CAONABO AND HIS BRAVES.

house, a church
and a house for himself, as governor of the colony. On the
side streets were built the houses for the people who were to
live in the new town, while on a rocky point with its queer



98 TRYING IT AGAIN.

little round tower looking out to sea stood the stone fort to
protect the little city. It was the first settlement made by
white men in all the great new world of America. _

You must know that there are some very wise and very
bright people who do not
agree tothis. They say that
nearly five hundred years
before Columbus landed, a
Norwegian prince or viking,
whose name was Leif Erics-
son, had built on the banks
of the beautiful Charles
River, some twelve miles
from Boston, a city which
he called Norumbega.

But this has not really
been proved. It is almost
all the fancy of a wise man



who has studied it out for

THE TOWER OF THE FORT.

himself, and says he be-
lieves there was such a city. But he does not really know
it as we know of the city of Isabella, and so we must still
say that Christopher Columbus really discovered America
and built the first fort and the first city on its shores —
although he thought he was doing all this in Asia, on the
shores of China or Japan.

When Columbus had his people nearly settled in their



Full Text



ty |

aw

in
Ur



UVALATAU eae !
Sr ye ceacmens an
VAN LAA TTT ca l
ED SATE ADOT iN nT
Loca ‘i |























|

rene

i. aa
i Ht
E ul ae La i

at

\

\

i



BN co. ui

“THE BOYS, POINTING AFYER HIM, WOULD CALL HIM ‘THE CRAZY EXPLORER.*”
See page 36
Tels TRUE STORY OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CALLED THE GREAT ADMIRAL

TOED FOR VOUNGEST READERS

BY

ELBRIDGE 1S), BROOKS |
i Author of
“The Story of the United States,” “ Historic Boys,” ‘‘ Historic Girls,”
“ Story of the American Indian,” “ Story of the American Sailor,”
“In No Man’s Land,” and others

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED

BOSTON
D LOTHROP COMPANY
1893
Copyricur, 1892,
BY

D. Lorurop Company.
PRE ACr:

Tuis “ True Story of Christopher Columbus” is offered and
inscribed to the boys and girls of America as the opening volume
in a series especially designed for their reading, and to be called
“Children’s Lives of Great Men.” In this series the place of honor,
or rather of position, is given to Columbus the Admiral, because had
it not been for him and for his pluck and faith and perseverance there
might have been no young Americans, such as we know to-day, to
read or care about the world’s great men.

Columbus led the American advance; he discovered the New
World; he left a record of persistence in spite of discouragement and
of triumph over all obstacles, that has been the inspiration and guide
for Americans ever since his day, and that has led them to work on
in faith and hope until the end they strove for was won.

“The True Story of Christopher Columbus” will be followed by
_ the “true story” of others who have left names for us to honor and
revere, who have made the world better because they lived, and who
have helped to make and to develop American freedom, strength and
progress.
~ It will be the endeavor to have all these presented in the simple,
straightforward, earnest way that appeals to children, and shows how

the hero can be the man, and the man the hero.
BaSe Be
CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

A BOY WITH AN IDEA

CHAPTER II.

WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. . . .

CHAPTER III.
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS. FRIEND

CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. : . .

CHAPTER V.
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS :

CHAPTER VI.
WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED . : : : 7

CHAPTER VII.
HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF

CHAPTER VIII.

TRYING IT ‘AGAIN

It

23

34

48

58

66

82

g2
CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN .

CHAPTER X,

FROM PARADISE TO PRISON

CHAPTER XI.

HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN

CHAPTER XII.

HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE

CHAPTER XIII.

THE END OF THE STORY .

CHAPTER XIV.

HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT



103

TI2—-

r24

141

197

173
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.



“The Boys pointing after him would Call him ‘ the crazy Explorer.’”
Sailing to distant Lands

The Birthplace of Columbus . : ‘ : : : o
Bound around Africa

Genoa, the Birthplace of Cee 4 : 5 z ‘i : 5
“ Golden Cathay ” :

First Inspirations of Columbus .

Columbus at Thirty . : i

What Folks Thought Lived in the “ Tomine -off Place ”

The Round Earth

A Dream of Cathay

A Wise Old Scholar

The Room in the Convent of Rabida in which fe Talked it Over
The Treasures of Cathay : ; ‘

The Convent of Rabida where Columbus Found Friends .

Looking toward Cathay 5 ; 5 5 : : : : :
The City Gate of Santa Fé

The Alhambra at Granada

Columbus at Granada Explaining his Ideas to Queen Isabella

The World as Columbus Knew it when he Went to School

The Bridge of Pinos where the Queen’s Messenger found Columbus. °

The Church of St. George at Palos

The Santa Maria, the Flag-ship of Columbus :
What Pedro the Cabin Boy Expected to become in Cathay
The Departure from Palos .

Good-by, Columbus!

The Two Owners

The Three Caravels . é é . : ; . 5 F 2
A City in the Sea Deen ee ets sy Ter clapeal eas Protas een

Watching for Land. : : : . . 6 : i ‘
The Night before the Discovery . : : : : . . .

Columbus Sees a Light : : : . . ee
The Landing of Columbus ‘(vom a German picture) . ; ‘
The Place where Columbus Landed . : , . s 3 :

Frontis.

41
43
46
49
51
54

5515

57

59
61

64
65
67

71
74
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The Landing of Columbus (From the puinting in the Capitol) : 6 : : 2 : 75
“ They have Come from Heaven,” they Said. a : a : js ° i a A 77
The Tropic Islands. ss 7 2 : . i . : é 7 : : 78
The New Land . : : : : : : : 5 : . : 7 5 : : 79

Captain Alonso Pinzon ‘ z 3 5 2 . S : : 5 : é ss 5 82
Fort La Navidad : 5 3 ‘i : ‘ : . 3 . : 5 : 7 i 84
Columbus Received by Ferdinand and Isabella at Barcelona’ . . : . : : 87
Columbus has Come . : : e 5 . : : . . : : 89
Looking at the Procession . . . 5 : . 7 . : : : 5 go
Columbus Telling his Adventures to Juan Perez at Rabida : : 7 ss . : 5 gt
The Harbor of Cadiz . : : : : A ; : . : 93
“ He saw the Hill-tops of Dominica” . : : é é : : : 5 : : : 94
The Lurking Indian . . 7 : 4 . . r . . i . A : A 95
Caonabo and his Braves. ‘ 2 : . : . . . . - é : é 97

The Tower of the Fort 4 : : 3 . . 5 ‘ * . : i ‘ 98
The Ruins of Isabella : : 2 i : E 5 . 5 . e 2 : i 99°
The Grumblers l
Statue of Leif Ericsson in Boston s
Along the Shore of Cuba . a 4 : : : . : . eagle . . 5 104

Ior

Columbus in the Garb of a Priest . . : Suet ; : 2 . stig tee 2 108
The Queen’s Messengers . : : . . 3 ° . : . . . . : 109
Ferdinand and Isabella A : j . . : : : . . . : 110
In Sight of the mountain Peaks of Trinidad : 5 . ° ° . . 7 : : Ill
The Three Ships of Columbus Leaving “ Paradise” . . . ° : . : : : 113
In the Dragon’s Mouth . i 5 : 5 : S . eines . rs A i IIs
Bartholomew Columbus, Brother of the Admiral x F . és . < : , 117
On the Dock at Cadiz . 8 : ; 2 5 A 5 . i : : ‘ : 5 11g
Paddles and Pots from the Indies : 3 : : : 7 . i . : 120

“ He Listened to the Complaints of all ue Black < Sheep” : : . : . : ° : 121

Feathers and Fruit from the Indies. : : : : . 3 . . 5 : é 123
Columbus in Chains. 7 5 : : . : : . 125
The Man who Wanted “to Set Matters s Steaiaue” a z - . ; . . ° " 5 127
The Alhambra’ . . 2 : : : . . . . . ° . 130
The Court of the Lionsin the Alhambra . ‘ 3 : . . . e . . 131
Tam still the Admiral : ; . : : : ; i : . . . : ° 134
The old Castle and water Batteries at Santo Domingo : é . . . . . : 135
Getting ready the Gold Fleet. : : : : 7 A : 7 2 : 137
Corner of the City Wall and Sentry Box, Santo Doinings : : 5 : < : : A 138
The Wreck of Bobadilla’s Ship. é : : $ . . . : 5 7 , . 139
“ Broken and Shattered” . : ‘ i . ; “ % * ‘ . . A 140

A Fragment of the Alhambra. . . . ‘ 7 . : 3 . . . : 141
Off the Coast of Honduras. : 2 é eee : : : . . . 7 a 142
“The Galley of the Cacique”

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

The People of Honduras see the oe of the Admiral

A Gold Hunt in Veragua
On the Mosquito Coast

- Sir Christopher’s Cove on the Island of Jamaica : : 5 &

On the Island of Jamaica
Diego Mendez going for Help
Storm-tossed in the Indies .
Seville the Beautiful

The Arms of Columbus

The Death of Columbus

The House in Valladolid in which Columbus Died : : . 2

A Cloister in the old Cathedral in Santo Domingo . . : :
Americus Vespucius 7 : : s
Map showing the four Voyages of +: Coltmbus : : ; ° .
Ruins of the Palace of Diego in Santo Domingo . . ° .

Spanish Adventurers Exploring the New Land . i . . .

A Medal of Columbus
Two Historic Bridges.

Independence Hall, Philadelphia A 3 . . . ° .

The White City by the Lake

The Discoverer of our Country

The Founder of our Country

The Savior of our Country

The Harbor of New York City and the Statue of Liberty . . °
Looking down the Lagoon on the World’s Fair Grounds . : .
The Old and the New. : :
A Railway Station in Philadelphia : 5 : . ‘ fs .

A Business Street in Chicago
The Dome of the Capitol





143
146
148
149
150
151
154
155
156
158
159
162
163
164
165
168
169
172
174
175
177

179
180
182

183
185

186
Ene TRUE. Ss bORN, OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CHAPTER: J

= A BOY WITH AN IDEA.
——~
es



EN who do great things are men we all
Se like to read about. This is the story
= of Christopher Columbus, the man
who discovered America. He lived
four hundred years ago. When he was a little boy he lived
in Genoa. It was a beautiful city in the northwestern part
of the country called Italy. The mountains were behind it ;
the sea was in front of it, and it was so beautiful a place
that the people who lived there called it “Genoa the Superb.”

Christopher Columbus was born in this beautiful city of
Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He
was a bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear
eye and golden hair. His father’s name was Domenico
Columbus; his mother’s name was Susanna. His father
was a wool-comber. He cleaned and straightened out the

II
12 A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

snarled-up wool that was cut from the sheep so as to make it
ready to be woven into cloth. |

Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong
enough, but he went to school, too, and learned to read and
write and to draw maps and charts. These charts were maps
of the sea, to show the sailors where they could steer without
running on the rocks and sand, and how to sail safely from
one country to another.

This world was not as big then as it is now —or, I
should say, people did not know it was as big. Most of the
lands that Columbus had studied about in school, and
most of the people he had
heard about, were in Europe
and parts of Asia and Africa.

The city of Genoa where
Columbus lived was a very
busy and a very rich city. It



was on the Mediterranean Sea,

SAILING TO DISTANT LANDS.

and many of the people who
lived there were sailors who went in their ships on voyages
to distant lands. They sailed to other places on the Mediter-
ranean Sea, which is a very large body of water, you know,
and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far
away as the cold northern island of Iceland. This was
thought to be a great journey.
The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a
time as is this in which you live. People were always




















































































































































































































































































































*«THE BIRTHPLACE OF COLUMBUS.

(The house at the right, with the tablet over the door, is the one in which the great Admiral was
born. The arch in the distance is the old Gate of St. Andrew.)

A BOY WITH AN IDEA. Is

quarreling and fighting about one thing or another, and the
sailors who belonged to one country would try to catch and
steal the ships or the things that belonged to the sailors or
the storekeepers of another country. This is what we call
piracy, and a pirate, you know, is thought to be a very
wicked man.

But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so
very wicked to be a sort of half-way pirate, although they
did know that they would be killed if they were caught.
So almost every sailor was about half pirate. Every boy
who lived near the seashore and saw the ships and the
sailors, felt as though he would like to sail away to far-off
lands and see all the strange sights and do all the brave
things that the sailors told about. Many of them even said
they would like to be pirates and fight with other sailors,
and show how strong and brave and plucky they could be.

Columbus was one of these. He was what is called
an adventurous boy. He did not like to stay quietly at
home with his father and comb out the tangled wool. He
thought it would be much nicer to sail away to sea and be a
brave captain or a rich merchant.

When he was about fourteen years old he really did go
to sea. There was a captain of a sailing vessel that some-
times came to Genoa who had the same last name — Colum-
bus. He was norelation, but the little Christopher somehow
got acquainted with him among the wharves of Genoa.
Perhaps he had run on errands for him, or helped him with
16 A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

some of the sea-charts he knew so well how to draw. At
any rate he sailed away with this Captain Columbus as his
cabin boy, and went to the wars with him and had quite an
exciting life for a boy.

Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their
own adventures or about far-off lands and countries. Colum-

























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































GENOA, THE BIRTHPLACE OF COLUMBUS.
(‘1t was so beautiful a place that the people who lived there called it ‘ Genoa the Superb.” )

bus listened to many of these sea-stories, and heard many
wonderful things about a very rich land away to the East
that folks called Cathay.

If you look in your geographies you will not find any
such place on the map as Cathay, but you will find China,
and that was what men in the time of Columbus called
A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 17

Cathay. They told very big stories about this far-off Eastern
land. They said its kings lived in golden houses, that they
were covered with pearls and diamonds, and that everybody
there was so rich that money was as plentiful as the stones
in the street.

This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who
were part pirate, very anxious to go to Cathay and get
some of the gold and jewels and spices and splendor for
themselves. But Cathay was miles and miles away from
Italy and Spain and France and England. It was away
across the deserts and mountains
and seas and rivers, and they had to
give it up because they could not
sail there.

At last a man whose name was



Marco Polo, and who was a very
brave and famous traveler, really did
go there, in spite of all the trouble it

“ GOLDEN CATHAY.”

took. And when he got back his stories were so very sur-
prising that men were all the more anxious to find a way to
sail in their ships to Cathay and see it for themselves.

But of course they could not sail over the deserts and
mountains, and they were very much troubled because they
had to give up the idea, until the son of the king of Port-
ugal, named Prince Henry, said he believed that ships could
sail around Africa and so get to India or “the Indies” as
they called that land, and finally to Cathay.
18 A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

Just look at your map again and see what a long, long
voyage it would be to sail from Spain and around Africa
to India, China and Japan. It is such a long sail that,

as you know, the Suez Canal was dug some twenty years

ago so that ships could sail through the Mediterranean Sea
and out into the Indian Ocean, and not have to go away
around Africa. |

But when Columbus was a boy it was even worse than
now, for no one really knew how long Africa was, or whether
ships really could sail around it. But Prince Henry said

he knew they could, and he sent out ships to try. He

died before his Portuguese sailors,
Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and
Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did
sail around it and got as far as
“the Indies.”

So while Prince Henry was try-
ing to see whether ships could sail
SS around Africa and reach Cathay in
ngs orn ae that way, the boy Columbus was
listening to the stories the sailors



told and was wondering whether some other and easier
way to Cathay might not be found.

When he was at school he had studied about a certain
man named Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands
of years before he was born, and who had said that the earth
was round “like a ball or an orange.” As Columbus grew






- tl

ee | (shee |
\. |

Gur Barns |

FIRST INSPIRATIONS OF COLUMBUS.



(From the statue by Giulio Monteverde, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston )
A BOY. WITH AN IDEA. 20

older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books
and listened to what other people said, he began to believe
that this man named Pythagoras might be right, and that
the earth was round, though everybody declared it was
flat. “If it is round,” he said to himself, “what is the use of
trying to sail around Africa to get to Cathay? Why not
just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going right
around the world until you strike
Cathay? I believe it could be
done,” said Columbus.

By this time Columbus was a
man. He was thirty years old and
was a great sailor. He had been
captain of a number of vessels;
he had sailed north and south and
east; he knew all about a ship and
all about the sea. But, though he
was so good a sailor, when he said
that he believed the earth was
round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy.
“Why, how can the earth be round?” they cried. “ The water
would all spill out if it were, and the men who live on the
other side would all be standing on their heads with their feet
waving in the air.” And then they laughed all the harder.

But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh
at. He believed it so strongly, and felt so sure that he was
right, that he set to work to find some king or prince or great



COLUMBUS AT THIRTY.


22 4A BOY WITH AN IDEA.

lord to let him have ships and sailors and money enough to
try to find a way to Cathay by sailing out into the West
and across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which
break upon our rocks and beaches, was thought in Colum-
bus’s day to be a dreadful place. People called it the Sea of
Darkness, because they did not know what was on the other
side of it, or what dangers lay beyond that distant blue rim
where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we call
the horizon. They thought the ocean stretched to the end
of a flat world, straight away to a sort of “jumping-off
place,” and that in
this horrible Jump-
ing-off place were
giants and goblins




and dragons and Qe
monsters and all sorts of terrible Oe
things that would catch the »
ships and destroy them and the sailors.

So when Columbus said that Wee ieee! Eee
wanted to sail away toward this dreadful Tee
jumping-off place, the people said that he was worse than crazy.
They said he was a wicked man and ought to be punished.

But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on
trying. He went from place to place trying to get the ships
and sailors he wanted and was bound to have. As you will
see in the next chapter, he tried to get help wherever he
WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 23

thought it could be had. He asked the people of his own
home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and played
when a boy; he asked the people of the beautiful city that
is built in the sea— Venice; he tried the king of Portugal,
the king of England, the king of France, the king and queen
of Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listen to
such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan — to go to Cathay
by the way of the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off
place. You would never get there alive, they said.

And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white
while he waited, though he was not yet an old man. He
had thought and worked and hoped so much that he began
to look like an old man when he was forty years old. But
still he would never say that perhaps he was wrong, after all.
He said he knew he was right, and that some day he should
find the Indies and sail to Cathay.

Once Gee

CHAPTER II.
WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

DO not wish you to think that Columbus was the first
man to say that the earth was round, or the first to sail
to the West over ‘the Atlantic Ocean. He was not. Other
men had said that they believed the earth was round; other
24 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor
who believed the earth was round had ever yet tried to prove
that it was by crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus
was really the first man to say, I believe the earth is round
and I will show you that it is by sailing to the lands that
are on the other side of the earth.

