The Story of Our Country. Various
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navigator.
One day a glad sailor called his comrades and pointed over the side. A branch of a green bush was floating by with fresh berries on it. It looked as if it had just been broken off a bush. Another day one of them picked from the water a stick which had been carved with a knife. Land birds were seen flying over the ships. Hope came back to their hearts. They were sure now that land must be near.
October 11th came. When night fell dozens of men were on the lookout. Each wanted to be the first to see land. About 10 o'clock that night, Columbus, who was looking out over the waves, saw a light far off. It moved up and down like a lantern carried in a man's hand.
Hope now grew strong. Every eye looked out into the darkness. About two o'clock in the morning came the glad cry of "Land! Land!" A gun was fired from the leading vessel. One of its sailors had seen what looked like land in the moonlight. You may be sure no one slept any more that night.
When daylight came the joyful sailors saw before them a low, green shore, on which the sunlight lay in beauty; men and women stood on it, looking in wonder at the ships, which they thought must be great white-winged birds. They had never seen such things before. We can hardly think what we would have done if we had been in their place.
When the boats from the ships came to the shore, and Columbus landed, clad in shining armor, and bearing the great banner of Spain, the simple natives fell to the ground on their faces. They thought the gods had come from heaven to visit them.
Some of the red-skinned natives wore ornaments of gold. They were asked by signs where they had got this gold, and pointed south. Soon all were on board again, the ships once more spread their sails, and swiftly they flew southward before the wind.
Day by day, as they went on, new islands arose, some small, some large, all green and beautiful. Columbus thought this must be India, which he had set out to find, and he called the people Indians. He never knew that it was a new continent he had discovered.
The month of March of the next year came before the little fleet sailed again into the port of Palos. The people hailed it with shouts of joy, for they had mourned their friends as dead.
Fast spread the news. When Columbus entered Barcelona, where the king and queen were, bringing with him new plants, birds and animals, strange weapons, golden ornaments, and some of the red-skinned natives, he was received as if he had been a king. He was seated beside the king; he rode by his side in the street; he was made a grandee of Spain; all the honors of the kingdom were showered on him.
We here recall the incident of Columbus and the egg. A dinner was given in his honor and many great men were there. The attention Columbus received made some people jealous. One of them with a sneer asked Columbus if he did not think any one else could have discovered the Indies. In answer Columbus took an egg from a dish on the table and handing it to the questioner asked him to make it stand on end.
After trying several times the man gave it up. Columbus, taking the egg in his hand, tapping it gently on one end against the top of the table so as to break the shell slightly, made it balance.
"Any one could do that," said the man. "So any one can discover the Indies after I have shown him the way," said Columbus.
It was his day of pride and triumph. Poor Columbus was soon to find out how Spain treated those who had given to it the highest honor and the greatest riches. Three times again he sailed to the New World, and once a base Spanish governor sent him back to Spain with chains upon his limbs. Those chains he kept hanging in his room till he died, and asked that they should be buried with him.
They who had once given him every honor, now treated him with shameful neglect. He who had ridden beside the king and dined with the highest nobles of Spain, became poor, sad and lonely.
He died in 1506, fourteen years after his great discovery.
Then Spain, which had treated him so badly, began to honor his memory. But it came too late for poor Columbus, who had been allowed to die almost like a pauper, after he had made Spain the richest country in Europe.
CHAPTER II
THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS
VERY likely some of the readers of this book have asked their fathers or mothers how Spain came to own the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico, whose people they treated so badly that the United States had to go to war a few years ago and take these islands from Spain. Of course, you all know how the battleship Maine was blown up in the harbor of the city of Havana, and nearly all its brave sailors went to the bottom and were drowned. That was one reason why we went to war. If you should ask me that question, I would say that these were some of the islands which Columbus found, when he sailed into those sunny seas four centuries ago. They were settled by Spaniards, who killed off all their people and have lived on them ever since. There they have raised sugar cane, and tobacco, and coffee, and also oranges and bananas and all kinds of fine fruits.
They might have kept on owning these islands and raising these fruits for many years to come, if they had not been so cruel to the people that they rose against them, and with the help of the United States Government the islands were taken from Spain.
When Columbus told the nobles and people of Spain of his wonderful discovery, and showed them the plants and animals, the gold and other things, he had found on these far-off islands, it made a great excitement in that country.
You know how the finding of gold in Alaska has sent thousands of our own people to that cold country after the shining yellow metal. In the same way the gold which Columbus brought back sent thousands of Spaniards across the wide seas to the warm and beautiful islands of which the great sailor told them, where they hoped to find gold like stones in our streets.
Dozens of ships soon set sail from Spain, carrying thousands of people to the fair lands of the west, from which they expected to come back laden with riches. At the same time two daring sailors from England, John Cabot and his son Sebastian, crossed the ocean farther north, and found land where the Northmen had found it five hundred years before. In the seas into which the Cabots sailed, great fish were so plentiful that the ships could hardly sail through them, and bears swam out in the water and caught the fish in their mouths. That was certainly a queer way of fishing.
When the Cabots came back and told what they had seen, you may be sure the daring fishermen of Europe did not stay long at home. Soon numbers of their stout little vessels were crossing the ocean, and most of them came back so full of great codfish that the water almost ran over their decks.
Do you not think these fishermen were wiser than the Spaniards, who went everywhere seeking for gold, and finding very little of it? Gold is only good to buy food and other things; but if these can be had without buying they are better still. At any rate, the hardy fishermen thought so, and they were more lucky in finding fish than the Spaniards were in finding gold.
Thus the years passed on, and more and more Spaniards came to the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (which is now known as Hayti or San Domingo). And some of them soon began to sail farther west in search of new lands. Columbus, in his last voyage, reached the coasts of South America and Central America and other Spanish ships followed to those new shores.
I might tell you many wonderful things about these daring men. One of them was named Balboa, whose story you will be glad to hear, for it is full of strange events. This man had gone to the island of Hispaniola to make his fortune, but he found there only bad fortune. He had to work on a farm, and in time he became so poor and owed so much money that it seemed as if he could never get out of debt. In fact he was in sad straits.