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It was difficult to man the ships, sailors generally being frightened at the enterprise, but at last the captains succeeded in getting together one hundred and twenty men, and on Friday, August 3rd, 1492, the admiral crossing at eight o'clock in the morning the bar of Saltez, off the town of Huelva, in Andalusia, adventured himself with his three half-decked caravels upon the Atlantic waves.
Next, we have that large and increasing class of Americans, who, either from natural bias, or from the severe political shocks of the last twelve years, have accepted what we may call the politics of despair, by which is meant, not so much a belief in any definite ill fortune for the Republic, as a conviction that the United States are being borne on to an end not seen, by a current which it is impossible to resist; that it is futile longer to seek to interpose restraints upon the rate of this progress, or to change its direction; that the nation has already gone far outside the traditional limits of safe political navigation, and is taking its course, for weal or woe, across an unknown sea, not unlike that little squadron which sailed out from the Straits of Saltez on the 3d of August, 1492.
Three other expeditions left Spain almost at the same time as that of Hojeda. The first of these, consisting of but one vessel, sailed from Barra Saltez in June 1499. Pier Alonzo Nino, who had served under Columbus in his two last voyages, was its commander, and he was accompanied by Christoval Guerra, a merchant of Seville, who probably defrayed the expenses of the expedition.
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