He even figured out how far it was around the world.
Your geography, you know, tells you now
that what is called the circumference of the
earth — that is, a straight line drawn right
around it—is nearly twenty-five thousand
miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty
carefully and he thought it was about twenty
; thousand miles. If-I could start from
‘Genoa, he said, and walk straight ahead until I got back
to Genoa again, I should walk about twenty thousand miles.
Cathay, he thought, would take up so much land on the
other side of the world that, if he went west instead of east,
he would only need to sail about twenty-five hundred or
three thousand miles.





















‘THE ROUND EARTH.

If you have studied your geography carefully you will
see what a mistake he made.

It is really about twelve thousand miles from Spain to
China (or Cathay as he called it). But America is just about
three thousand miles from Spain, and if you read all this
story you will see how Columbus’s mistake really helped him
to discover America.




A DREAM OF CATHAY.
(Zvery boy of spirit in those days of adventure felt certain that he could find and conquer that
: land of fable.)

WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 27

I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do some-
thing great from the time when, as a little boy, he had hung
around the wharves in Genoa and looked at the ships sailing
east and west and talked with the sailors and wished that he
could go to sea. Perhaps what he had learned at school —
how some men said that the earth was round — and what he
had heard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set
him to thinking and to dreaming that it might be possible
for a ship to sail around the world without falling off. At
any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming and longing until,
at last, he began doing.

Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portu-
gal, of whom I have told you, in their trying to sail around
Africa discovered two groups of islands out in the Atlantic that
they called the Azores, or Isles of Hawks, and the Canaries,
or Isles of Dogs. When Columbus was in Portugal in
1470 he became acquainted with a young woman whose
name was Philippa Perestrelo. In 1473 he married her.

Now Philippa’s father, before his death, had been governor
of Porto Santo, one of the Azores, and Columbus and his
wife went off there to live. In the governor’s. house Colum-
bus found a lot of charts and maps that told him about
parts of the ocean that he had never before seen, and made
him feel certain that he was right in saying that if he sailed
away to the West he should find Cathay.

At that time there was an old man who lived in Flor-
ence, a city of Italy. His name was Toscanelli. He was a
28 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

great scholar and studied the stars and made maps, and was
a very wise man. Columbus knew what a wise old scholar
Toscanelli was, for Florence is not very far from Genoa. So
while he was living in the Azores he wrote to this old
scholar asking him what he thought about his idea that a
man could sail around the world until he reached the land
called the Indies and at last found Cathay.

Toscanelli wrote to Columbus saying that he
=<, believed his idea was the right one, and he
| said it would be a grand thing to do, if Co-
lumbus dared to try it. Perhaps, he said,
Re } you can find all those splendid things that I

awiseoxn know are in Cathay — the great cities with

vc oe marble bridges, the houses of marble covered
with gold, the jewels and the spices and the precious stones,
and all the other wonderful and magnificent things. I do
not wonder you wish to try, he said, for if you find Cathay
it will be a wonderful thing for you and for Portugal.

That settled it with Columbus. If this wise old scholar
said he was right, he must be right. So he left his home
in the Azores and went to Portugal. This was in 1475, and
from that time on, for seventeen long years he was trying to
get some king or prince to help him sail to the West to
find Cathay.

But not one of the people who could have helped him, if
they had really wished to, believed in Columbus. As I told
you, they said that he was crazy. The king of Portugal,


WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. “29

whose name was John, did a very unkind thing —I am sure
you would call it a mean trick. Columbus had gone to him
with his story and asked for ships and sailors. The king
and his chief men refused to help him; but King John said
to himself, perhaps there is something in this worth looking
after and, if so, perhaps I can have my own people find
Cathay and save the money that Columbus will want to keep
for himself as his share of what he finds. So one day he
copied off the sailing directions that Columbus had left with
him, and gave them to one of his own captains without letting
Columbus know anything about it. The Portuguese cap-
tain sailed away to the West in the direction Columbus had
marked down, but a great storm came up and so frightened
the sailors that they turned around in a hurry. Then they
hunted up Columbus and began to abuse him for getting
them into such a scrape. You might as well expect to find
land in the sky, they said, as in those terrible waters.

And when, in this way, Columbus found out that King
John had tried to use his ideas without letting him know
anything about it, he was very angry. His wife had died in
the midst of this mean trick of the Portuguese king, and so,
taking with him his little five-year-old son, Diego, he left
Portugal secretly and went over into Spain.

Near the little town of Palos, in western Spain, is agreen
hill looking out toward the Atlantic. Upon this hill stands
an old building that, four hundred years ago, was used as a
a convent or home for priests. It was called the Convent of
30 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

Rabida, and the priest at the head of it was named the Friar
Juan Perez. One autumn day, in the year 1484, Friar Juan
Perez saw a dusty traveler with a little boy talking with the
gate-keeper of the convent. The stranger was so tall and
fine-looking, and seemed such an interesting man, that Friar
Juan went out and began to talk with him. This man was
Columbus.

As they talked, the priest grew more and more interested
in what Columbus said. He invited him into the convent to -
stay for a few days, and he asked some other people — the
doctor of Palos and some of the sea captains and sailors of
the town—to come and talk with this stranger who had
such a singular idea about sailing across the Atlantic.

It ended in Columbus’s staying some months in Palos,
waiting for a chance to go and see the king and queen.
At last,in 1485, he set out for the Spanish court with a letter
to a priest who was a friend of Friar Juan’s, and who could
help him to see the king and queen.

At that time the king and queen of Spain were fighting
to drive out of Spain the people called the Moors. These
people came from Africa, but they had lived in Spain for
many years and had once been a very rich and powerful
nation. They were not Spaniards; they were not Christians.
So all Spaniards and all Christians hated them and tried to
drive them out of Europe.

The king and queen of Spain who were fighting the
Moors were named Ferdinand and Isabella. They were


THE ROOM IN THE CONVENT OF RABIDA IN WHICH THEY TALKED I'l! OVER,
(As it looks today.)
a rear!


WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 33

pretty good people as kings and queens went in those days,
but they did a great many very cruel and very mean things,
just as the kings and queens of those days were apt to do.
I am afraid we should not think they were very nice people
nowadays. Wecertainly should not wish our American boys
and girls to look up to them as good and true and noble.

.When Columbus first came to them, they were with the
army in the camp near the city of Cordova. The king and
queen had no time to listen to what they thought were crazy
plans, and poor Columbus could get no one to talk with him
who could be of any help. So he was obliged to go back to
drawing maps and selling books to make enough money to
support himself and his little Diego.

But at last, through the friend of good Friar Juan Perez
of Rabida, who was a priest at the court,and named Talavera,
and to whom he had a letter of introduction, Columbus found
a chance to talk over his plans with a number of priests and
scholars in the city of Salamanca where there was a famous
college and many learned men.

Columbus told his story. He said what he ened to do,
and asked these learned men to say a good word for him to
Ferdinand and Isabella so that he could have the ships and
sailors to sail to Cathay. But it was of no use.

What! sail away around the world? those wise men cried
in horror. Why, you are crazy. The world is not round; it
is flat. Your ships would tumble off the edge of the world
and all the king’s money and all the king’s men would be
34 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

lost. No, no; go away; you must not trouble the queen or
even mention such a ridiculous thing again.

So the most of them said. But one
or two thought it might be worth try-
ing. Cathay was a very rich country,
and if this foolish fellow were willing to
run the risk and did succeed, it would
be a good thing for Spain, as the king
and queen would need a great deal of
money after the war with the Moors



was over. At any rate,it was a chance worth
thinking about.

And so, although Columbus was dread-
fully disappointed, he thought that if he had
only a few friends at Court who were ready

THE ‘TREASURES OF ;
CATHAY. to say a good word for him he must not

give up, but must try, try again. And so he staid in Spain.

CHAE hE:
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.
\ HEN you wish very much to do a certain thing it is

dreadfully hard to be patient; it is harder still to
have to wait. Columbus had to do both. The wars against
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 35

the Moors were of much greater interest to the king and
queen of Spain than was the finding of a new and very un-
certain way to get to Cathay. If it had not been ‘for the
patience and what we call the persistence of Columbus,
America would never have been discovered —at least not
in his time.

He staid in Spain. He grew poorer and poorer. He





THE CONVENT OF RABIDA WHERE COLUMBUS FOUND FRIENDS.

was almost friendless. It seemed as if his great enterprise
must be given up. But he never lost hope. He never
stopped trying. Even when he failed he kept on hoping
and kept on trying. He felt certain that sometime he should
succeed.

As we have seen,he tried to interest the rulers of different
countries, but with no success. He tried to get help from
36 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

his old home-town of Genoa and failed; he tried Portugal
and failed; he tried the Republic of Venice and failed; he
tried the king and queen of Spain and failed; he tried some
of the richest and most powerful of the nobles of Spain and
failed; he tried the king of England (whom he got his
brother, Bartholomew Columbus, to go and see) and failed.
There was still left the king of France. He would make
one last attempt to win the king and queen of Spain to his
side and if he failed with them he would try the last of the
rulers of Western Europe, the king of France.

He followed the king and queen of Spain as they went
from place to place fighting the Moors. He hoped that
some day, when they wished to think of something besides
fighting, they might think of him and the gold and jewels
and spices of Cathay.

The days grew into months, the months to years, and
still the war against the Moors kept on; and still Columbus
waited for the chance that did not come. People grew to
know him as “the crazy explorer” as they met him in
the streets or on the church steps of Seville or Cordova, and
even ragged little boys of the town, sharp-eyed and shrill-
voiced as all such ragged little urchins are, would run after
this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered
cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown little fore-
heads with their dirty fingers to show that even they knew
that he was “as crazy as a loon.” |

At last he decided to make one more attempt before giving
















































































































































































LOOKING TOWARD CATHAY.

HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 39

it up in Spain. His money was gone; his friends were few;
but he remembered his acquaintances at Palos and so he
journeyed back to see once more his good friend Friar Juan
Perez at the Convent of Rabida on the hill that looked out
upon the Atlantic he was so anxious to cross.

It was in the month of November, 1491, that he went
back to the Convent of Rabida. If he could not get any
encouragement there, he was determined to stay in Spain no
longer but to go away and try the king of France.

Once more he talked over the finding of Cathay with the
priests and the sailors of Palos. They saw how patient he
was; how persistent he was; how he would never give up
his ideas until he had tried them. They were moved by his
determination. They began to believe in him more and
more. They resolved to help him. One of the principal sea
captains of Palos was named Martin Alonso Pinzon. He
became so interested that he offered to lend Columbus
money enough to make one last appeal to the king and
queen of Spain, and if Columbus should succeed with them,
this Captain Pinzon said that he would go into partnership
with Columbus and help him out when it came to getting
ready to sail to Cathay.

This was a move in the right direction. At once a mes-
senger was sent to'the splendid Spanish camp before the
city of Granada, the last unconquered city of the Moors of
Spain. The king and queen of Spain had been so long try-
ing to capture Granada that this camp was really a city,
49 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

with gates and walls and houses. It was called Santa Fé.
Queen Isabella, who was in Santa Fé, after some delay,
agreed to hear more about the crazy scheme of this persistent

Genoese sailor, and the Friar
Juan Perez was sent for.
He talked so well in be-
half of his friend Columbus
that the queen became still
more interested. She ordered
Columbus to come and see



her, and sent him sixty-five

THE CITY GATE OF SANTA FE.

dollars to pay for a mule, a
new suit of clothes and the journey to court.

About Christmas time, in the year 1491, Columbus,
mounted upon his mule, rode into the Spanish camp before
the city of Granada. But even now, when he had been told
to come, he had to wait. Granada was almost captured; the
Moors were almost conquered At last the end came. On
the second of January, 1492, -_--:
the Moorish king gave up the )
keys of his beloved city, and
the great Spanish banner was
hoisted on the highest tower
of the Alhambra — the hand-
somest building in Granada
and one of the most beautiful in the world. The Moors
were driven out of Spain and Columbus’s chance had come.



THE ALHAMBRA AT GRANADA.
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 41

So he appeared before Queen Isabella and her chief men
and told them again of all his plans and desires. The
queen and her advisers sat in a great room in that splendid
Alhambra I have told you of. King Ferdinand was not
there. He did not believe in Columbus and did not wish to
let him have either money, ships or sailors to lose in such a



COLUMBUS AT GRANADA EXPLAINING HIS IDEAS TO QUEEN ISABELLA.

foolish way. But as Columbus stood before her and talked
so earnestly about how he expected to find the Indies and
Cathay and what he hoped to bring away from there, Queen
Isabella listened and thought the plan worth trying.

Then a singular thing happened. You would think if
you wished for something very much that you would be
42 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

willing to give up a good deal for the sake of getting it.
Columbus had worked and waited for seventeen years. He
had never got what he wanted. He was always being disap-
pointed. And yet, as he talked to the queen and told her
what he wished to do, he said he must have so much as a
reward for doing it that the queen and her chief men were
simply amazed at his —well, what the boys to-day call
“ cheek” — that they would have nothing to do with him.
This man really is crazy, they said. This poor Genoese
sailor comes here without a thing except his very odd ideas
and almost “wants the earth” as a reward. This is not
exactly what they said, but it is what they meant.

His few friends begged him to be more modest. Do not
ask so much, they said, or you will get nothing. But Colum-
bus was determined. I have worked and waited all these
years, he replied. I know just what I can do and just how
much I'can do for the king and queen of Spain. They must
pay me what I ask and promise what I say, or I will go some-
where else. Go,then! said the queen and her advisers. And
Columbus turned his back on what seemed almost his last
hope, mounted his mule and rode away.

Then something else happened. As Columbus rode off
to find the French king, sick and tired of all his long and
" useless labor at the Spanish court, his few firm friends there
saw that, unless they did something right away, all the glory
and all the gain of this enterprise Columbus had taught them
to believe in would be lost to Spain. So two of them, whose


—_ = +

SS

CAPE DE VERDE
- 2 z A 1
Bs j

ln



AFRICA.



CANARIES 2

a
Be




THE WORLD AS COLUMBUS KNEW IT WHEN HE WENT TO SCHOOL,




HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 45

names were Santangel and Quintanilla, rushed into the
queen’s room and begged her, if she wished to become the
greatest queen in Christendom, to call back this wandering
sailor, agree to his terms and profit by his labors.

What if he does ask a great deal? they said. He has
spent his life thinking his plan out; no wonder he feels
that he ought to have a good share of what he finds. What
he asks is really small compared with what Spain will gain.
The war with the Moors has cost you ever so much; your
money-chests are empty; Columbus will fill them up. The
people of Cathay are heathen; Columbus will help you
make them Christian men. The Indies and Cathay are
full of gold and jewels; Columbus will bring you home
shiploads of treasures. Spain has conquered the Moors;
Columbus will help you conquer Cathay.

In fact, they talked to Queen Isabella so strongly and so
earnestly, that she, too, became excited over this chance for
glory and riches that she had almost lost. Quick! send for
Columbus. Call him back! she said. I agree to his terms.
If King Ferdinand cannot or will not take the risk, I, the
queen, will do it all. Quick! do not let the man get into
France. After him. Bring him back!

And without delay a royal messenger, mounted on a swift.
horse, was sent at full gallop to bring Columbus back.

All this time poor Columbus felt bad enough. Every-
thing had gone wrong. Now he must go away into a new
land and do it all over again. Kings and queens, he felt,
46. HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

were not to be depended upon, and he remembered a place
in the Bible where it said: “ Put not your trust in princes.”
Sad, solitary and heavy-hearted, he jogged slowly along
toward the mountains, wondering what the king of France
would say to him, and whether it was really worth trying.
Just as he was riding across the little bridge called the
Bridge of Pinos, some six miles from Granada, he heard the
quick hoof-beats of a horse behind him. It wasa great spot

.



THE BRIDGE OF PINOS WHERE THE QUEEN’S MESSENGER FOUND COLUMBUS.

for robbers, and Columbus felt of the little money he had in
his traveling pouch, and wondered whether he must lose it
all. The hoof-beats came nearer. Then a voice hailed him.
Turn back, turn back! the messenger cried out. The queen
bids you return to Granada. She grants you all you ask.
Columbus hesitated. Ought he to trust this promise, he
HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 47

‘wondered. Put not your trust in princes, the verse in the
Bible had said. If I go back I may only be put off and
worried as I have been before. And yet, perhaps she means
what she says. At any rate, I will go back and try once
more.

So, on the little Bridge of Pinos, he turned his mule
around and rode back to Granada... And, sure enough, when
he saw Queen Isabella she agreed:to all that heasked. If he
found Cathay, Columbus was to be made admiral for life of
all the new seas and oceans into which he might sail; he
was to be chief ruler of all the lands he might find; he was
to keep one tenth part of all the gold and jewels and treasures
he should bring away, and was to have his “say” in all
questions about the new lands. For his part (and this was
because of the offer of his friend at Palos, Captain Pinzon)
he agreed to pay one eighth of all the expenses of this expe-
‘dition and of all new enterprises, and was to have one eighth
of all the profits from them.

So Columbus had his wish at last. The queen’s men
figured up how much money they could let him have; they
called him “ Don Christopher Columbus,” “ Your Excellency”
and “ Admiral,” and at once he set about getting ready for
this voyage.


48 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

[ee agreement made. between Columbus and the king

and queen of Spain was signed on the seventeenth of
April, 1492. But it was four months before he was quite
ready to sail away. |

He selected the town of Palos as the place to sail from,
because there, as you know, Captain Pinzon lived; there,
too, he had other acquaintances, so that he supposed it would
be easy to get the sailors he needed for his ships. But in
this he was greatly mistaken.

As soon as the papers had been signed that held the
queen to her promise, Columbus set off for Palos. He
stopped at the Convent of Rabida to tell the Friar Juan Perez
how thankful he was to him for the help the good priest
had given him, and how everything now looked promising
and successful.

The town of Palos, as you can see from your map of
Spain, is situated at the mouth of the river Tinto on a little
bay in the southwestern part of Spain, not far from the
borders of Portugal. To-day the sea has gone away from it
so much that it is nearly high and dry; but four hundred
_HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 49

years ago it was quite a seaport, when Spain did not have
a great many sea towns on the Atlantic coast.

At the time of Columbus’s voyage the king and queen of
Spain were angry with the port of Palos for something its
people had done that was wrong — just what this was we do
not know. But to punish the town, and because Columbus
wished to sail from there, the king and queen ordered that
Palos should pay them’a fine for their wrong-doing. And
this fine was to lend the king and queen of Spain, for one
year, without pay, two sailing vessels of the kind called cara-
vels, armed and equipped “for the service of the crown” —
that is, for the use of the king and queen of Spain, in the
western voyage that Columbus was to make.

