of doubt and foreboding. Trivial obstacles might, in this early stage of the voyage, spread panic and mutiny through his crews, and induce them to renounce the prosecution of the enterprise.

Martin Alonzo Pinzon, who commanded the Pinta, secured the rudder with cords, but these fastenings soon gave way, and the caraval proving defective in other respects, Columbus remained three weeks cruising among the Canary Islands, in search of another vessel to replace her. Not being able to find one, the Pinta was repaired, and furnished with a new rudder. The latine sails of the Niña were also altered into square sails, that she might work more steadily and securely. While making these repairs, and taking in wood and water, Columbus was informed that three Portuguese caravals had been seen hovering off the island of Ferro. Dreading some hostile stratagem, on the part of the King of Portugal, in revenge for his having embarked in the service of Spain, he put to sea early on the morning of the 6th of September, but for three days a profound calm detained the vessels within a short distance of the land. This was a tantalizing delay, for Columbus trembled lest something should occur to defeat his expedition, and was impatient to find himself far upon the ocean, out of sight of either land or sail; which, in the pure atmospheres of these latitudes, may be descried at an immense distance.

On Sunday, the 9th of September, as day broke, he beheld Ferro about nine leagues distant; he was in the very neighbourhood, therefore, where the Portuguese caravals had been seen. Fortunately a breeze sprang up with the sun, and in the course of

the day, the heights of Ferro gradually faded from the horizon.

On losing sight of this last trace of land, the hearts of the crews failed them, for they seemed to have taken leave of the world. Behind them was every thing dear to the heart of man-country, family, friends, life itself; before them every thing was chaos, mystery, and peril. In the perturbation of the moment, they despaired of ever more seeing their homes. Many of the rugged seamen shed tears, and some broke into loud lamentations. Columbus tried in every way to soothe their distress, describing the splendid countries to which he expected to conduct them, and promising them land, riches, and every thing that could arouse their cupidity or inflame their imaginations; nor were these promises made for purposes of deception, for he certainly believed he should realize them all.

He now gave orders to the commanders of the other vessels, in case they should be separated by any accident, to continue directly westward; but that, after sailing seven hundred leagues, they should lay by from midnight until daylight, as at about that distance he confidently expected to find land. Foreseeing that the vague terrors already awakened among the seamen would increase with the space which intervened between them and their homes, he commenced a stratagem which he continued throughout the voyage. This was to keep two reckonings, one private, in which the true way of the ship was noted, and which he retained in secret for his own government; the other public, for general inspection, in which a number of leagues was daily subtracted from the sailing of the ships,

so as to keep the crews in ignorance of the real distance they had advanced.

When about one hundred and fifty leagues west of Ferro, they fell in with a part of a mast of a large vessel, and the crews, tremblingly alive to every portent, looked with a rueful eye upon this fragment of a wreck, drifting ominously at the entrance of these unknown seas.

On the 13th of September, in the evening, Columbus, for the first time, noticed the variation of the needle, a phenomenon which had never before been remarked. He at first made no mention of it, lest his people should be alarmed; but it soon attracted the attention of the pilots, and filled them with consternation. It seemed as if the very laws of nature were changing as they advanced, and that they were entering another world, subject to unknown influences. They apprehended that the compass was about to lose its mysterious virtues, and, without this guide, what was to become of them in a vast and trackless ocean? Columbus tasked his science and ingenuity for reasons with which to allay their terrors. He told them that the direction of the needle was not to the polar star, but to some fixed and invisible point. The variation, therefore, was not caused by any fallacy in the compass, but by the movement of the north star itself, which, like the other heavenly bodies, had its changes and revolutions, and every day described a circle round the pole. The high opinion they entertained of Columbus as a profound astronomer gave weight to his theory, and their alarm subsided.

They had now arrived within the influence of the trade wind, which, following the sun, blows steadily from east to west between the tropics, and sweeps

With

over a few adjoining degrees of the ocean. this propitious breeze directly aft, they were wafted gently but speedily over a tranquil sea, so that for many days they did not shift a sail. Columbus in his journal perpetually recurs to the bland and temperate serenity of the weather, and compares the pure and balmy mornings to those of April in Andalusia, observing, that the song of the nightingale was alone wanting to complete the illusion.

They now began to see large patches of herbs and weeds all drifting from the west. Some were such as grow about rocks or in rivers, and as green as if recently washed from the land. On one of the patches was a live crab. They saw also a white tropical bird, of a kind which never sleeps upon the sea; and tunny fish played about the ships. Columbus now supposed himself arrived in the weedy sea described by Aristotle, into which certain ships of Cadiz had been driven by an impetuous east wind.

As he advanced, there were various other signs that gave great animation to the crews; many birds were seen flying from the west; there was a cloudiness in the north, such as often hangs over land; and at sunset the imagination of the seamen, aided by their desires, would shape those clouds into distant islands. Every one was eager to be the first to behold and announce the wished-for shore; for the sovereigns had promised a pension of thirty crowns to whomsoever should first discover land. Columbus sounded occasionally with a line of two hundred fathoms, but found no bottom. Martin Alonzo Pinzon, as well as others of his officers, and many of the seamen, were often solicitous for Columbus to alter his course, and steer in the direction

of these favourable signs; but he persevered in steering to the westward, trusting that, by keeping in one steady direction, he should reach the coast of India, even if he should miss the intervening islands, and might then seek them on his return.

Notwithstanding the precaution which had been taken to keep the people ignorant of the distance they had sailed, they gradually became uneasy at the length of the voyage. The various indications of land which occasionally flattered their hopes, passed away one after another, and the same interminable expanse of sea and sky continued to extend before them. They had advanced much farther to the west than ever man had sailed before, and though already beyond the reach of succour, were still pressing onward and onward into that apparently boundless abyss. Even the favourable wind, which seemed as if providentially sent to waft them to the new world with such bland and gentle breezes, was conjured by their fears into a source of alarm. They feared that the wind in these seas might always prevail from the east, and if so, would never permit their return to Spain. A few light breezes from the west allayed for a time their last apprehension, and several small birds, such as keep about groves and orchards, came singing in the morning, and flew away at night. Their song was wonderfully cheering to the hearts of the poor mariners, who hailed it as the voice of land The birds they had hitherto seen had been large and strong of wing; but such small birds, they observed, were too feeble to fly far, and their singing showed that they were not exhausted by their flight.

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