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I have always had a deep admiration for your native land. I vinerate the mimory of that great, that noble Eyetalian who was the original and first discoverer of this here land of ours. "Why, gintlemen, at me mother's knee I was taught to sing that inspirin' song: 'Columbus, the Jim of the Ocean'!" Whereupon there was loud applause. Mr. Johnsing had an enthusiastic admirer in Little Eph Jones.
Under the splendid inspiration of Prince Henry the Navigator, an inspiration that remained potent throughout Portugal long after his death, Bartholomew Dias, five years before Columbus made his voyage to America, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, actually sailed into the Indian Ocean, and was pressing on toward India when his crew, from exhaustion, refused to go farther, and he was forced to return home.
While we were still in Columbus I began to read them, but I did not read so much of them as could have helped me to a truer and freer ideal. I read "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and I liked its vulgar music and its heavy-handed sarcasm.
Diaz ordered Columbus to come on board his small vessel in order to go and report himself to the King's officers; but Columbus replied that he was the Admiral of the Sovereigns of Castile, "that he did not render such account to such persons," and that he declined to leave his ship.
Alexander H. Everett, then minister to Spain, at once granted the request, and in replying suggested a possible literary task the translation of a new Spanish work, Navarrete's "Voyages of Columbus," which was shortly to make its appearance. Murray, who was then in some difficulties, did not think favorably of the project.
Then certain enterprising sailors Vasco da Gama, Maghalaes, Columbus brought home the news that the known world was only one side of an enormous globe, and that there were vast lands and great peoples thousands of miles across the ocean. The minds of men in Europe had hardly strained their shells sufficiently to embrace this larger earth when the second discovery was reported.
Every possible site for an interoceanic canal lies within the strip of land thus visited by Columbus shortly before his death in 1504.
His promises could never fill up the empty hold of the ship that was going back to Spain; and so, failing the rich cargo which the men of La Navidad were to have gathered, Columbus bethought himself of some other way in which his discoveries might bring money to the Spanish Crown.
This shabby dreamer, this penniless beggar aspired to honour and dignities fit for a prince! It was absurd, and not to be thought of. If this beggarly sailor would have Spain assist him he must needs be more humble in suit. But not one jot would Columbus abate of his demands.
Columbus must have been painfully conscious that the time for sending samples had more than expired, and that the people in Spain might reasonably expect some of the actual riches of which there had been so many specimens and promises.
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