When Columbus called together the leading people of
Palos to meet him in the church
of St. George and hear the royal
commands, they came; but at first
they did not understand just
what they must do. But when
they knew that they must send



two of their ships and some of

THE CHURCH OF ST. GEORGE AT PALOS.

their sailing men on this dreadful

voyage far out upon the terrible Sea of Darkness, they were
terribly distressed. Nobody was willing to go. They would
obey the commands of the king and queen and furnish the
two ships, but as for sailing off with this crazy sea captain
— that they would not do.
50 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

Then the king’s officers went to work. They seized some
sailors (impressed is the word for this), and made them go;
they took some from the jails, and gave them their freedom
as a reward for going; they begged and threatened and paid
in advance, and still it was hard to get enough men for the
two ships. Then Captain Pinzon, who had promised Colum-
bus that he would join him, tried his hand. He added a
third ship to the Admiral’s “ fleet.” He made big promises
to the sailors, and worked for weeks, until at last he was able
to do what even the royal commands could not do, and a
_ crew of ninety men was got together to man the three vessels.

The names of these three vessels were the Capitana
(changed before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and
the Vina or Baby. Captain dela Cosa commanded the Santa
Maria, Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon the Pinta and his
brother, Captain Vincent Pinzon, the Mina. The Santa
Maria was the largest of the three vessels; it was therefore
selected as the leader of the fleet —the flag-ship, as it is
called — and upon it sailed the commander of the expedition,
the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus.

When we think of a voyage across the Atlantic nowa-
days, we think of vessels as large as the big three-masted
ships or the great ocean steamers — vessels over six hundred
feet long and fifty feet wide. But these « ships” of Colum-
bus were not really ships. They were hardly larger than
the “ fishing smacks ” that sail up and down our coast to-day.
Some of them were not so large. The Santa Maria was, aS.






































































THE SANTA MARIA, THE FLAG-SHIP OF COLUMBUS.

(The ship in the picture is an exact copy in every way of the original Santa Maria, and was built
in Spain in 1892 to come to America to take part in the Columbian anniversaries.)

HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 53

I have told you, the largest of the three, and she was only
sixty-three feet long, twenty feet wide and ten and a half
feet deep. Just measure this out on the ground and see
how small, after all, the Admiral’s “flag-ship” really was.
The Pinta was even smaller than this, while the little Vzxa
was hardly anything more than a good-sized sail boat. Do
you wonder that the poor people of Palos and the towns
round about were frightened when they thought of their
fathers and brothers and sons putting out to sea, on the
great ocean they had learned to dread so much, in such shaky
little boats as these? »

But finally the vessels were ready. The crews were se-
lected. The time had come to go. Mostof the sailors were
Spanish men from the towns near to the sea, but somehow
a few who were not Spaniards joined the crew.

One of the first men to land in America from one of the
ships of Columbus was an Irishman named William, from
the County Galway. And another was an Englishman
named either Arthur Laws or Arthur Larkins. The Spanish
names for both these men look very queer, and only a wise
scholar who digs among names and words could have found
out what they really were. But such a one did find it out,
and it increases our interest in the discovery of America to
know that some of our own northern blood — the Irishman
and the Englishman — were in the crews of Columbus.

The Admiral Columbus was so sure he was going to
find a rich and civilized country, such as India and Cathay
$4 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

were said to be, that he took along on his ships the men he
would need in such places as he expected to visit and among
such splendid people as he was sure he should meet. He
took along a lawyer to make out all the forms and proclama-
tions and papers that would have to be sent by the Admiral
to the kings and princes he expected to visit; he had a secre-
tary and historian to write out the story of what he should
find and what he should do. There was a learned Jew,
named Louis, who could speak almost a dozen languages,
and who could, of course, tell him what
the people of Cathay and Cipango and the
Indies were talking about. There was a
jeweler and silversmith who knew all
about the gold and silver and precious
stones that Columbus was going to load
the ships with; there was a doctor and a
surgeon ; there were cooks and pilots, and
even a little fellow, who sailed in the
Santa Maria as the Admiral’s cabin boy,
-and whose name was Pedro de Acevedo.



Some scholars have said that it cost —
about two hundred and thirty thousand so eeenmrasite anon
dollars to fit out this expedition. I do aes

not think it cost nearlyso much. We do know that Queen
Isabella gave sixty-seven thousand dollars to help pay
for it. Some people, however, reckoning the old Spanish

money ina different way, say that what Queen Isabella gave
HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 55

toward the expedition was not over three or four thousand
dollars of our money. Perhaps as much more was _ bor-
rowed from King Ferdinand, although he was to have no
share in the enterprise in which Queen Isabella and Colum-
bus were partners.

It was just an hour before sunrise on Friday, the third





: THE DEPARTURE FROM PALOS.
(Zhe Friar Juan Peres bidding Columbus good-by. The building on the hill is the Convent of Rabida.)

of August, 1492, that the three little ships hoisted their
anchors and sailed away from the port of Palos. I suppose
it was a very sorry and a very exciting morning in Palos.
The people probably crowded down on the docks, some of
56 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY.

them sad and sorrowful, some of them restless and curious.
Their fathers and brothers and sons and acquaintances were
geing—no one knew where, dragged off to sea by a crazy
old Italian sailor who thought there was land to be found
somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place. They all knew
he was wrong. ‘They were certain that nothing but dreadful
goblins and horrible monsters lived off there to the West,
just waiting to devour or destroy the poor sailors when
these three little ships should tumble over the edge.

But how different Columbus must have felt as he stepped
into the rowboat that took him off to his “ flag-ship,” the ~
Santa Maria. His dreams had come true. He had ships
and sailors under his command, and was about to sail away
_ to discover great and wonderful things. . He who had been
so poor that he could hardly buy his own dinner, was now
called Don and Admiral. He had a queen for his friend
and helper. He was given a power that only the richest and
noblest could hope for. But more than all, he was to have
the chance he had wished and worked for so long. He was
to find the Indies; he was to see Cathay; he was to have
his share in all the wealth he should discover and bring
away. The son of the poor wool-weaver of Genoa was to
be the friend of kings and princes; the cabin boy of a pirate
was now Admiral of the Seas and Governor of the Colonies
of Spain! Do you wonder that he felt proud ?

So, as I have told you, just before sunrise on a Friday
morning in August, he boarded the Santa Maria and gave
HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWA ¥.

crt
NI

orders to his captains “to get under way.” The sailors with

a “yo heave ho!” (or whatever the Spanish for that is)

tugged at the anchors,
breeze, and while the
people of Palos watched
them from the _ shore,
while the good friar,
Juan Perez, raised his
hands to Heaven calling
down a blessing on the
enterprise, while the chil-
dren waved a last good-
by from the water-stairs,
the three vessels steered
out from Palos Harbor,
and before that day’s sun
had set, Columbus and
his fleet were full fifty
miles on their way across

the sails filled with the morning .



GOOD-BY, COLUMBUS!

the Sea of Darkness. The westward voyage to those won-

derful lands, the Indies and Cathay, had at last begun.






58 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

CHAE DER wv.
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

Ee you ever set out, in the dark, to walk with your little
brother or sister along a road you did not know much
about or had never gone over before? It was not an easy
thing to do, was it? And how did your little brother or
sister feel when it was known that you were not just certain
whether you were right or not? Do you remember what the
Bible says about the blind leading the blind ?

It was much the same with Columbus when he set out
from Palos to sail over an unknown sea to find the uncertain
land of Cathay. He had his own idea of the way there, but
no one in all his company had ever sailed it, and he himself
was not sure about it. He was very much in the dark.
And the sailors in the three ships were worse than little
children. They did not even have the confidence in their
leader that your little brother or sister would probably have
in you as you traveled that new road ona dark night. It
was almost another case of the blind leading the blind,
was it not?

Columbus first steered his ships to the south so as to
reach the Canary Islands and commence his real westward
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 59

voyage from there. The Canary Islands, as you will see by
looking in your geography, are made up of seven islands and
lie off the northern corner of Africa, some sixty miles or
so west of Morocco. They were named Canaria by the Ro-
mans from the Latin canis, a dog, “ because of the multitude
of dogs of great size” that were found there. The canary
birds that sing so sweetly in your home come from these
islands. They had been known to the Spaniards and other
European sailors of Columbus's day about a hundred years.

At the Canaries the troubles of Columbus commenced.
And he did have a lot of trouble before his voyage was
over. While near the island called the Grand Canary the
rudder of the Pinta, in which Captain Alonso Pinzon sailed,
somehow got loose, then broke and finally came off. It was
said that two of the Pznta’s crew, who were really the
owners of the vessel, broke the rudder on purpose, because
they had become frightened at the thoughts
of the perilous voyage, and hoped by dam-
aging their vessel to be left behind.

But Columbus had no thought of doing —
any such thing. He sailed to the island



THE TWO OWNERS.

of Gomera, where he knew some people,

and had the Pinta mended. And while lying here with his
fleet the great mountain on the island of Teneriffe, twelve
thousand feet high, suddenly began to spit out flame and
smoke. It was, as of course you know, a volcano; but the
poor frightened sailors did not know what set this mountain
60 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

on fire, and they were scared almost out of their wits’ and
begged the Admiral to go back home. But Columbus would
not. And as they sailed away from Gomera some sailors
told them that the king of Portugal was angry with Colum-
bus because he had got his ships from the king and queen
of Spain, and that he had sent out some of his war-ships to
worry or capture Columbus.

But these, too, Columbus escaped, although not before
his crews had grown terribly nervous for fear of capture.
At last they got away from the Canaries, and on Sunday, the
ninth of September, 1492, with a fresh breeze filling their
sails, the three caravels sailed away into the West. And as
the shores of Ferro, the very last of the Canary Islands,
faded out of sight, the sailors burst into sighs and murmur-
ings and tears, saying that now indeed they were sailing off
— off —off— upon the awful Sea of Darkness and would
never see land any more.

When Columbus thought that he was sailing too slowly
—he had now been away from Palos a month and was only
about a hundred miles out at sea— and when he saw what
babies his sailors were, he did something that was not just
right (for it is never right to do anything that is not true)
but which he felt he really must do. He made two records
(or reckonings as they are called) of his sailing. One of
these records was a true one; this he kept for himself. The
other was a false one; this he kept to show his sailors. So
while they thought they were sailing slowly and that the
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 61

ocean was not so very wide, Columbus knew from his own
‘true record that they were getting miles and miles away
from home.

Soon another thing happened to worry the sailors. The
pilots were steering by the compass. You know what that is
—a sort of big magnet-needle perfectly balanced and pointing
always to the north. At the time of
Columbus the compass was a new
thing and was only understood by a
few. On the thirteenth of September
they had really got into the middle
of the ocean, and the line of the north
changed. Of course this made the
needle in the compass change its posi-
tion also. Now the sailors had been
taught to believe so fully in the
compass that they thought it could
never change its position. And here Ge cay oe
it was playing acruel trick upon them. Weare trapped! they
cried. The goblins in this dreadful sea are making our com-
pass point wrong so as to drag us to destruction. Go back;



take us back! they demanded.

But Columbus, though he knew that his explanation was
wrong, said the compass was all right. The North Star,
toward which the needle always pointed, had, so he said,
changed its position. This quieted the sailors for a while.

When they had been about forty days out from Palos,
62 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

the ship ran into what is marked upon your maps as the
Sargasso Sea. This is a vast meadow of floating seaweed
and seagrass in the middle of the Atlantic; it is kept drift-
ing about in the same place by the two great sea currents
that flow past it but not through it.

The sailors did not know this, of course, and when the
ships began to sail slower and slower because the seaweed
was so thick and heavy and because there was no current to
carry them along, they were sure that they were somewhere
near to the Jumping-off place, and that the horrible monsters
they had heard of were making ready to stop their ships, and
when they had got them all snarled up in this weed to drag
them all down to the bottom of the sea.

For nearly a week the ships sailed over these vast sea-
meadows, and when they were.out of them they struck what
we call the trade-winds —a never-failing breeze that blew them
ever westward. Then the sailors cried out that they were in
an enchanted land where there was but one wind and never a
breeze to blow the poor sailors home again. Were they not
fearfully “scarey?” But no doubt we should have been so,
too, if we had been with them and knew no more than they did.

And when they had been over fifty days from home
on the twenty-fifth of September, some one suddenly cried
Land! Land! And all hands crowded to the side. Sure
enough, they all saw it, straight ahead of them — fair green
islands and lofty hills and a city with castles and temples
and palaces that glittered beautifully in the sun.
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS, 63

Then they all cried for joy and sang hymns of praise and
shouted to each other that their troubles were over. Cathay,
it is Cathay! they cried; and they steered straight for the

shining city. But, worst of all their troubles, even as they
sailed toward the land they thought to be Cathay, behold!
it all disappeared — island and castle and palace and temple
and city, and nothing but the tossing sea lay all about them.









































































































































A CITY IN THE SEA.

For this that they had seen was
what is called a mirage—a
aa ay trick of the clouds and the sun
and the sea that makes people imagine they see what they
would like to, but really do not. But after this Columbus
had a harder time than ever with his men, for they were sure
he was leading them all astray.
64 HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS.

And so with frights and imaginings and mysteries like
these, with strange birds flying about the ships and floating
things in the water that told of land somewhere about them,
with hopes again and again disappointed, and with the
sailors growing more and more restless and discontented,
and muttering threats against this Italian adventurer who
was leading the ships and sailors of the Spanish king to sure
destruction, Columbus ‘still
sailed on, as full of patience
and of faith, as certain of
success as he had ever been.

On the seventh of Octo-
ber, 1492, the true record
that Columbus was keeping
showed that he had sailed
twenty-seven hundred miles
from the Canaries; the false
record that the sailors saw
said they had sailed twenty-
two hundred miles. Had
Columbus kept straight on,
he would have landed very soon upon the coast of Florida
or South Carolina, and would really have discovered the
mainland of America. But Captain Alonso Pinzon saw
what looked like a flock of parrots flying south. This made
him think the land lay that way; so he begged the Admiral
to change his course to the southward as he was sure there



WATCHING FOR LAND.
HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 65

was no land to the west. Against his will, Columbus at last
consented, and turning to the southwest headed for Cuba.
But he thought he was steering for Cathay. The islands
of Japan, were, he thought, only a few leagues away to the
west. They were really, as you know, away across the























































‘THE NIGHT BEFORE THE DISCOVERY.

United States and then across the Pacific Ocean, thousands:
of miles farther west than Columbus could sail. But accord-
ing to his reckoning he hoped within a day or two to see the
cities and palaces of this wonderful land. |

When they sailed from the Canaries a reward had been
offered to whomsoever should first see land. This reward
was to be a silken jacket and nearly five hundred dollars
in money; so all the sailors were on the watch.
66 WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

At about ten o'clock on the evening of the eleventh of
October, Columbus, standing on the high raised stern of the
Santa Maria, saw a moving light, as if some one on the
shore were running with a flaming torch. At two o’clock
the next morning — Friday, the twelfth of October, 1492 —
the sharp eyes of a watchful sailor on the Pizza (his name
was Rodrigo de Triana) caught sight of a long low coast-
line not far away. He raised the joyful shout Land, ho!
The ships ran in as near to the shore as they dared, and
just ten weeks after the anchors had been hauled up in
Palos Harbor they were dropped overboard, and the ships of
Columbus were anchored in the waters of a new world.

Where was it? What was it? Wasit Cathay? Colum-
bus was sure that it was. He was certain that the morning
sun would shine for him upon the marble towers and golden
roofs of the wonderful city of the kings of Cathay.

a pny
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

LITTLE over three hundred years ago there was a
Pope of Rome whose name was Gregory XIII. He

was greatly interested in learning and science, and when the
scholars and wise men of his day showed him that a mis-




A

SEES

Ss

OLUMBU

Cc

WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. . 69

take in reckoning time had long before been made he set
about to make it right. At that time the Pope of Rome
had great influence with the kings and queens of Europe,
and whatever he wished them to do they generally did.

So they all agreed to his plan of renumbering the days
of the year, and a new reckoning of time was made upon
the rule that most of you know by heart in the old rhyme:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November ;

All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February which alone
Hath twenty-eight — and this, in fine,

One year in four hath twenty-nine.

And the order of the days of the months and the year is
what is called, after Pope Gregory, the Gregorian Calendar.

This change in reckoning time made, of course, all past
dates wrong. The old dates, which were called Old Style,
had to be made to correspond with the new dates which were
called New Style.

Now, according to the Old Style, Columbus discovered
the islands he thought to’ be the Indies (and which have
ever since been called the West Indies) on the twelfth of
October, 1492. But, according to the New Style, adopted
nearly one hundred years after his discovery, the right date
would be the twenty-first of October. And this is why, in
the Columbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated
?

7o WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America
on the twenty-first of October; which, as you see, is the same
as the twelfth under the Old Style of reckoning time,

But did Columbus discover America? What was this
land that greeted his eyes as the daylight came on that
Friday morning, and he saw the low green shores that lay
ahead of his caravels ?

As far as Columbus was concerned he was sure that he
had found some one of the outermost islands of Cipango or
Japan. So he dropped his anchors, ordered out his row-
boat, and prepared to take possession of the land in the
name of the queen of Spain, who had helped him in his
enterprise.

Just why or by what right a man from one country could
sail up to the land belonging to another country and, planting
in the ground the flag of his king, could say, “ This land be-
longs to my king!” is a hard question to answer. But there
is an old saying that tells us, Might makes right; and the
servants of the kings and queens — the adventurers and ex-
plorers of old——used to go sailing about the world with this
idea in their heads, and as soon as they came to a land they
had never seen before, up would go their flag, and they
would say, This land is mine and my king’s! They would
not of course do this in any of the well-known or “ Christian
lands” of Europe; but they believed that all “ pagan lands ”
belonged by right to the first European king whose sailors
should discover and claim them.


F COLUMBU

ANDING O

HE L

ay

)

tteart.

by Closs of Stui

rawing

a

(From a

WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 73

So Columbus lowered a boat from the Sanxfa Maria,
and with two of his chief men and some sailors for rowers
he pulled off toward the island.

But before he did so, he had to listen to the cheers and
congratulations of the very sailors who, only a few days _be-
fore, were ready to kill him. But, you see, this man whom
they thought crazy had really brought them to the beautiful
land, just as he had promised. It does make such a differ-
ence, you know, in what people say whether a thing turns
out right or. not.

Columbus, as I say, got into his rowboat with his chief
inspector and his lawyer. He wore a crimson cloak over
his armor, and in his hand he held the royal banner of Spain.
Following him came Captain Alonso Pinzon in a rowboat
from the Pizfa, and in a rowboat from the Mixa Captain
Vincent Pinzon. Each of these captains carried the “ banner
of the green cross” on which were to be seen the initials of
the king and queen of Spain.

