I. CHAP. of all these difficulties, he preserved the courage and noble self-control that so dignifies his character. His confidence 1492. in the success of his enterprise, was not the idle dream of a mere enthusiast; it was founded in reason, it was based on science. His courage was the courage of one, who, in the earnest pursuit of truth, loses sight of every personal consideration. He asked only for a little more time, that he might prove to others the truth of what he himself so firmly believed. When lo! the following night the land breeze, fragrant with the perfume of flowers, greeted them; never was it more grateful to the worn and weary sailor. The ships were ordered to lie to, lest they should run upon rocks. Suddenly the ever watchful eye of Columbus saw a light, a moving light! The alternations of hope and fear, the visions of fame and greatness, or the higher aspirations that may have filled his soul on that eventful night, are more easily imagined than described. Frid., Oct. 12. The next morning, they saw lying before them in all its luxuriant beauty an island, called by the natives Guanahani, but renamed by Columbus, San Salvador, or Holy Saviour. With a portion of his crew he landed. Falling on their knees, they offered thanksgivings to God, who had crowned their labors with success. Columbus raised a banner, and planted a cross, and thus took formal possession of the land in the names of his sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. The awe-stricken natives watched the ceremony from amid the groves; they thought the white strangers were the children of the sun, their great deity. Alas! the cross did not prove to them the emblem of peace and good-will! Columbus explored this island-one of the Bahama group-and discovered others, now known as the West Indies. Thus he spent three months; then taking with him seven of the natives, he sailed for home. On the 15th 1493. of March he arrived at Palos. From that port to the court HIS THIRD VOYAGE. I. 5 at Barcelona, his progress was a triumphal procession. He CHAP. was graciously received by the King and Queen, who appointed him Viceroy or Governor of all the countries he 1493. had or should discover. They conferred upon him and his family titles of nobility, and permission to use a coat of arms. The day he made his discovery, was the day of his triumph; this day was the recognition of it by his patrons and by the world. His past life had been one of unremitting toil and hope deferred; but in the future were bright prospects for himself and his family. But his title, the object of his honorable ambition, proved the occasion of all his after sorrows. The honors so justly conferred upon him, excited the jealousy of the Spanish nobility. From this time his life was one continued contest with his enemies. He made more voyages, and more discoveries in the West Indies. On his third voyage he saw the main- 1498. land at the mouth of the Orinoco. It seems never to have occurred to him, that a river so large must necessarily drain a vast territory. He supposed the lands he had discovered were islands belonging to Cathay, or Farther India; from this circumstance the natives of the New World were called Indians. It is more than probable Columbus died without knowing that he had found a great continent. After a few years his enemies so far prevailed, that on a false accusation he was sent home in chains from the island of Hispaniola. Isabella, indignant at the treatment he had received, ordered them to be taken off, and all his rights and honors restored. Ferdinand promised to aid her in rendering him justice, and in punishing his enemies; but, double-dealing and ungenerous, he did neither. To the misfortunes of Columbus was added the death of Isabella, his kind and generous patroness. And now he was openly maligned and persecuted. Their work was soon done; in a short time he died, worn out by disease and I. CHAP. disappointment. His last words were: "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." 1506. His body was deposited in a convent in Spain. Ferdinand, it is said, ordered a monument to his memory, The justice he had denied him in life he was willing to inscribe upon his tomb,-it was to bear the inscription : "Columbus has given a world to Castile and Leon." The body of Columbus was afterwards conveyed to Hispaniola. After a lapse of almost three hundred years that island passed into the hands of the French. Generations had come and gone, but the Spanish nation remembered that Columbus had "given a world to Castile and Leon;" and they wished to retain his remains within their own territories. They disinterred them, and with imposing ceremonies transferred them to Havana in the 1795. island of Cuba, where they still remain. About seven years after the first voyage of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine gentleman, visited the West Indies, and also landed on the eastern coast of South America. On his return he published a glowing description of the newly discovered countries. From this circumstance the name AMERICA was given to the New World by a German writer on Geography, who may have been ignorant of the claims of Columbus. CHAPTER II. THE ABORIGINES. II. IN the earliest ages of the world the ancient inhabit- CHAP. ants of America may have come from Asia. The proximity of the two continents in the vicinity of Behring's Straits and the Aleutian Isles, renders such an emigration comparatively easy. There is reason to believe the people found here by Europeans, were not the original inhabitants of the land. Throughout the continent, more especially in the valley of the Mississippi, are found monuments of a race more ancient,-mounds and enclosures of great extent,— the work, not of roving savages, but of a people who lived in settled habitations, it may be, as prosperous and peaceful cultivators of the soil. To build these immense monuments, the materials of which were frequently brought from a distance, required the labor and toil of a numerous population. Perhaps in the vicinity of these works, villages and cities once stood. The enclosures were used either as places of defence, or for purposes of worship, and perhaps for both; the mounds evidently as places of burial for kings or chiefs. The antiquary finds here no inscriptions, which, like those found on the plains of Shinar or in the valley of the Nile, can unfold the mysteries of bygone centuries. He finds only the scattered remnants of vessels of earthen II. CHAP. ware, rude weapons of warfare, axes made of stone, and ornaments worn only by a people rude and uncultivated. How much of happiness or of misery this ancient people experienced during those many ages, none can tell. In an evil hour came some dire calamity. It may have been. civil war, which in its path spread desolation far and wide; blotted out their imperfect civilization, and drove the more peaceful inhabitants further south, where they founded the empires of Mexico and Peru; while those who remained degenerated into roving savages, and converted those fertile plains into hunting-grounds. Or may we not rather suppose that centuries after the first emigration, there came another from the same mother of nations, Asia ;—that the latter were warlike savages, who lived not by cultivating the soil but by hunting ;-that these invaders drove the peaceful inhabitants of that beautiful region to the far south, and took possession of the conquered land as their own home and hunting-ground? Travellers have noticed the near resemblance of the aborigines of North America to the people of northeastern Asia, not only in their customs but in their physical appearance. "The daring traveller Ledyard, as he stood in Siberia with men of the Mongolian race before him, and compared them with the Indians who had been his old play-fellows and school-mates at Dartmouth, writes deliberately that, 'universally and circumstantially they resemble the aborigines of America.' On the Connecticut and the Obi, he saw but one race.” 1 More than two thousand years ago, Herodotus wrote in his history, that the Scythians practised the custom of scalping their enemies slain in battle; that the warrior preserved these scalps as the evidence of his bravery, and used them to decorate his tent and the trappings of his horse. The wonderful skill of these Scythians in han 1 Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. III., page 318. |