As they rowed toward the land they saw some people on
the shore. They were not dressed in the splendid clothes
the Spaniards expected to find the people of Cathay wearing.
In fact, they did not have on much of anything but grease
and paint. And the land showed no signs of the marble
temples and gold-roofed palaces the sailors expected to find.
It was a little, low, flat green island, partly covered with
trees and with what looked like a lake in the center.

This land was, in fact, one of the three thousand keys or
74 WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

coral islands that stretch from the capes of Florida to the
island of Hayti, and are known as the Bahama Islands.
The one upon which Columbus landed was called by the
natives Guanahani, and was either the little island now marked
on the map as Cat Island or else the one called Watling’s
Island. Just which of these it was has been discussed over
and over again, but careful scholars have now but little
doubt that it was the one known to-




day as Watling’s Island.

To see no sign of glittering
palaces and gayly
dressed people
was quite a dis-
appointment to
Columbus. But
then, he said, this
is probably the

THE PLACE WHERE COLUMBUS LANDED.

island farthest out
to sea, and the people who live here are not the real Cathay
folks. We shall see them very soon. |

So with the royal banner and the green-cross standards
floating above him, with his captains and chief officers and
some of the sailors gathered about him, while all the others
watched him from the decks of his fleet, Columbus stepped
upon the shore. Then he took off his hat, and holding the
royal banner in one hand and his sword in the other he said
aloud: I take possession of this island, which I name


‘THE LANDING OF COLUMBUS.
(from a painting by John van der Lyn in the Capitol at Washington.)

WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 17

San Salvador,* and of all the islands and lands about it in
the name of my patron and sovereign lady, Isabella, and her
kingdom of Castile. This, or something like it, he said, for
the exact words are not known to us.

And when he had done this the captains and sailors fell
at his feet in wonder and admiration,
begging him to forgive them for all the
hard things they had said about him.
For you have found Cathay, they cried.
You are our leader. You will make us



rich and powerful. Hurrah for the great
Admiral ! © nHEY HAVE COME FROM
And when the naked and astonished aL pe
people of the island saw all this—the canoes with wings,
as they called the ships, the richly-dressed men with white
and bearded faces, the flags and swords, and the people
kneeling about this grand-looking old man in the crimson
cloak — they said to one another: These men are gods;
they have come from Heaven to see us. And then they,
too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from
Heaven, as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be.
And when they found that the men from Heaven did not
offer to hurt them, they came nearer; and the man in the
crimson cloak gave them beads and pieces of bright cloth
and other beautiful things they had never seen before. And

* The island of San Salvador means the island of the Holy Saviour. Columbus and the Spanish
explorers who followed him gave Bible or religious names to very much of the land they discovered.
78 WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED.

this made them feel all the more certain that these men who
had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be

fo

hi
"i
a
yp
Us

' fi p f

y " fap tins i
4 “aN a

ih
Ws
|

THE TROPIC ISLANDS.







from Heaven. So they brought them fruits
and flowers and feathers and birds as pres-
ents ; and both parties, the men with clothes
and the men without clothes, got on very
well together.

But Columbus, as we know, had come
across the water for one especial reason.
He was to find Cathay, and he was to find
it so that he could carry back to Spain the
gold and jewels and spices of Cathay. The
first thing, therefore, that he tried to find
out from the people of the island — whom
he called “ Indians,” because he thought he
had come to a part of the coast of India —
was where Cathay might be.

Of course they did not understand him.
Even Louis, the interpreter, who knew a
dozen languages and who tried them all,
could not make out what these “ Indians”
said. But from their signs and actions
and from the sound of the words they
spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay
was off somewhere to the southwest, and
that the gold he was bound to find came
from there. The “Indians” had little bits






THE NEW LAND.

try excels all others,” wrote Columbus, “ as the day surpasses the night.”)

2S coun.

(“ Th

&



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 8:

of gold hanging in their ears and noses. So Columbus sup-
posed that among the finer people he hoped soon to meet in
the southwest, he should find great quantities of the yellow
metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was not far off.
Japan was near, China was near, Indiawas near. Of this he
was certain; and even until he died Columbus did not have
any idea that he had found a new world — such as America
teally was. He was sure that he had simply landed upon
the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set
out to discover — the nearest route to the Indies.

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and _hav-
ing seized and carried off to his ships some of the poor
natives who had welcomed him so gladly, he commenced a
cruise among the islands of the group he had discovered.

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic
islands, and of them and of the people who lived upon them
he wrote to the king and queen of Spain: “ This country excels
all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor.
The natives love their neighbors as themselves; their con-
versation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces smiling ;
and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to
Your Highness there is not a better people in the world.”

Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have
acted so meanly toward these innocent people who loved
and trusted him so? For it was Columbus who first stole
them away from their island homes and who first thought
of making them slaves to the white men.
82 HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

CharT ER Wilk
HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

OLUMBUS kept sailing on from one island to another.

Each new island he found would, he hoped, bring him

nearer to Cathay and to the marble temples and golden
palaces and splendid cities he was looking for.

But the temples and palaces and cities did not appear.
When the Admiral came to the coast of

Cuba he said: This, I know, is the main-
land of Asia. So he sent off Louis, the
interpreter, with a letter to the “great
Emperor of Cathay.” Louis was gone
several days; but he found no emperor,
no palace, no city, no gold, no jewels, no
spices, no Cathay — only frail houses of
bark and reeds, fields of corn and grain,
with simple people who could tell him nothing about Cathay
or Cipango or the Indies.

So day after day Columbus kept on his search, sailing
from island to island, getting a little gold here and there,
or some pearls and silver and a lot of beautiful bird skins,
feathers and trinkets.



CAPTAIN ALONSO PINZON.
HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 83

Then Captain Alonso Pinzon, who was sailing in the
Pinta, believed he could do better than follow the Admiral's
lead. I know, he said, if I could go off on my own hook I
could find plenty of gold and pearls, and perhaps I could
find Cathay. So one day he sailed away and Columbus did
not know what had become of him.

_ At last Columbus, sailing on and troubled at the way
Captain Alonso Pinzon had acted, came one day to the
island of Hayti. If Cuba was Cathay (or China), Hayti, he
felt sure, must be Cipango(or Japan). So he decided to sail
into one of its harbors to spend Christmas Day. But just
before Christmas morning dawned, the helmsman of the
Santa Maria, thinking that everything was safe, gave the
tiller into the hands of a boy — perhaps it was little Pedro
the cabin boy —and went to sleep. The rest of the crew
also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt quite
big to think that he was really steering the Admiral’s flag-
ship, was a little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had
driven the Saxta Maria plump upon a hidden reef. And
there she was wrecked. They worked hard to get her off
but it was no use. She keeled over on her side, her seams
opened, the water leaked in, the waves broke over her, the
masts fell out and the Saxta Maria had made her last voyage.

Then Columbus was in distress. The Pinta had deserted
him, the Santa Maria was a wreck, the Vina was not nearly
. large enough to carry all his men back to Spain. And to
Spain he must return at once. What should he do?
84 HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

Columbus was quick at getting out of a fix. So in this
case he speedily decided what to do. He set his men at
work tearing the wreck of the Saxta Maria to pieces. Out
of her timbers and woodwork, helped out with trees from the
woods and a few stones from the shore, he made quite a fort.
It had a ditch and a watch-tower and a drawbridge. It
proudly floated the
flag of Spain. It was
the first European fort
in the new world. On
its ramparts Colum-
bus mounted the can-
nons he had saved
from the wreck and
named the fort La
Navidad — that is,
Fort Nativity, be-
cause it was made

DORA ED: out of the ship that
was wrecked on Christmas Day —the day of Christ's nativ-
ity, his birthday. _

He selected forty of his men to stay in the fort until he
should return from Spain. The most of them were quite
willing to do this as they thought the place was a beautiful one
and they would be kept very busy filling the fort with gold.
Columbus told them they must have at least a ton of gold
before he came back. He left them provisions and powder


HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 85

for a year, he told them to be careful and watchful, to be
kind to the Indians and to make the year such a good one
that the king and queen of Spain would be glad to reward
them. And then he said good-by and sailed away for Spain.

It was on the fourth of January, 1493, that Columbus
turned the little Wzwa homeward. He had not sailed very
far when what should he come across but the lost Pzzfa.
Captain Alonso Pinzon seemed very much ashamed when he
saw the Admiral, and tried to explain his absence. Colum-
bus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon had gone off
gold hunting and had not found any gold. But he did not
scold him, and both the vessels sailed toward Spain. _

The homeward voyage was a stormy and seasick one.
Once it was so rough that Columbus thought surely the
Nina would be wrecked. So he copied off the story of what
he had seen and done, addressed it to the king and queen of
Spain, put it into a barrel and threw the barrel overboard.

But the Viza was not shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth
of February Columbus reached the Azores. The Portuguese
governor was so surprised when he heard this crazy Italian
really had returned, and was so angry to think it was Spain
and not Portugal that was to profit by his voyage that he
tried to make Columbus a prisoner. But the Admiral gave
this inhospitable welcomer the slip and was soon off the
coast of Portugal. ,

Here he was obliged to land and meet the king of Portu-
gal —that same King John who had once acted so meanly
86 HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

toward him. King John would have done so again had he
dared. But things were quite different now. Columbus
was a great man. He had made a successful voyage, and
the king and queen of Spain would have made it go hard
with the king of Portugal if he dared trouble their admiral.
So King John had to give a royal reception to Columbus,
and permit him to send a messenger to the king and queen
of Spain with the news of his return from Cathay.

Then Columbus went on board the Mina again and
sailed for Palos. But his old friend Captain Alonso Pinzon
had again acted badly. For he had left the Admiral in one
of the storms at sea and had hurried homeward. Then he
sailed into one of the northern ports of Spain, and hoping to
get all the credit for his voyage, sent a messenger post-haste
to the king and queen with the word that he had returned
from Cathay and had much to tell them. And then he, too,
sailed for Palos. i

On the fifteenth of March, 1493, just seven months after
he had sailed away to the West, Columbus in the Vina
sailed into Palos Harbor. The people knew the little vessel
at once. And then what a time they made! Columbus has
come back, they cried. He has found Cathay. Hurrah!
hurrah! And the bells rang and the cannons boomed and
the streets were full of people. The sailors were welcomed
with shouts of joy, and the big stories they told were listened
to with open mouths and many exclamations of surprise.
So Columbus came back to Palos. And everybody pointed


LO ae
on pele i \ in

ia





NS



























“fg Fs
ae vA 4 f i 4 GY | ! i Liat
, i INA pt el,






























































WU COG) (
| |
| |
i y 2 i
Bs
~
oe al
Ae i FN ad ; ! di Z|
IN AZ /* Sn) il
‘i x. : ff i “4 UCC :
o% Z é
Fp a CS
\ re ZS | Ul ae
WI EN ne eee, rie
Uh é ‘ Mia URI CR epe ee eS Se eam ie i Mt.
Zk. ‘ whe ae

Hiss at = 4
wa kid
a ive

ae Sacha MMM acs 1. ie ie
y Fag J Ay li ons
ytd SRS
Mh te “ae eat mM
8 gt ae Dl eS

DEM eye



. ve sas Se

wia ly

-- re

COLUMBUS RECEIVED BY FERDINAND AND ISABELLA AT BARCELONA.

(“ The king and queen said he had done weli.”

HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 89

him out and cheered him and he was no longer eG of as
“that crazy Italian who dragged away the men of Palos to
the Jumping-off place.”

And in the midst of all this rejoicing what should sail
into the harbor of Palos but the Px/a, just a few hours late!
And when Captain Alonso Pinzon heard the sounds of re.
joicing, and knew that his plans to take away from Columbus
all the glory of what had been done had all gone
wrong, he did not even go to see his old friend and
ask his pardon. He went away to his own house
without seeing any one. And there he found a
stern letter from the king and queen of Spain
scolding him for trying to get the best of Colum-



bus, and refusing to hear or see him. The Way COLUMBUS Has —

COME.

things had turned out made Captain Alonso Pin-
zon feel so badly that he fell sick; and in a few days he died.
But Columbus, after he had seen his good friend Juan
Perez, the friar at Rabida, and told him all his adventures,
went on to Barcelona where King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella were waiting for him. They had already sent him
letters telling him how pleased they were that he had found
Cathay, and ordering him to get ready fora second expedition
at once. Columbus gave his directions for this, and then, in
a grand procession that called everybody to the street or
_ window or housetop, he set off for Barcelona. He reached
the court on a fine April day and was at once received with
much pleasure by the king and queen of Spain.
go HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF.

Columbus told them where he had been and what he
had seen; he showed them the gold and the pearls and the
birds and curiosities he had brought to Spain as specimens
of what was to be found in Cathay; he showed them the ten
painted and “fixed-up” Indians he had stolen and brought
back with him.

And the king and queen of Spain said he had done well.
They had him sit beside them while he told his story, and
treated this poor Italian wool-weaver as they would one of
their great princes or mighty lords. They told him he could
put the royal arms alongside his own on his shield or crest,
and they bade him get together at once
ships and sailors for a second expedition
to Cathay— ships and sailors enough,
they said, to get away up to the great



cities of Cathay, where the marble temples



and the golden palaces must be. It was



their wish, they said, to gain the friend-
Shae ship of the great Emperor of Cathay, to
EECUESSION trade with him and get a good share of
his gold and jewels and spices. For, you see, no one as
yet imagined that Columbus had discovered America. They
did not even know that there was such a continent. They
thought he had sailed to Asia and found the rich countries
that Marco Polo had told such big stories about. :
Columbus, you may be sure, was “ all the rage” now.
Wherever he went the people followed him, cheering and
HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL IO GRIEF. gt

shouting, and begging him to take them with him on his
next voyage to Cathay.

He was as anxious as any one to get back to those beau-
tiful islands and hunt for gold and jewels. He set to work
at once, and on the twenty-fifth of September, 1493, with a
fleet of seventeen ships and a company of fifteen hundred





COLUMBUS TELLING HIS ADVENTURES TO JUAN PEREZ AT RABIDA.

men, Columbus the Admiral set sail from Cadiz on_ his
second voyage to Cathay and Cipango and the Indies. And
this time he was certain he should find all these wonderful
places, and bring back from the splendid cities unbounded
wealth for the king and queen of Spain.
g2 2ZRYING IT AGAIN.

CHAPTER Vill >
TRYING IT AGAIN.

[)° you not think Columbus must have felt very fine as
he sailed out of Cadiz Harbor on his second voyage to
the West? It was just about a year before, you know, that
his feeble fleet of three little ships sailed from Palos port.
His hundred sailors hated to go; his friends were few;
everybody else said he was crazy; his success was very
doubtful. Now, as he stood on the high quarter-deck of his
big flag-ship, the Maria Galante, he was a great man. By
appointment of his king and queen he was “ Admiral of the
Ocean Seas” and “ Viceroy of the Indies.” He had servants
to do as he directed; he had supreme command over the
seventeen ships of his fleet, large and small; fifteen hundred
men joyfully crowded his decks, while thousands left at
home wished that they might go with him, too. He had
soldiers and sailors, horsemen and footmen ; his ships were
filled with all the things necessary fer trading with the
Indians and the great merchants of Cathay, and for building
the homes of those who wished to live in the lands beyond
the sea.
Everything looked so well and everybody was so full of
TRYING IT AGAIN. 93

hope and expectation that the Admiral felt that now his
fondest dreams were coming to pass and that he was a
great man indeed. ©

This was to be a hunt for gold. And so sure of success
was Columbus that he promised the king and queen of








zs . e
rif —

n ee “U0 eS ae

5

Y E>.

as pm cn LT Mt 5
ine

| ———o ie malt) eee
aS Se a ee Se
















THE HARBOR OF CADIZ.

Spain, out of the money he should make on this voyage, to
himself pay for the fitting out of a great army of fifty thou-
sand foot soldiers and four thousand horsemen to drive away
the pagan Turks who had captured and held possession of
the city of Jerusalem and the sepulcher of Christ. For this
had been the chief desire, for years and years, of the Chris-


94 TRYING IT AGAIN.

tian people of Europe. To accomplish it many brave
knights and warriors had fought and failed. But now
Columbus was certain he could do it.

So, out into the western ocean sailed the great expedi-
tion of the Admiral. He sailed first to the Canary Isles,
where he took aboard wood and water and many cattle,
sheep and swine. Then, on the seventeenth of October, he















steered straight

























out into the broad
Atlantic, and on
Sunday, the third
of November, he
saw the hill-tops
of one of the
West India Isl-
ans that he
named Dominica.
You can find it
on your map of
the West Indies.

For days he
sailed on, passing

“WE SAW THE HILL-TOPS OF DOMINICA.”

island after isl-
and, landing on some and giving them names. Some of
them were inhabited, some of them were not; some were very
large, some were very small. But none of them helped him
in any way to find Cathay, so at last he steered toward Hayti






IRYING IT AGAIN.

(or Hispaniola, as he called it) and the lit-
tle ship-built fortress of La Navidad, where
his forty comrades had been left.

On the twenty-seventh of November,
the fleet of the Admiral cast anchor off the
solitary fort. It was night. No light was
to be seen on the shore; through the dark-
ness nothing could be made out that looked
like the walls of the fort. Columbus fired
a cannon; then he fired another. The
echoes were the only answer. They must
be sound sleepers in our fortress there, said
the Admiral. At last, over the water he
heard the sound of oars — or was it the dip
of a paddle? A voice called for the Ad-
miral; but it was not a Spanish voice.
The interpreter —who was the only one
left of those ten stolen Indians carried by
Columbus to Spain—came to the Ad-
miral’s side; by the light of the ship’s lan-
tern they could make out the figure of an
Indian in his canoe. He brought presents
from his chief. But where are my men at
the fort? asked the Admiral. And then
the whole sad story was told.

The fort of La Navidad was destroyed ;
the Spaniards were all dead; the first at-

95



THE LURKING INDIAN.
96 TRYING IT AGAIN.

tempt of Spain to start a colony in the new world was a
terrible failure. And for it the Spaniards themselves were
to blame.

_ After Columbus had left them, the forty men in the fort
did not do as he told them or as they had solemnly promised.
They were lazy; they were rough; they treated the Indians
badly; they quarreled among themselves; some of them ran
off to live in the woods. Then sickness came; there were
two “sides,” each one jealous of the other; the Indians be-
came enemies. A fiery war-chief from the hills, whose name
was Caonabo, led the Indians against the white men. The
fort and village were surprised, surrounded and destroyed.
And the little band of “conquerors” —as the Spaniards
loved to call themselves — was itself conquered and killed.

It was a terrible disappointment to Columbus. The
men in whom he had trusted had proved false. The gold
he had told them to get together they had not even found.
His plans had all gone wrong.

But Columbus was not the man to stay defeated. His
fort was destroyed, his men were killed, his settlement was
atailure.\ It canst bewhelpedinow,” hei said, \2l will) try,
again.

This time he would not only build a fort, he would
build a city. He had men and material enough to do this
and to do it well. So he set to work.

But the place where he had built from the wreck of the
unlucky Saxta Maria his unlucky fort of La Navidad did
TRVING IT AGAIN. 97

not suit him. It was low, damp and unhealthy. He must
find a better place. After looking about for some time he
finally selected a place on the northern side of the island.
You can find it if you look at the map of Hayti in the West
Indies; it is near to Cape Isabella.

He found here a good harbor for ships, a good place on
the rocks for a fort, and good land for gardens. Here
Columbus laid
out his new town,
and called it after
his friend the
queen of Spain,
the city of Isa-
bella.

He marked
out a central spot
for his park or
square; around
this ran a street,
and along this
street he built
large stone build-



ings for a store-

CAONABO AND HIS BRAVES.

house, a church
and a house for himself, as governor of the colony. On the
side streets were built the houses for the people who were to
live in the new town, while on a rocky point with its queer
98 TRYING IT AGAIN.

little round tower looking out to sea stood the stone fort to
protect the little city. It was the first settlement made by
white men in all the great new world of America. _

You must know that there are some very wise and very
bright people who do not
agree tothis. They say that
nearly five hundred years
before Columbus landed, a
Norwegian prince or viking,
whose name was Leif Erics-
son, had built on the banks
of the beautiful Charles
River, some twelve miles
from Boston, a city which
he called Norumbega.

But this has not really
been proved. It is almost
all the fancy of a wise man



who has studied it out for

THE TOWER OF THE FORT.

himself, and says he be-
lieves there was such a city. But he does not really know
it as we know of the city of Isabella, and so we must still
say that Christopher Columbus really discovered America
and built the first fort and the first city on its shores —
although he thought he was doing all this in Asia, on the
shores of China or Japan.

When Columbus had his people nearly settled in their


Tyabel la Oise

oo



THE RUINS OF ISABELLA.
(The first settlement made by white men in all the great new world of America.)

TRYING IT AGAIN. 101

new city of Isabella, he remembered that the main thing he
was sent to do was to get together as much gold as possible.’
His men were already grumbling. They had come over the
sea, they said, not to dig cellars
and build huts, but to find gold
—gold that should make them
rich and great and happy.

So Columbus set to work
gold-hunting. At first things THE GRUMBLERS,
seemed to promise success. The Indians told big stories of
gold to be found in the mountains of Hayti; the men sent
to the mountains discovered signs



of gold, and at once Columbus
sent home joyful tidings to the
king and queen of Spain.

~ Then he and his men hunted
everywhere for the glittering yel-
low metal. They fished for it in
the streams ; they dug for it in the
earth; they drove the Indians to
hunt for it also until the poor red-
men learned to hate the very sound
of the word gold, and believed that
this was all the white men lived



STATUE OF LEIF ERICSSON IN BOSTON.

for, cared for or worked for; hold.
ing up a piece of this hated gold the Indians would say, one
to another: “ Behold the Christian’s god!” And so it came
102 TRYING JT AGAIN.

about that the poor worried natives, who were not used to
such hard work, took the easiest way out of it all, and told
the Spaniards the biggest kind of lies as to where gold
might be found— always away off somewhere else — if only
the white men would go there to look for it.

On the thirteenth of January, 1494, Columbus sent back
to Spain twelve of his seventeen ships. He did not send
back in them to the king and queen, the gold he had promised.
He sent back the letters that promised gold; he sent back as
prisoners for punishment some of the most discontented and
quarrelsome of his colonists; and, worst of all, he sent to
the king and queen a note asking them to permit him to
send to Spain all the Indians he could catch, to be sold as
slaves. He said that by doing this they could make “ good
Christians” of the Indians, while the money that came from
selling the natives would buy cattle for the colony and leave
some money for the royal money-chests.

It is not pleasant to think this of so great a man as
Columbus. But it is true, and he is really the man who
Started the slave-trade in America. Of course things were
very different in his time from what they are to-day, and peo-
ple did not think so badly of this horrible business. But
some good men did, and spoke out boldly against it. What
they said was not of much use, however, and slavery was
started in the new world. And from that act of Columbus
came much sorrow and trouble for the land he found. Even
the great war between the northern and southern sections of
hy
HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 103

our own United States, upon one side or the other of which
your fathers, or your grandfathers perhaps, fought with gun
and sword, was brought about by this act of the great Ad-
miral Columbus hundreds of years before.

So the twelve ships sailed back to Spain, and Columbus,
with his five remaining ships, his soldiers and his colonists,
remained in the new city of Isabella to keep up the hunt for
gold or to become farmers in the new world.



CHAPTER IX.
HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN.

Bee the farmers and the gold hunters had a hard time

of it in the land they had come to so hopefully. The
farmers did not like to farm when they thought they could
do so much better at gold hunting; the gold hunters found
that it was the hardest kind of work to get from the water
or pick from the rocks the yellow metal they were so
anxious to obtain.

Columbus himself was not satisfied with the small amount
of gold he got from the streams and mines of Hayti; he
was tired of the wrangling and grumbling of his men. So,
one day, he hoisted sail on his five ships and started away
¢

104 - HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN.

on a hunt for richer gold mines, or, perhaps, for those won-
derful cities of Cathay he was still determined to find.

He sailed to the south and discovered the island of Ja-
maica. Then he coasted along the shores of Cuba. The
great island stretched away so many miles that Columbus
was certain it was the mainland of Asia. There was some
excuse for this mis-
take. The great num-
ber of small islands
he had sailed by all
seemed to lie just
as the books about
Cathay that he had
read said they did;
the trees and fruits
that he found in these islands seemed to be just the same
that travelers said grew in Cathay.

To be sure the marble temples, the golden-roofed palaces,
the gorgeous cities had not yet appeared; but Columbus was
so certain that he had found Asia that he made all his men
sign a paper in which they declared that the land they had
found (which was, as you know, the island of Cuba) was
really and truly the coast of Asia.



ALONG THE SHORE OF CUBA.

This did not make it so, of course; but it made the peo-
ple of Spain, and the king and queen, think it was so. And
this was most important. So, to keep the sailors from going
back on their word and the statement they had signed,
HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 105

Columbus ordered that if any officer should afterward say
he had been mistaken, he should be fined one hundred dol-
lars; and if any sailor should say so, he should receive one
hundred lashes with a whip and have his tongue pulled out.
That was a curious way to discover Cathay, was it not?

Then Columbus, fearing’ another shipwreck or another mu-
tiny, sailed back again to the city of Isabella. His men were
discontented, his ships were battered and leaky, his hunt for
gold and palaces had again proved a failure. He sailed
around Jamaica; he got as far as the eastern end of Hayti,
and then, just as he was about to run into the harbor of Isa-
bella, all his strength gave out. The strain and the disap-
pointment were too much for him; he fell very, very sick,
and on the twenty-ninth of September, 1494, after just about
five months of sailing and wandering and hunting, the Vina
ran into Isabella Harbor with Columbus so sick from fever
that he could not raise his hand or his head to give an order
to his men. }

For five long months Columbus lay in his stone house
on the plaza or square of Isabella a very sick man. His ©
brother Bartholomew had come across from Spain with
three supply ships, bringing provisions for the colony. So
Bartholomew took charge of affairs for a while.

And while Columbus lay so sick, some of the leading
men in the colony seized the ships in which Bartholomew
Columbus had come to his brother’s aid, and sailing back to
Spain they told the king and queen all sorts of bad stories
‘306 =) HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN.
about Columbus. They were Spaniards. Columbus was an
Italian. They were jealous of him because he was higher
placed and had more to say than they had. They were
angry to think that when he had promised to bring them to
the gorgeous cities and the glittering gold mines of Cathay
he had only landed them on islands which were the homes
of naked savages, and made them work dreadfully hard for
what little gold they could find. He had promised them
power; they went home poorer than when they came away.
So they were “mad” at Columbus — just as boys and girls
are sometimes “mad” at one another; and they told the
worst stories they could think of about him, and called him
all sorts of hard names, and said the king and queen of Spain
ought to look out for “ their great Admiral” or he would get
the best of them and keep for himself the most of whatever
he could find in the new lands.

At last Columbus began to grow better. And when he
knew what his enemies had done he was very much troubled
for fear they should get the king and queen to refuse him
any further aid. So, just as soon as he was able, on the
tenth of March, 1496, he sailed home to Spain.

How different was this from his splendid setting out
from Cadiz two years before. Then everything looked bright
and promising; now everything seemed dark and disappoint-
ing. The second voyage to the Indies had been a failure.

So, tired of his hard work in trying to keep his dissatis-
fied men in order, in trying to check the Indians who were
HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. ; 107

no longer his friends, in trying to find the gold and pearls
that were to be got at only by hard work, in trying to make
out just where he was and just where Cathay might be,
Columbus started for home. Sick, troubled, disappointed,
threatened by enemies in the Indies and by more bitter ene-
mies at home, sad, sorry and full of fear, but yet as deter-
mined and as brave as ever, on the tenth of March, 1496, he
went on board his caravels with two hundred and fifty
homesick and feversick men, and on the eleventh of June his
two vessels sailed into the harbor of Cadiz.

The voyage had been a tedious one. Short of food,
storm-tossed and full of aches and pains the starving com-
pany “crawled ashore,” glad to be in their home land once
more, and most of them full of complaints and grumblings
at their commander, the Admiral.

And Columbus felt as downcast asany. He came ashore
dressed, not in the gleaming armor and crimson robes of a
conqueror, as on his-first return, but in the garb of what was
known as a penitent — the long, coarse gown, the knotted
girdle and peaked hood of a priest. For, you see, he did
not know just what terrible stories had been told by his
enemies; he did not know how the king and queen would
receive him. He had promised them so much; he had
brought them so little. He had sailed away so hopefully ;
he had come back humbled and hated. The greatest man in
the world, he had been in 1492; and in 1496 he was unsuc-
cessful, almost friendless and very unpopular. So you see,
_ 108 HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN.

boys and girls, that success is a most uncertain thing, and

the man who is a hero to-day may be a beggar to-morrow.

But, as is often the case, Columbus was too full of fear.







































—
ATTRA eee
TR

COLUMBUS IN THE GARB OF A PRIEST.

(At the church in Cadiz after his return from his second voyage.)

He was not really
in such disgrace as
he thought he was.
Though his ene-
mies had said all
sorts of hard things
against him, the
kipg—and_ espe-
cially the queen—
could not forget
that he was, after
all, the man who
had found the new
land for Spain; they
knew that even
though he had not
brought home the
great riches that
were to have been
gathered in the In-
dies, he had _ still

found for Spain a land that would surely, in time, give to it

riches, possessions and power.

So they sent knightly messengers to Columbus telling him


HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 109

to come and see them at once, and greeting him with many
pleasant and friendly words. Columbus was, as you must
have seen, quick to feel glad again the moment things seemed
to turn in his favor; so he laid aside his penitent’s gown, and
hurried off to court. And almost the first thing he did was
toask the king and
queen to fit out
another fleet for
him. Six ships,
he said he should
want this time;
and with these
he was certain he
could sail into the



yet undiscovered ; THE QUEEN’S MESSENGERS.
waters that lay
beyond Hayti and upon which he knew he should find Cathay.
I am afraid the king and queen of Spain were beginning
to feel a little doubtful as to this still undiscovered Cathay.
At any rate, they had other matters to think of and they did
not seem so very anxious to spend more money on ships
and sailors. But they talked very nicely to Columbus ; they
gave him anew title (this time it was duke or marquis); they
made him a present of a great tract of land in Hayti, but it
was months and months before they would help him with
the ships and money he kept asking for.
At last, however, the queen, Isabella, who had always had
110 HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN.

more interest in-Columbus and his plans than had the king,
her husband, said a good word for him. The six ships were
given him, men and supplies were put on board and on the
twentieth of May, 1498, the Admiral set out on his third
voyage to what every one now called the Indies.

There was not nearly so much excitement among the
people about this voyage. Cathay and its riches had almost
become an old story; at any rate it was astory that was not
altogether believed in. Great crowds did not now follow the
‘Admiral from place to place begging him to take them with
him to the Indies. The hundreds of sick, disappointed and
angry men who had come home poor when they expected
to be rich, and sick when
they expected to be strong,
had gone through the land,
and folks began to think
that Cathay was after all
only a dream, and that the



stories of great gold and of
untold riches which they had
heard were but “sailors’ yarns” which no one could believe.

FERDINAND ANI ISABELLA.

So it was hard to get together a crew large enough to
man the six vessels that made up the fleet. At last, however,
all was ready, and with a company of two hundred men,
besides his sailors, Columbus hoisted anchor in the little
port of San Lucar just north of Cadiz, near the mouth of
the Guadalquivir river, and sailed away into the West.
HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. , III

This time he was determined to find the continent of Asia.
Even though, as you remember, he made his men sign a
paper saying that the coast of Cuba was Asia, he really
seems to have doubted this himself. He felt that he had
only found islands. If so, he said, Cathay must be the other
side of those islands; and Cathay is what I must find.

So, with this plan in mind, he sent three of his ships to
the little settlement of Isabella, and with the other three he
sailed more to the southwest. On the first of August the

tia



























































































































































































































































IN SIGHT OF THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS OF TRINIDAD.

ships came in sight of the three mountain peaks of the large
island he called Trindad, or Trinity.

Look on your map of South America and you will see
that Trinidad lies almost in the mouth of the Orinoco, a
- mighty river in the northern part of South America.

. Columbus coasted about this island, and as he did so,
looking across to the west, he saw what he supposed to be
still another island. It was not. It was the coast of South
America. For the first time, but without knowing it, Colum-
bus saw the great continent he had so long been hunting
for, though he had been seeking it under another name.
112% FROM PARADISE TO PRISON.

So you see, the story of Columbus shows how his life
was full of mistakes. In his first voyage he found an island
and thought it was the mainland of the Eastern Hemi-
sphere; in his third voyage he discovered the mainland of
the New World and thought it only an island off the coast of
the Old World. His life was full of mistakes, but those mis-
takes have turned out to be, for us, glorious successes.

ie ee
CHAPTER X.
FROM PARADISE TO PRISON.

ia you know a boy or a girl whose mind is set on any one

thing, you will find that they are always talking about
that thing. Is not this so? They have what people call a
“hobby ” (which is a kind of a horse, you know), and they
are apt, as we say, to “ ride their hobby to death.”

If this is true of certain boys and girls, it is even more
true of men and women. They get to be what we call peo-
ple of one idea, and whatever they see or whatever they do
always turns on that one idea.

It was so with Columbus. All his life his one idea had
been the finding of Asia — the Indies, or Cathay, as he called
it — by sailing to the west. He did sail to the west. He
did find land. And, because of this, as we have seen, all his








‘HE THREE SHIPS OF COLUMBUS LEAVING “PARADISE.”
(“So at last he turned away from the lovely land that he thought must be Paradise and steered toward Hayti.”)

FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 115

voyaging and all his exploring were done in the firm belief
that he was discovering new parts of the eastern coast of
Asia. The idea that he had found a new world never
entered his head. —

So, when he looked toward the west, as he sailed around
the island of Trinidad and saw the distant shore, he said it
was anew part of Asia. Hewasas certain of this as he had
before been certain that Cuba was a part of the Asiatic
mainland.

But when he sailed into the mouth of the great Orinoco
River he was puzzled. For the water was no longer salt;
it grew fresher and fresher as he sailed on. And it rushed
out so furiously through the two straits at the northern and
southern ends of Trin- ee
idad (which because | Co Ali he
of the terrible rush of "IMD yy ~ uy
their currents he called < ey





Hi




the Lion’s Mouth and

5 AY TS Li, ys
the Dragon’s Mouth) . gy By?
© at Me, 2B, :
that he was at first un- 2 GES
ee EU ee Gl eae
able to explain it all. os ag



Then he had a
curious idea. Colum-
bus was a great reader of the Bible; some of the Bible
scholars of his day said that the Garden of Eden was ina far
Eastern land where a mighty river came down through it
from the hills of Paradise; as Columbus saw the beautiful

IN THE DRAGON’S MOUTH.
116 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON.

land he had reached, and saw the great river sending down
its waters to the sea, he fitted all that he saw to the Bible
stories he knew so well,and felt sure that he had really dis-
covered the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

He would gladly have sailed across the broad bay and up
the great river to explore this heavenly land; but he was ill
with gout, he was nearly blind from his sore eyes, his ships
were shaky and leaky, and he felt that he ought to hurry
away to the city of Isabella where his brothers, Bartholomew
and Diego, were in charge of affairs and were, he knew, anx-
iously waiting for him to come back.

So at last he turned away from the lovely land that he
thought must be Paradise and steered toward Hayti. On
the nineteenth of August he arrived off the coast of Hayti.
He sent a messenger with news of his arrival, and soon
greeted his brother Bartholomew, who, when he heard of the
Admiral’s arrival, sailed at once to meet him.

Bartholomew Columbus had a sad story to tell his brother
Christopher. Things had been going badly in Hayti, and
the poor Admiral grew sicker and sicker as he listened to
what Bartholomew had to tell.

You have heard it said that there are black sheep in
every flock. There were black sheep in this colony of Colum-
bus. There were lazy men ‘and discontented men and
jealous men, and they made great trouble, both in the city of
Isabella and in the new town which Bartholomew had built .
in another part of the island and called Santo Domingo.
FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 117

Such men are sure to make mischief, and these men in
Hayti had made a lot of it. Columbus had staid so long in
Spain that these men began to say that they knew he was
certainly in trouble or disgrace there, that the king and queen
were angry with him, and that his offices of viceroy and ad-
miral were to be taken away
from him. If this were so,’
they were going to look out
for themselves, they said.
They would no longer obey
the commands of the Admi-
ral’s._ brothers, Bartholomew
and Diego, whom he had left
in charge.

So they rose in rebellion,
and made things so uncom-
fortable for the two brothers

that the colony was soon full BARTHOLOMEW COLUMBUS, BROTHER OF THE
ADMIRAL.



of strife and quarreling.

The leader of this revolt was one of the chief men in
the colony. His name was Roldan. When Columbus and
Bartholomew sailed into the harbor of Santo Domingo, on
the thirtieth of August, they found that Roldan and his fol-
lowers had set up a camp for themselves in another part of
the island, and given out that they were determined’ never to
have anything more to do with the three Columbus brothers.

This rebellion weakened the colony dreadfully. Things
118 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON.

looked desperate ; so desperate indeed that Columbus, after
thinking it all over, thought that the only way to do was to
seem to give in to Roldan and patch up some sort of an
agreement by which they could all live together in peace.
But all the same, he said, I will complain to the king and
have this rebel Roldan punished.

So the Admiral wrote Roldan a letter in which he offered
to forgive and forget all that he had done if he would come
back and help make the colony strong and united again.
Roldan agreed to do this, if he could have the same position
he held before, and if Columbus would see that his followers
had all the land they wanted. Columbus agreed to this and
also gave the rebels permission to use the poor natives as
slaves on their lands. So the trouble seemed to be over for
a while, and Columbus sent two of his ships to Spain with
letters to the king and queen. But in these letters he ac-
cused Roldan of rebellion and tried to explain why it was
that things were going so badiy in Hayti.

But when these ships arrived in Spain the tidings they
brought and the other letters sent by them only made mat-
ters worse. People in Spain had heard so many queer
things from across the sea that they were beginning to lose
faith in Columbus. The men who had lost health and
money in the unlucky second voyage of the Admiral were
now lazy loafers about the docks, or they hung about the court
and told how Columbus had made beggars of them, while
they hooted after and insulted the two sons of Columbus
FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 119

who were pages in the queen’s train. They called the boys
the sons of “ the Admiral of Mosquitoland.”

gold. And people said
this was a fine viceroy
who couldn't keep
order among his own
men because, no doubt,
he was too busy hid-
ing away for his own
use the gold and pearls
they knew he must
have found in the river
of Paradise he said he
had discovered.
Then came five
shiploads of Indian
slaves, sent to. Spain
by Columbus, and
along with them came
the story that Colum-
bus had forgiven Rol-
dan for his rebellion
and given him lands
and office in Hayti.
King Ferdinand



ON THE DOCK AT CADIZ.
(“ No gold! This ts a fine Viceroy,” they said.)


120 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON.

had never really liked Columbus and had always been sorry
that he had given him so much power and so large a share
in the profits. The queen, too, began to think that while
Columbus was a good sailor, he was a very poor governor.
But when she heard of the shiploads of slaves he had sent,
and found out that among the poor creatures were the
daughters of some of the chiefs, or caciques, of the Indians,
she was very angry, and asked how “her viceroy” dared to
use “her vassals” so without letting her know about it.
Things were indeed beginning to look bad for Columbus.



PADDLES AND POTS FROM THE INDIES.

The king and queen had promised that only members of
the Admiral’s family should be sent to govern the island;
they had promised that no one but himself should have the
right to trade in the new lands. But now they began to go
back on their promises. If Columbus cannot find us gold
and spices, they said, other men can. So they gave permis-
sion to other captains to explore and trade in the western
LROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 121

lands. And as the complaints against the Admiral kept
coming they began to talk of sending over some one else to
govern the islands.

‘More letters came from Columbus asking the king and
queen to let him keep up his slave-trade, and to send out
some one to act as a judge of his quarrel with Roldan.
Then the king and queen decided that something must be

_



“HE LISTENED TO THE COMPLAINTS OF ALL THE BLACK SHEEP.”

done at once. The queen ordered the return of the slaves
Columbus had sent over, and the king told one of his
officers named Bobadilla to go over to Hayti and set things
straight. And he sent a letter by him commanding Colum-
bus to talk with him, to give up all the forts and arms in
the colony and to obey Bobadilla in all things.
122 ; FROM PARADISE TO PRISON.

Bobadilla sailed at once. But before he got across the
sea matters, as we know, had been straightened out by the
Admiral; and when Bobadilla reached Hayti he found every-
thing quiet there. Columbus had made friends with Roldan
- (or made believe that he had), and had got things into good
running order again. Se

This was not what Bobadilla had reckoned upon. He
had expected to find things in such a bad way that he would
have to take matters into his own hand at once, and become
a greater man than the Admiral. If everything was all
right he would have his journey for nothing and everybody
would laugh at him. So he determined to go ahead, even
though there was no necessity for his taking charge of
affairs. He had been sent to do certain things, and he did
them atonce. Without asking Columbus for his advice or his
assistance, he took possession of the forts and told every one
that he was governor now. He said that he had come to
set things straight, and he listened to the complaints of all
the black sheep of the colony —and how they did crowd
around him and say the worst things they could think of
against the Admiral they had once been so anxious to follow.

Bobadilla listened to all their stories. He proceeded to
use the power the king and queen had given him to punish
and disgrace Columbus — which was not what they meant
him to do. He moved into the palace of the Admiral; he
ordered the Admiral and his brothers to come to him, and —
when they came expecting to talk things over, Bobadilla
FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 123

ordered that they be seized as prisoners and traitors, that

they be chained hand and foot and put in prison.
Columbus’s saddest day had come. The man who had
found a new world for his king and queen, who had worked



FEATHERS AND FRUIT FROM THE
INDIES.

so hard in their service and who
had meant to do right, although
he had made many mistakes, was
thrust into prison as if he were a
thief ora murderer. The Admiral
of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of
the Indies, the grand man whom
all Spain had honored and all the
world had envied, was held as a
prisoner in the land he had found,
and all his powers were taken by
a stranger. He was sick, he was
disappointed, he was defeated in
all his plans. And now he was
in chains. His third voyage had
ended the worst of all. He had

sailed away to find Cathay; he ;
had, so he believed, found the
Garden of Eden and the river of

Paradise. And here, as an end to it all, he was arrested by
order of the king and queen he had tried to serve, his power
and position were taken from him by an insolent and unpity-
ing messenger from Spain; he was thrown into prison and
124 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

after a few days he was hurried with his brothers on board a
ship and sent to Spain for trial and punishment. How would
it all turn out? Was it not asad and sorry ending to his
bright dreams of success ?

DD 6 OD
CHAPTER XI.
HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. -

I SUPPOSE you think Bobadilla was a very cruel man.

He was. But in his time people were apt to be cruel
to one another whenever they had the power in their own
hands. The days in which Columbus lived were not like
these in which we are living. You can never be too thankful
for that, boys and girls. Bobadilla had been told to go over
the water and set the Columbus matters straight. He had
been brought up to believe that to set matters straight you
must be harsh and cruel; and so he did as he was used to
seeing other people in power do. Even Queen Isabella did
not hesitate to do some dreadful things to certain people she
did not like when she got them in her power. Cruelty was
common in those days. It was what we call the “spirit of
the age.” So you must not blame Bobadilla too much, al-
though we will all agree that it was very hard on Columbus.

So Columbus, as I have told you, sailed back to Spain.


































is Hh

i =





























SSS = ——

























































































COLUMBUS IN CHAINS,

- morials of my services.

HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 127

But when the officer who had charge of him and whose
name was Villijo, had got out to sea and out of Bobadilla’s
sight, he wanted to take the chains off. For he loved
Columbus and it made him’ feel very sad to see the old
Admiral treated like a convict or a murderer. Let me have
these cruel chains struck off, Your
Excellency, he said. No, no, Villijo,
Columbus replied, Let these fetters
remain upon me. My king and queen
ordered me to submit and Bobadilla
has put me in chains. I will wear
these irons until my king and queen
shall order them removed, and I shall
keep them always as relics and me-

It always makes us sad to see any
one in great trouble. To hear of a
great man who has fallen low or of a
rich man who has become poor, always
makes us say: Is not that too bad?



Columbus had many enemies in Spain. S

_. The nobles of the court, the men who tHe Man wuo wantep “To set
MN MATTERS STRAIGHT.”

had lost money in voyages to the In- |

dies, the people whose fathers and sons and brothers had

sailed away never to return, could not say anything bad

enough about “ this upstart Italian,” as they called Columbus.

But to the most of the people Columbus was still the
128 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

great Admiral. He was the man who had stuck to his one

idea until he had made a friend of the queen; who had

sailed away into the West and proved the Sea of Darkness
and the Jumping-off place to be only fairy tales after all;
who had found Cathay and the Indies for Spain. He was
still a great man to the multitude.

So when on a certain October day, in the year 1500, it
was spread abroad that a ship had just come into the harbor
of Cadiz, bringing home the great Admiral, Christopher
Columbus, a prisoner and in chains, folks began to talk at
once. Why, who has done this? they cried. Is this the
way to treat the man who found Cathay for Spain, the man
whom the king and the queen delighted to honor, the man
who made a procession for us with all sorts of birds and ~
animals and pagan Indians? It cannot be. Why, we all
remember how he sailed into Palos Harbor eight years ago
and was received like a prince with banners and proclama-
tions and salutes. And now to bring him home in chains!
It is a shame; it is cruel; it is wicked. And when people
began to talk in this way, the very ones who had said the
worst things against him began to change their tone.

As soon as the ship got into Cadiz, Columbus.sent off a
letter to a friend of his at the court in the beautiful city of
Granada. This letter was, of course, shown to the queen.
And it told all about what Columbus had suffered, and was
so full of sorrow and humbleness and yet of pride in what he
had been able to do, even though he had been disgraced, that
HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 129

Queen Isabella (who was really a friend to Columbus in
spite of her dissatisfaction with the things he sometimes did)
became very angry at the way he had been treated.

She took the letter to King Ferdinand, and at once both
the king and the queen hastened to send a messenger to
Columbus telling him how angry and sorry they were that
Bobadilla should have dared to treat their good friend the
Admiral so. .They ordered his immediate release from im-.
prisonment ; they sent him a present of five thousand dollars
and asked him to come to court at once.

On the seventeenth of December, 1500, Columbus came
to the court at Granada in the beautiful palace of the Alham-
bra. Herodeona mule. At that time, in Spain, people were
not allowed to ride on mules, because if they did the Spanish
horses would not be bought and sold, as mules were so
_ much cheaper and were easier to ride. But Columbus was
sick and it hurt him to ride horseback, while he could be
fairly comfortable on an easy-going mule. So the king and
queen gave him special permission to come on mule-back.

When Columbus appeared before the queen, looking so
sick and troubled, Isabella was greatly affected. She thought
of all he had done and all he had gone through and all he
had suffered, and as he came to the steps of the throne the
queen burst into tears. That made Columbus cry too, for
he thought a great deal of the queen, and he fell at her feet
and told her how much he honored her, and how much he
was ready to do for her, if he could but have the chance.
130

HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

Then the king and queen told him how sorry they were

that any one should have so misunderstood their desires and

have treated
ner JPANCS
and
Admiral so
shamefully.
They prom-
ised to make












loyal








Te ALHAMBRA

everything all right for him-
again, and to show him that
they were his good friends
now as they always had been
since the day he first sailed
away to find the Indies for
them and for Spain.

Of course this made Co-
lumbus feel much better. He

eacraatesyoaece
' Tey

athena oo

ate Sota

eee

a

had left Hayti in fear and trembling. He had come home -
expecting something dreadful was going to happen; he
would not have been surprised at a long imprisonment; he
would not even have been surprised if he had been put to
HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 131

death — for the kings and queens and high lords of his day
were very apt to order people put to death if they did not
like what had been done. The harsh way in which Boba-
dilla had treated him made him think the king and queen
had really ordered it. Perhaps they had; and perhaps the
way in which the people cried out in indignation when they
saw the great Admiral brought ashore in chains had its in-
fluence on Queen Isabella. King Fer-
dinand really cared nothing about it.
He would gladly have seen Columbus
put in prison for life; but the queen
had very much to say about things in
her kingdom, and so King Ferdinand
made believe he was sorry and talked
quite as pleasantly to Columbus as did
the queen.

Now Columbus, as you must have |
found out by this time, was as quick to
feel glad as he was to feel sad. And
witen he found that the king and queen |: (uss Se
were his friends once more, he became oe
full of hope again and began to say where he would go and
what he would do when he went back again as Viceroy
of the Indies and Admiral of the Ocean Seas. He begged |
the queen to let him go back again at once, with ships and
sailors and the power to do as he pleased in the islands he
had found and in the lands he hoped to find.


132 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

They promised him everything, for promising is easy.
But Columbus had once more to learn the truth of the old
Bible warning that he had called to mind years before on
the Bridge of Pinos: Put not your trust in princes.

The king and queen talked very nicely and promised
much, but to one thing King Ferdinand had made up his
mind — Columbus should never go back again to the Indies
as viceroy or governor. And King Ferdinand was as stub-
born as Columbus was persistent.

Not very much gold had yet been brought back from the
Indies, but the king and queen knew from the reports of
those who had been over the seas and kept their eyes open
that, in time, a great deal of gold and treasure would come
from there. So they felt that if they kept their promises to
Columbus he would take away too large a slice of their
profits, and if they let him have everything to say there it
would not be possible to let other people, who were ready to
share the profits with them, go off discovering on their
own hook.

So they talked and delayed and sent out other expedi-
tions and kept Columbus in Spain, unsatisfied. Another
governor was sent over to take the place of Bobadilla, for
they soon learned that that ungentlemanly knight was not
even so good or so strict a governor as Columbus had
been.

Almost two years passed in this way and still Columbus
staid in Spain. At last the king and queen said he might
HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 133

go if he would not go near Hayti and would be sure to find
other and better gold lands.

Columbus did not relish being told where to go and where
not to go like this; but he promised. And on the ninth of
May, 1502, with four small caravels and one hundred and
fifty men, Christopher Columbus sailed from Cadiz on his
fourth and last voyage to the western world.

He was now fifty-six years old. That is not an age at
which we would call any one an old man. But Columbus
had grown old long before his time. Care, excitement, expos-
ure, peril, trouble and worry had made him white-haired and
wrinkled. Hewas sick, he was nearly blind, he was weak, he
was feeble — but his determination was just as firm, his hope
just as high, his desire just as strong as ever. He was bound,
this time, to find Cathay.

And he had one other wish. He had enemies in Hayti;
they had laughed and hooted at him when he had been
dragged off to prison and sent in chains on board the ship.
He did wish to get even with them. He could not forgive
them. He wanted to sail into the harbor of Isabella and
Santo Domingo with his four ships and to say: See, all of
you! Here I am again, as proud and powerful as ever.
The king and queen have sent me over here once more with
ships and sailors at my command. Iam still the Admiral
of the Ocean Seas and all you tried to do against me has
amounted to nothing.

This is not the right sort of a spirit to have, either for
134 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

men or boys; it is not wise or well to have it gratified. For-
giveness is better than vengeance; kindliness is better than
pride.
At any rate, it was not to be gratified with Columbus.
When his ships arrived off the coast of Hayti, although his
ACTER qe orders from the king and
queen were not to stop at
the island going over, the
temptation to show himself
was too strong. He could
not resist it. So he sent
word to the new governor,
whose name was Ovando,
_ that he had arrived with his
fleet for the discovery of new
lands in the Indies, and that
he wished to come into Santo



Domingo Harbor as one of

“JT AM STILL THE ADMIRAL!”

his ships needed repairs; he
would take the opportunity, he said, of mending his vessel
and visiting the governor at the same time.

Now it so happened that Governor Ovando was just
about sending to Spain a large fleet. And in these shipswere
to go some of the men who had treated Columbus so badly.
Bobadilla, the ex-governor, was one of them; so was the
rebel Roldan who had done so much mischief; and there
were others among the passengers and prisoners whom




THE OLD CASTLE AND









WATER BATTERIES AT SANTO DOMINGO.
HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 137

Columbus disliked or who hated Columbus. There was also
to go in the fleet a wonderful cargo of gold—the largest
amount yet sent across to Spain. There were twenty-six ships
in all, in the great gold fleet, and the little city of Santo
Domingo was filled with excitement and confusion.
Wecannot altogether make out whether Governor Ovando
was a friend to Columbus or not. At any rate, he




felt that it would be unwise and unsafe for Colum-
bus to come into the harbor or show himself in
the town when so many :
of his bitter enemies
were there. So he sent
back word to Columbus
that he was sorry, but
that really he could not
let him come in.

How bad that must
have made the old Ad-
miral feel! To be re-

fused admission to the
place he had found and built up for Spain! It was unkind,
he said; he must and would go in.

Just then Columbus, who was a skillful sailor and knew
all the signs of the sky, and all about the weather, happened
to notice the singular appearance of the sky, and saw that
there was every sign that a big storm was coming on. So
he sent word to Governor Ovando again, telling him of this,
138 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

and asking permission to run into the harbor of Santo

Domingo with his ships to escape the coming storm.

But the governor could not see that any storm was com-

ing on. He said: Oh! that is only another way for the Ad-



aut Wi







































ie Pian =
WOO

CORNER OF THE CITY WALL AND SENTRY BOX, SANTO DOMINGO.



miral to try to get
around meand get
me to let him in.
I can't doit. So
he sent back word
a second time
that he really
could not let
Columbus come
in. I know you
are a very clever
sailor, he said,
but, really, I
think you must
be mistaken
about this storm.
At any rate, you
will have time

to go somewhere else before it comes on, and I shall be

much obliged if you will.

Now, among the twenty-six vessels of the gold fleet was

one in which was stored some of the gold that belonged to

Columbus as his share, according to his arrangement with
HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 139

the king and queen. If a storm came on, this vessel would
be in danger, to say nothing of all the rest of the fleet. So
Columbus sent in to Governor Ovando a third time. He
told him he was certain a great storm was coming. And he
begged the governor, even if he was not allowed to come up



THE WRECK OF BOBADILLA’S SHIP.

to Santo Domingo, by all means to keep the fleet in the har-
bor until the storm was over. If you don't, there will surely
be trouble, he said. And then he sailed with his ships along
shore looking for a safe harbor.

But the people in Santo Domingo put no faith in the
Admiral’s “ probabilities.” There will be no storm, the cap-


140 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

tains and the officers said. If there should be our ships are
strong enough to stand it. The Admiral Columbus is get-
ting to be timid as he grows older. And in spite of the old
sailor's warning, the big gold fleet sailed out of the harbor
of Santo Domingo and headed for Spain.

But almost before they had reached the eastern end of
the island of Hayti, the storm that Columbus had prophesied
burst upon them. :

It was a terrible tempest. Twenty of the ships went to
the bottom. The great gold fleet was destroyed. The ene-
mies of Columbus — Boba-
dilla, Roldan and the rest
were drowned. Only a few
of the ships managed to get



“BROKEN AND SHATTERED.” back into Santo Domingo

Harbor, broken and_ shat-

tered. And the only ship of all the great fleet that got safely

through the storm and reached Spain all right was the one

that carried on board the gold that belonged to Columbus.
Was not that singular?

Then all the friends of Columbus cried : How wonderful!
Truly the Lord is on the side of the great Admiral!

But his enemies said: This Genoese is a wizard. He
was mad because the governor would not let him come into
the harbor, and he raised this storm in revenge. It is a dan-
gerous thing to interfere with the Admiral’s wishes.

For you see in those days people believed in witches and
HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE, 141

spells and all kinds of fairy-book things like those, when
they could not explain why things happened. And when
they could not give a good reason for some great disaster
or for some stroke of bad luck, they just said: It is witch-
craft; and left it so.









E ALHAMBRA.

A FRAGMENT OF T
CHAPTER XII.
HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

HILE the terrible storm that wrecked the great gold

fleet of the governor was raging so furiously, Colum-

bus with his four ships was lying as near shore as. he dared
in a little bay farther down the coast of Hayti. Here he
escaped the full fury of the gale, but still his ships suffered
greatly, and came very near being shipwrecked. They be-
came separated in the storm, but the caravels met at last after
the storm was over and steered away for the island of Jamaica.
For several days they sailed about among the West
India Islands; then they took a westerly course, and on the
thirtieth of July, Columbus saw before him the misty out-
lines of certain high mountains which he supposed to be
142 HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

somewhere in Asia, but which we now know were the Coast
Range Mountains of Honduras. And Honduras, you re-
member, is a part of Central America.

Just turn to the map of Central America in your geog-
raphy and find Honduras. ‘The mountains, you see, are
marked there; and on the northern coast, at the head of a
fine bay, you will notice the seaport town of Truxillo. And



OFF THE COAST OF HONDURAS.

that is about the spot where, for the first time, Columbus
saw the mainland of North America.

As he sailed toward the coast a great canoe came close
to the ship. It was almost as large as one of his own
caravels, for it was over forty feet long and fully eight feet
wide. It was paddled by twenty-five Indians, while in the
middle, under an awning of palm-thatch sat the chief Indian,
or cacique, as he was called. A curious kind of sail had
been rigged to catch the breeze, and the canoe was loaded
with fruits and Indian merchandise.




“THE GALLEY OF THE CACIQUE.”

HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 145

This canoe surprised Columbus very much. He had
seen nothing just like it among the other Indians he had
visited. The cacique and his people, too, were dressed in
clothes and had sharp swords and spears. He thought of
the great galleys of Venice and Genoa; he remembered the
stories that had come to him of the people of Cathay; he
believed that, at last, he had come to the right place. The
shores ahead of him were, he was sure, the coasts of the
Cathay he was hunting for, and these people in “the galley
of the cacique” were much nearer the kind of people he
was expecting to meet than were the poor naked Indians of
Hayti and Cuba.

In a certain way he was right. These people in the big
canoe were, probably, some of the trading Indians of Yucatan,
and beyond them, in what we know to-day as Mexico, was a
race of Indians, known as Aztecs, who were what is called
_ half-civilized; for they had cities and temples and stone houses
and almost as much gold and treasure as Columbus hoped
to find in his fairyland of Cathay. But Columbus was not
to find Mexico. Another daring and cruel Spanish captain,
named Cortez, discovered the land, conquered it for Spain,
stripped it of its gold and treasure, and killed or enslaved its
brave and intelligent people.

After meeting this canoe, Columbus steered for the dis-
tant shore. He coasted up and down looking for a good
harbor, and on the seventeenth of August, 1502, he landed
as has been told you, near what is now the town of Truxillo,
146 HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

in Honduras. There, setting up the banner of Castile, he
took possession of the country in the name of the king and
queen of Spain.

For the first time in his life Columbus stood on the real
soil of the New World. All the islands he had before dis-
covered and colonized were but outlying pieces of America.
Now he was really upon the American Continent.

But he did not know it. Yo him it was but a part of
Asia. And as the main purpose of this fourth voyage was
to find a way to sail straight to India — which he supposed
lay somewhere to the south — he set off on his search. The



THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS SEE THE SHIPS OF THE ADMIRAL.

Indians told him of “a narrow place” that he could find by
sailing farther south, and of a “great water’ beyond it.
This “narrow place” was the Isthmus of Panama, and the
“oreat water” beyond it was, of course, the Pacific Ocean.
But Columbus thought that by a “narrow place” they


HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 147

meant a strait instead of an isthmus. If he could but find
that strait, he could sail through it into the great Bay of
Bengal which, as you know and as he had heard, washes the
eastern shore of India.

So he sailed along the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua
trying to find the strait he was hunting for. Just look at
your map and see how near he was to the way across to the
Pacific that men are now digging out, and which, as the
Nicaragua Canal, will connect the Atlantic and the Pacific
Oceans. And think how near he was to finding that Pacific
Ocean over which, if he could but have got across the
Isthmus of Panama, he could have sailed to the Cathay and
the Indies he spent his life in trying to find. But if he had
been fortunate enough to get into the waters of the Pacific, I
do not believe it would have been so lucky for him, after all.
His little ships, poorly built and poorly provisioned, could
never have sailed that great ocean in safety, and the end
might have proved even more disastrous than did the
Atlantic voyages of the Admiral.

He soon understood that he had found a richer land than
the islands he had thus far discovered. Gold and pearls were
much more plentiful along the Honduras coast than they
were in Cuba and Hayti, and Columbus decided that, after
he had found India, he would come back by this route and
collect a cargo of the glittering treasures.

The land was called by the Indians something that
sounded very much like Veragua. This was the name
148 HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Columbus gave to it; and it was this name, Veragua, that
was afterward given to the family of Columbus as its title;
so that, to-day, the living descendant of Christopher Colum-
bus in Spain is called the Duke of Veragua.

But as Columbus sailed south, along what is called “the
Mosquito Coast,’ the weather grew stormy and the gales
were severe. His ships were crazy and worm-eaten; the
food was running low; the sailors began to grumble and



A GOLD HUNT IN VERAGUA.

complain and to say that if they kept on in this way they
would surely starve before they could reach India.
Columbus, too, began to grow uneasy. His youngest son,
Ferdinand, a brave, bright little fellow of thirteen, had come
with him on this voyage, and Columbus really began to be
afraid that something might happen to the boy, especially if
the crazy ships should be wrecked, or if want of food should
make them all go hungry. So at last he decided to give
HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 149

up hunting for the strait that should lead him into the Bay
of Bengal; he felt obliged, also, to give up his plan of going
back to the Honduras coast for gold and pearls. He turned
his ships about and headed for Hayti where he hoped he
could get Governor Ovando to give him better ships so that
he could try it all
over again.

Here, you see,
was still another
disappointing de-
feat for Colum-
bus. For after
he had been on
the American



ON THE MOSQUITO COASY.

coast for almost a year; after he had come so near to what
he felt to be the long-looked-for path to the Indies; after
most wonderful adventures on sea and land, he turned his
back on it all, without really having accomplished what he
set out to do and, as I have told you, steered for Hayti.

But it was not at all easy to get to Hayti in those leaky
ships of his. In fact it was not possible to get there with
them at all; for on the twenty-third of June, 1503, when he
had reached the island of Jamaica he felt that his ships
would not hold out any longer. They were full of worm-
holes; they were leaking badly; they were strained and
battered from the storms. He determined, therefore, to find
a good harbor somewhere on the island of Jamaica and go in


150 HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

there for repairs. But he could not find a good one; his
ships grew worse and worse, every day's delay was danger-
ous; and for fear the ships would sink and carry the crews
to the bottom of the sea, Columbus decided to run them
ashore anyhow. This he did; and on the twelfth of August,
1503, he deliberately headed for the shore and ran his ships
aground in a little bay on the island of Jamaica still known
as Sir Christopher's Cove. And there the fleet was wrecked.

The castaways lashed the four wrecks together; they
built deck-houses and protections so as to make themselves
as comfortable as possible, and for a whole year Columbus
and his men lived there at Sir Christopher’s Cove on the
beautiful island of
Jamaica.

It proved any-
thing but beautiful
for them, however.
It makes a good
deal of difference,
you know, in en-
joying things

SIR CHRIS'TOPHER’S COVE, ON THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA.
(Where Columbus played Robinson Crusove.)

whether you are
well and happy.
If you are hungry and can’t get anything to eat, the sky
does not look so blue or the trees so green as if you were sit-
ting beneath them with a jolly picnic party and with plenty
of lunch in the baskets.
































































































































ON THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA.

(Where the year spent by Columbus and his companions was one of “ horror, peril, sickness
and starvation.”’)

HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 153

It was no picnic for Columbus and his companions.
That year on the island of Jamaica was one of horror, of
peril, of sickness, of starvation. Twice, a brave comrade
named Diego Mendez started in an open boat for Hayti to
bring relief. The first time he was nearly shipwrecked, but
the second time he got away all right. And then for months
nothing was heard of him, and it was supposed that he had
been drowned. But the truth was that Governor Ovando
had an idea that the king and queen of Spain were tired of
Columbus and would not feel very bad if they never saw him
again. He promised to send help, but did not do so for fear
he should get into trouble. And the relief that the poor
shipwrecked people on Jamaica longed for did not come.

Then some of the men who were with Columbus mu-
tinied and ran away. In fact, more things happened during
this remarkable fourth voyage of Columbus than I can
begin to tell you about. The story is more wonderful than
is that of Robinson Crusoe, and when you are older you must
certainly read it all and see just what marvelous adventures
Columbus and his men met with and how bravely the little
Ferdinand Columbus went through them all. For when
Ferdinand grew up he wrote a life of his father, the Admiral,
and told the story of how they all played Robinson Crusoe
at Sir Christopher's Cove.

At last the long-delayed help was sent by Governor
Ovando, and one day the brave Diego Mendez came sailing
into Sir Christopher's Cove. And Columbus forgave the
154 HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

rebels who had run away; and on the twenty-eighth of June,
1504, they all sailed away from the place, that, for a year
past, had been almost worse than a prison to them all.

On the fifteenth of August, the rescued crews sailed into
the harbor of Santo Domingo. The governor, Ovando, who
had reluctantly agreed to send for Columbus, was now in a
hurry to get him away. Whether the governor was afraid
of him, or ashamed because of the way he had treated him,
or whether he felt that
Columbus was no longer
held so high in Spain,
and that, therefore, it
was not wise to make
much of him, I cannot
say. At any rate he
hurried him off to Spain,
and on the twelfth of
September, 1504, Co-



DIEGO MENDEZ GOING FOR HELP.

lumbus turned his back forever on the new world he had
discovered, and with two ships sailed for Spain.

He had not been at sea but a day or two before he found
that the ship in which he and the boy Ferdinand were sail-
ing was not good for much. A sudden storm carried away
its mast and the vessel was sent back to Santo Domingo.
Columbus and Ferdinand, with a few of the men, went on
board the other ship which was commanded by Bartholomew
Columbus, the brother of the Admiral, who had been with
HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 155

him all through the dreadful expedition. At last they saw
the home shores again, and on the seventh of November,
1504, Columbus sailed into the harbor of San Lucar, not far
from Cadiz.

He had been away from Spain for fully two years and a
half. He had not accomplished a single thing he set out to
do. He had met with disappointment and disaster over and
over again, and had left the four ships that had been given
him a total wreck upon the shores of Jamaica. He came
back poor, unsuccessful, unnoticed, and so ill that he could
scarcely get ashore.

And so the fourth voyage of the great Admiral ended.
It was his last. His long sickness had almost made him
crazy. He said and did many odd things, such as make us
think, nowadays, that people
have, as we call it, “lost their
© minds.’ But he was certain
of one thing—the king and
s),queen of Spain had not kept
~ the promises they had made
him, and he was determined, if



STORM-TOSSED IN THE IND1Es.

he lived, to have justice done
him, and to make them do as they said they would.

They had told him that only himself or one of his family
should be Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the
New Lands; they had sent across the water others, who were
not of his family, to govern what he had been promised for
156 HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE.

his own. They had told him that he should have a certain
share of the profits that came from trading and gold hunting
in the Indies; they had not kept this promise either, and he
was poor when he was certain he ought to be rich.

So, when he was on land once more, he tried hard to get
to court and see the king and queen. But he was too sick.















Velcro ces See ee ON MN eee a eee ee

SEVILLE THE BEAUTIFUL.
The “ tower of gold” in the foreground is said to have been built to store the gold in that came from the
Se £4 &
New World.)

He had got as far as beautiful Seville, the fair Spanish city
by the Guadalquivir, and there he had to give up and go to
bed. And then came a new disappointment. He was to
lose his best friend at the court. For when he had been
scarcely two weeks in Spain, Queen Isabella died.

She was not what would be considered in these days
either a particularly good woman, or an especially good
queen. She did many cruel things; and while she talked
THE END OF THE STORY. 157

much about doing good, she was generally looking out for
herself most of all. But that was not so much her fault as
the fault of the times in which she lived. Her life was not
a happy one; but she had always felt kindly toward Colum-
bus, and when he was where he could see her and talk to
her, he had always been able to get her to side with him
and grant his wishes.

Columbus was now avery sick man. He had to keep
his bed most of the time, and this news of the queen’s death,
made him still worse, for he felt that now no one who had
the “say” would speak a good word for the man who had
done so much for Spain, and given to the king and queen the
chance to make their nation great and rich and powerful.

(

CHAPTER XIII.

THE END OF THE STORY.

NY one who is sick, as some of you may know, is apt to

be anxious and fretful and full of fears as to how he

is going to get along, or who will look out for his family.
Very often there is no need for this feeling; very often it is a
part of the complaint from which the sick person is suffering.
In the case of Columbus, however, there was good cause
for this depressed and anxious feeling. King Ferdinand,
158 THE END OF THE STORY.

after Queen Isabella’s death, did nothing to help Columbus.
He would not agree to give the Admiral what he called his
rights, and though Columbus kept writing letters from his
sick room asking for justice, the king would do nothing
for him. And when the king’s smile is turned to a frown,
the fashion of the court is to frown, too.

So Columbus had no
friends at the king’s court.
Diego, his eldest son, was
still one of the royal pages;
but he could do nothing.
Without friends, without in-
fluence, without opportunity,



Columbus began to feel that
he should never get his rights
unless he could see the king
himself. And sick though
he was he determined to





try it.

THE ARMS OF COLUMBUS.

It must have been sad

(Containing the castle of Castile, the lion of Arragon,

the anchors of a es the islands of a enough to see this sick old

man drag himself feebly to
the court to. ask for justice from the king whom he had en.
riched. You would think that when King Ferdinand really
saw Columbus at the foot of the throne, and when he remem-
bered all that this man had done for him and for Spain, and

how brave and persistent and full of determination to do


THE DEATH OF COLUMBUS.
(“luto thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.”)

THE END OF THE STORY. 161

great things the Admiral once had been, he would at least
have given the old man what was justly due him.

But he would not. Hesmiled on the old sailor, and said
many pleasant things and talked as if he were a friend, but he
would not agree to anything Columbus asked him; and the
poor Admiral crawled back to his sick bed again, and gave
up the struggle. I have done all that I can do, he said to
the few friends who remained faithful to him; I must leave
it all to God. He has always helped me when things were
at the worst.

And God helped him by taking him away from all the
fret, and worry, and pain, and struggle that made up so much
of the Admiral’s troubled life. On the twentieth of May,
1506, the end came. In the house now known as Number
7 Columbus Avenue, in the city of Valladolid, in Northern
Spain, with a few faithful friends at his side, he signed
his will, lay back in bed and saying trustfully these words:
Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit! the Admiral
of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of the Indies, the Discov-
erer of a New World, ended his fight for life. Christopher
Columbus was dead.

He was but sixty years old. With Tennyson, and Whit-
tier, and Gladstone, and De Lesseps living to be over eighty,
and with your own good grandfather and grandmother,
though even older than Columbus, by no means ready to be
called old people, sixty years seems an early age to be so
completely broken and bent and gray as was he. But trouble,
162 THE END OF THE STORY.

end care, and exposure, and all the worries and perils of his
life of adventure, had, as you must know, so worn upon
Columbus that when he died he seemed to be an old, old
man. He was white-haired, you remember, even before he

A



THE HOUSE IN VALLADOLID IN WHICH COLUMBUS DIED.

discovered America, and each year he seemed to grow older
and grayer and more feeble.

And after he had died in that lonely house in Valladolid,
the world seems for a time to have almost forgotten him.
A few friends followed him to the grave; the king, for whom
THE END OF THE STORY. 163

he had done so much, did not trouble himself to take any
notice of the death of his Admiral, whom once he had been
forced to honor, receive-and reward. The city of Valladolid,
in which Columbus died, was one of those fussy little towns
in which everybody knew what was happening next door,
and talked and
argued about







whatever hap-
pened upon its
streets and in
its homes; and
yet even Val-
ladolid hardly
seemed to
know of the
presence with-



in its gates of
the sick “ Vice-
roy of the Indies.” Not until four weeks after his death did
the Valladolid people seem to realize what had happened;
and then all they did was to write down this brief record:
“The said Admiral is dead.”

To-day, the bones of Columbus inclosed in a leaden casket

A CLOISTER IN THE OLD CATHEDRAL IN SANTO DOMINGO.

lie in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. People have dis-
puted about the place where the Discoverer of America was
born; they are disputing about the place where he is buried.
But as it seems now certain that he was born in Genoa, so it
164 THE END OF THE STORY.

seems also certain that his bones are really in the tomb in the

old Cathedral at Santo Domingo, that old Haytian city which

he founded, and where he had so hard a time.

At least a dozen places in the Old World and the New
have built monuments and statues in his honor; in the
United States, alone, over sixty towns and villages bear his



AMERICUS ViSPUCIUS.
(Born 1451 — died 1512.)

name, or the kindred
one of Columbia. The
whole world honors
him as the Discoverer
of America; and yet
the very name that the
Western Hemisphere
bears comes not from
the man who dis-
covered it, but from
his friend and comrade
Americus Vespucius.
Like Columbus,
this Americus Vespu-
cius was an Italian;
like him, he was a dar-
ing sailor and a fearless
adventurer, sailing into

strange seas to see what he could find. Hesaw more of the
American coast than did Columbus, and not being so full
of the gold-hunting and slave-getting fever as was the Ad-






WORTH AMERICA ese





Bermuda lds.









fie 1492





nd VAY 1496







eee Le remoad.

i aaee id











Voy. (449

CUPP Or varie we ede ccer saan &



65



MAP SHOWING THE FOUR VOYAGES OF COLUME Us,
(The dotted lines, as mar re show the coming and the return voyages, with the exception of the third voyage, from which the
returned a prisoner and in chains.)

Admiral

THE END OF THE STORY. 167

miral, he brought back from his four voyages so much infor-
mation about the new-found lands across the sea, that
scholars, who cared more for news than gold, became inter-
ested in what he reported. And some of the map-makers
in France, when they had to name the new lands in the
West that they drew on their maps — the lands that were
not the Indies, nor China, nor Japan — called them after the
man who had told them so much about them — Americus
Vespucius. And so it is that to-day you live in America
and not in Columbia, as so many people have thought this
western world of ours should he named.

And even the titles, and-riches, and honors that the king
and queen of Spain promised to Columbus came very near
being lost by his family, as they had been by himself. It was
only by the hardest work, and by keeping right at it all the
time, that the Admiral’s eldest son, Diego Columbus, almost
squeezed out of King Ferdinand of Spain the things that
had been promised to his father.

But Diego was as plucky, and as brave, and as persistent
as his father had been; then, too, he had lived at court so
long — he was one of the queen’s pages, you remember —
that he knew just what to do and how to act so as to get
what he wanted. And at last he got it.

He was made Viceroy over the Indies; he went across
the seas to Hayti, and in his palace in the city of Santo
Demingo he ruled the lands his father had found, and which
for centuries were known as the Spanish Main; he was called
168 THE END OF THE STORY.

Don Diego; he married a high-born lady of Spain, the niece
of King Ferdinand; he received the large share of “ the
riches of the Indies” that his father had worked for, but
never received. And the family of Christopher Columbus,
the Genoese adventurer —under the title of the Dukes of
Veragua — have, ever since Don Diego's day, been of what
is called “ the best blood of Spain.”

If you have read this story of Christopher Columbus

Zz
eH]



Step ee = 2,

V7 fr



RUINS OF THE PALACE OF DIEGO IN SANTO DOMINGO.

aright, you must have come to the conclusion that the life
of this Italian sea captain who discovered a new world was
not a happy one. From first to last it was full of disap-
pointment. Only once, in all his life, did he know what
happiness and success meant, and that was on his return
from his first voyage, when he landed amid cheers of wel-


SPANISH ADVENTURERS EXPLORING ‘THE NEW LAND.

(44 was these men who, following ulong the track Columbus had shown, explored, conquered und peopled the new and.)



THE END OF THE STORY. I7I

come at Palos, and marched into Barcelona in procession like.
a conqueror to be received as an equal by his king and queen.

Except for that little taste of glory, how full of trouble
was his life! He set out to find Cathay and bring back its
riches and its treasures. He did not get within five thou-
sand miles of Cathay. He returned from his second voyage
a penitent, bringing only tidings of disaster. He returned
from his third voyage in disgrace, a prisoner and in chains,
smarting under false charges of theft, cruelty and treason.
He returned from his fourth voyage sick unto death, un-
noticed, unhonored, unwelcomed.

From first to last he was misunderstood. His ideas
‘were made fun of, his efforts were treated with contempt,
and even what he did was not believed, or was spoken of as
of not much account. A career that began in scorn ended
in neglect. He died unregarded, and for years no one gave
him credit for what he had done, nor honor for what he
had brought about.

Such a life would, I am sure, seem to all boys and girls,
but a dreary prospect if they felt it was to be theirs or that
of any one they loved. And yet what man to-day is more
highly honored than Christopher Columbus? People forget
all the trials and hardships and sorrows of his life, and think
of him only as one of the great successes of the world —the
man who discovered America.

And out of his life of disaster and disappointment two
things stand forth that all of us can honor and all of us should


172 THE END OF THE STORY.

wish to copy. These are his sublime persistence and his
unfaltering faith. Even as a boy, Columbus had an idea of
what he wished to try and what he was bound to do. He
kept right at that idea, no matter what might happen to

a)





annoy him or set



him back.

It was the faith
and the persistence
of Columbus that
discovered Amer-
ica and opened the
way for the mil-
lions who now call
it their home. It
is because of these
qualities that we
honor him to-day;

A MEDAL OF COLUMBUS. it is because this
(The Old World and the New clasping hands over the head of the great P :
Admiral.) faith and _persis-

tence ended as they did in the discovery of a new world,
that to-day his fame is immortal.

Other men were as brave, as skillful and as wise as he.
Following in his track they came sailing to the new lands;
they explored its coasts, conquered its red inhabitants, and
peopled its shores with the life that has made America to-
day the home of millions of white men and millions of free
men. But Columbus showed the way.
HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 173

CHAPTER) Xchve
HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT.

\ HENEVER you start to read a story that you hope

will be interesting, you always wonder, do you not,
how it is going to turn out? Your favorite fairy tale or
wonder story that began with “once upon a time,’ ends,
does it not, “so the prince married the beautiful princess,
and they lived happy ever after?”

Now, how does this story that we have been reading to-
gether turn out? You don't think it ended happily,do you?
It was, in some respects, more marvelous than any fairy tale
or wonder story; but, dear me! you say, why couldn't Colum-
bus have lived happily, after he had gone through so much,
and done so much, and discovered America, and given us
who came after him so splendid a land to live in ?

Now, just here comes the real point of the story. Wise
men tell us that millions upon millions of busy little insects
die to make the beautiful coral islands of the Southern seas.
Millions and millions of men and women have lived and
labored, died and been forgotten by the world they helped to
make the bright, and beautiful, and prosperous place to live

in that it is to-day.
174 HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT.

Columbus was one of these millions; but he was a leader
among them and has not been forgotten. As the world has
got farther away from the time in which he lived, the man
Columbus, who did so much and yet died almost unnoticed,
has grown more and more famous; his name is immortal, and
to-day he is the hero Columbus —
one of the world’s greatest men.






We, in America, are fond of
celebrating anniversaries. I sup-
pose the years that you boys and
. girls have thus far
lived have been the
most remarkable



roe ; in the history of
[The gateway to the
Bridge of Pines on

which Columbus was

the world for cele-
brating anniver-

turned back to dis-

saries. For nearly

wouver America.)

twenty years the

(Tie brudge at Concord where was fired the shot

that made America free.) U nited States has

TWO HISTORIC BRIDGES.

been keeping its
birthday. The celebration commenced even before you were
born, with the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of
Lexington (in 1875). It has not ended yet; for we are still
celebrating the greatest of all our birthdays— the discovery
of the continent that made it possible for us to be here at all.

Now this has not always been so with us. I suppose
that in 1592 and in 1692 no notice whatever was taken of
«

HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 175

the twelfth day of October, on which— one hundred and two
hundred years before —Columbus had landed on that flat
little “key” known as Watling’s Island down among the
West Indies, and had begun a new chapter in the world’s
wonderful story. In 1592, there was hardly anybody here to
celebrate the anniversary — in fact, there was hardly anybody
here at all, except a few Spanish settlers in the West Indies,
in Mexico, and in Florida. In :
1692, there were a few scattered
settlements of Frenchmen in
Canada, of Englishmen in New
England, Dutchmen in New
York, Swedes in Delaware, and
Englishmen in Maryland, Vir-
ginia and the Carolinas. But
none of these people loved the
Spaniards.. They hated them,
indeed ; for there had been fierce
fighting going on for nearly a















hundred years between Spain :
; INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA.
and England, and you couldn't (Where the Declaration of Independence was
x signed.)
find an Englishman, a Dutch-
man or a Swede who was willing to say a good word for
Spain, or thank God for the man who sailed away in Spanish
ships to discover America two hundred years before.
In 1792, people did think a little more about this, and

there were a few who did remember that, three hundred
176 HOW THE STORY TURNS OVT.

years before, Columbus had found the great continent upon
which, in that year 1792, a new republic, called the United
States of America, had only just been started after a long
and bloody war of rebellion and revolution.

We do not find, however, that in that year of 1792 there
were many, if any, public celebrations of the Discovery of
America, in America itself. A certain American clergy-
man, however, whose name was the Rev. Elhanan Win-
chester, celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the
Discovery of America by Columbus. And he celebrated it
not in America, but in England, where he was then living.
On the twelfth of October, 1792, Winchester delivered an
address on “ Columbus and his Discoveries,’ before a great
assembly of interested listeners. In that address he said
some very enthusiastic and some very remarkable things
about the America that was to be:

“TI see the United States rise in all their ripened glory
before me,” he said. “I look through and beyond every
yet peopled region of the New World, and behold period still
brightening upon period. Where one contiguous depth of
gloomy wilderness now shuts out even the beams of day, I
see new States and empires, new seats of wisdom and knowl-
edge, new religious domes spreading around. In places now
untrod by any but savage beasts, or men as savage as they,
I hear the voices of happy labor, and see beautiful cities ris-
ing to view. I behold the whole continent highly cultivated
and fertilized, full of cities, towns and villages, beautiful and






















































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE WHITE CITY BY THE LAKE.
(View of the lagoon, and Palace of Mechanic Arts, World's Fair buildings, Chicago.)

HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 179

lovely beyond expression. I hear the praises of my great
Creator sung upon the banks of those rivers now unknown
to song. Behold the delightful prospect! See the silver
and gold of America employed in the service of the Lord of,
the whole earth! See slavery, with
all its train of attendant evils, forever

abolished! See

a communica-



TILE DISCOVERER OF OUR
COUNTRY.



TOWN: ONCE! MONRO — pars ecmeae am Gein CoM
the whole continent,
from North to South and from East to West,
through a most fruitful country. Behold the



THE SAVIOR OF OUR
COUNTRY.

glory of God extending, and the gospel spreading through
the whole land!”

Of course, it was easy for a man to see and to hope and
to say all this; but it is a little curious, is it not, that he
should have seen things just as they have turned out ?

In Mr. Winchester’s day, the United States of America
had not quite four millions of inhabitants. In his day
180 HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT.

Virginia was the largest State — in the matter of population
— Pennsylvania was the second and New York the third.
Philadelphia was the greatest city, then followed New York,
Boston, Baltimore and Charleston. Chicago was not even
thought of.

To-day, four hundred years after Columbus first saw



























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE HARBOR OF NEW YORK CITY AND THE STATUE OF LIBERTY.

American shores, one hundred and sixteen years after the
United States were started in life by the Declaration of
American Independence, these same struggling States of
one hundred years ago are joined together to make the
greatest and most prosperous nation in the world. With
a population of more than sixty-two millions of people; with
the thirteen original States grown into forty-four, with the
population of its three largest cities — New York; Philadel-
phia and Chicago— more than equal to the population of
the whole country one hundred years ago; with schools and
HOW. THE STORY TURNS OVT. 181

colleges and happy homes brightening the whole broad land
that now stretches from ocean to ocean, the United States
leads all other countries in the vast continent Columbus dis-
covered. Still westward, as Columbus led, the nation ad-
vances ; and, in a great city that Columbus could never have
imagined, and that the prophet of one hundred years ago
scarcely dreamed of, the mighty Republic invites all the rest
of the world to join with it in celebrating the four hundredth
anniversary of the Discovery of America by Columbus the
Admiral. And to do this celebrating fittingly and grandly,
it has built up the splendid White City by the great Fresh
‘Water Sea.

Columbus was a dreamer; he saw such wonderful visions
of what was to. be, that people, as we know, tapped their
foreheads and called him the “the crazy Genoese.” But not
even the wildest fancies nor the most wonderful dreams of
- Columbus came any where near to what he would really see,
if to-day he could but visit the Exposition at Chicago, in the
great White City by the lake —a “show city” specially built
for the World’s Fair of 1893, given in his honor and as a
monument to his memory.

Why, he would say, the Cathay that I spent my life try-
ing to find was but a hovel alongside of this! What would
hesee? Acity stretching outa mile and a half in length, and
more than half a mile in breadth; a space covering over five
hundred acres of ground, and containing seventeen magnifi-
cent buildings, into any one of Which could be put all the
182 HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT.

palaces of all the kings and queens of Europe known to
Columbus's day. And in these buildings he would see,
gathered together, all the marvelous things, all the useful
things, all the beautiful things, and all the delightful things
that the world can make to-day, arranged and displayed for
all the world tosee. He would stand amazed in that wonder-
ful city of glass and iron, that surpassingly beautiful city, all

















LOOKING DOWN THE LAGOON ON 'THE WORLD’S FAIR GROUNDS.

of purest white, that has been built some eight miles from
the center of big and busy Chicago, and that looks out upon
the blue waters of mighty Lake Michigan. It is a city that I
hope all the boys and girls of America



especially all who
read this story of the man in whose honor it is built, may
visit. And as they see all its wonderful sights, study all its
marvelous exhibits, and enjoy all its beautiful belongings, they










THE OLD AND THE NEW.

(du northern waters to-day the past and the present often meet, as the Indians paddling their canoes
gaze in wonder upon the mouster steamship.)
ee
te

ee


HOW THE STORY TURNS OWT: 185

will be ready to say how proud, and glad, and happy they are
to think that they are American girls and boys, living in this
wonderful nineteenth century that has been more crowded
with marvels, and mysteries, and triumphs than any fairy tale
one could imagine, or any one of the Arabian Nights ever
contained.

And then just stop and think what a parrot did. That is
one of the most singular things in all this wonder story you
are reading. Do you not remember how, when Columbus
was slowly feeling his way westward, Captain Alonso Pin-
zon saw some parrots flying southward, and believing from
this that the land they sought was off in that direction, he
induced Columbus to change his course from
the west to the south? If Columbus had not





changed his course and fol-
lowed the parrots, the Sanza
Marta, with the Pinta and
the Vina, would have sailed
on until they had entered
the harbor of Savannah or
Charleston, or perhaps the

broad waters of Chesapeake A RAILWAY STATION IN PHILADELPHIA.
Bay. Then the United States of to-day would have been
discovered and settled by Spaniards, and the whole history
of the land would have been quite different from what it has
been. Spanish blood has peopled, but not uplifted, the coun-
tries of South America and the Spanish Main. English




186 HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT.

blood, which, following after — because Columbus had first
shown the way— peopled, saved and upbuilt the whole
magnificent northern land
that Spain missed and lost.
They have found in it more
gold than ever Columbus
dreamed of in his never-
found Cathay; they have
filled it with a nobler, braver,
mightier, and more numer-



ous people than ever Colum-

A BUSINESS STREET IN CHICAGO.

bus imagined the whole
mysterious land of the Indies contained; they have made it
the home of freedom, of peace, of education, of intelligence
and of progress, and have protected arid Drea it until the
whole world respects it for
its strength, honors it for
its patriotism, admires it
for its energy, and marvels
at it for its prosperity.
And this is what a fly-
ing parrot did: It turned the
tide of lawless adventure, of



gold-hunting, of slave-driv-

THE DOME OF THE CAPITOL.

i ng, an d of selfish stri fe for ( The shrine of American sovereignty.)

gain to the south; it left the north yet unvisited until it
was ready for the strong, and sturdy, and determined men
HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 187

and women who, hunting for liberty, came across the seas
and founded the colonies that became in time the free and
independent republic of the United States of America.

And thus has the story of Columbus really turned out.
Happier than any fairy tale, more marvelous than any
wonder book, the story of the United States of America is

)

one that begins, “Once upon a time,” and has come to the
point where it depends upon the boys and girls who read it,
to say whether or not they shall “live happily ever after.”
The four hundred years of the New World's life closes its
chapter of happiness in the electric lights and brilliant sun-
shine of the marvelous White City by Lake Michigan. It
is a continued story of daring, devotion and progress, that
the boys and girls of America should never tire of reading.
And this story was made possible and turned out so well,
- because of the briefer, but no less interesting story of the
daring, the devotion and the faith of the determined Genoese
sailor of four hundred years ago, whom men knew as Don
Christopher Columbus, the Admiral of the Ocean Seas.


Ae Gee: elatalalaine
&® HOW THEY GREW

BY MARGARET SIDNEY.

12mo0, Cloth, $1.50.

“No book written for children within the past decade has had so large a circulation or given
so much pleasure to the young as has Margaret Sidney’s “Five Little Peppers.” These very live
little children and their doings were pictured in that book with such art and with so thorough an
appreciation of child life at its best, that not only were the children who sat in circles in thousands
of homes to hear the story read, delighted with it, but the elders who did the reading were almost
equally pleased.” — Detroit Free Press.

“A book of home life and love. It tells the story of a poor family, obliged to pinch and plan
and scrimp from day to day, but the members of which are so imbued with the home-spirit as to

make the little brown house in which they live a genuine paradise.” — Chicago Interior.
“Tt is not one of the professed Christmas books, but there is enough Christmas feeling in it
for six.” — Boston Budget.

“Of all books for juvenile readers not one possesses more of the peculiar qualities which go
to make up a perfect story. It ought, for the lesson it teaches, to be in the hands of every boy and

girl in the country.” — Boston Transcript.

“TE the book had no other worth, it would be valuable as a refutation of the cynical old say-
ing, that, ‘when want comes in at the door, love flies out at the window.’ The little Peppers were

very poor, but very happy and affectionate in spite of it.” — Boston Journad.

“Tt is quite impossible to read this book without laughing and crying.” — Youxg /dea, Boston
hx At the bookstores, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers,

D. LOTHROP COMPANY, Boston, Mass.
FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS MIDWAY

SEQUEL TO

FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW.

By MARGARET SIDNEY.

Tlustrated by W. L. Taylor. 12mo, $1.50.

Ever since delighted children first read “Five Little Peppers,” that wonderful
story of pure, sweet, happy child-life in the midst of privations and poverty and
self-denial, there has been a constant appeal from the thousands of its readers
for “more, more.” It seemed as if nothing could satisfy them but to know
further about this most lovable and beloved family.

Polly, Ben, Davie, Joel and Phronsie all reappear in the new story, so do the
Kings and the Whitneys, so does the “Little Brown House,” so does the love
that made the Peppers so happy there, so do the acts of self-sacrifice in which
this love found vent. A few new characters are introduced, of whom the chief
is Mrs. Algernon Chatterton, a veritable ogre in the eyes of all the young people
and some of the older ones, but a brave and generous woman at heart, as is made
evident in the dénoument.

There are some rather exciting happenings as there always must be when
nine or ten wide-awake children are gathered under one roof. Dick breaks his
arm, Phronsie gets lost, a real burglar is secured by Dick’s heroism, a sham
burglary results disastrously for Joel.

There is a holiday visit to Badgertown, and this is the occasion for any
amount of old-time laughings, scamperings, story-tellings, coastings, straw-rides
and baking frolies.

And the best of it is that through it all old heads and young hearts keep to-
gether; old hearts grow tenderer and young heads grow wiser. ‘This is a book
of stored-up sunshine and no one need be afraid of exhausting the supply, though
he absorb just all he can. There is certainly enough for every boy and girl in
the land, and perhaps— who knows ?—a little to spare for the old folks.



x" Al the bookstores, or sent post-paid by the publishers, on reciept of price.

D. LOTHROP COMPANY, Boston, Mass.

-
AC

~~






SESS