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any indications of land to the westward which they had observed or heard of. They all had stories to tell of rumors in respect to land having been seen in that direction. Columbus listened to these accounts with great interest, but they all proved in the end to be fabulous.

These rumors in respect to land, false as they were proved to be in the end, were encouraging in their influence at the time, but there were others which were somewhat alarming. A small vessel came from the island of Ferro, which lies a little to the southwestward of Gomera, and is the most westerly island of the group, with a report that a squadron of Portuguese vessels was lying in wait near that island in order to intercept Columbus and prevent the prosecution of the voyage. The motive was, it was said, a jealousy on the part of the Portuguese government lest the Spaniards should outstrip and supersede them in the work of discovering new countries to the westward. Columbus paid no attention to these rumors, and he saw nothing of any such squadron. The whole story may have been an invention of his sailors, many of whom were unwilling to proceed on the voyage, and seem to have resorted to all possible contrivances to thwart and prevent it.

While the expedition remained at Gomera they

saw some grand volcanic eruptions from the mountains of Teneriffe.

September 6. The expedition sailed from Gomera, or rather attempted to sail, on the morning of this day, but the air was perfectly calm and the sea like glass, so that they made no progress. They were drifted about this way and that by the currents all that day and all the night following, so that on the morning of the next day they found themselves between Gomera and Teneriffe. Thus they had gone back rather than forward.

September 7. The calm continued and the vessels made very little progress. They still remained in the immediate vicinity of the Canary Islands.

THE VOYAGE COMMENCED IN EARNEST AT LAST.

September 8. At three o'clock in the morning a fresh breeze sprung up from the northward, and immediately all sails were set, and the ships began to move swiftly through the water. In coming from Portugal to the present position of the ships the expedition had been navigating seas which the sailors were already familiar with, the voyage to and from the Canaries being very common in those days. The course which they had pursued, as will appear from the chart, lay nearly parallel to the coast of Africa, and not very far from it. But

now they were to strike out in an entirely new direction, steering due west, into seas wholly unknown, and it was consequently not until this time that their real voyage was begun.

September 9. The wind was fresh and fair and the ships went on at great speed. The sailors, finding how rapidly the gale was bearing them away into wholly unknown regions, manifested some discontent, and Columbus, in order to diminish as much as possible any tendency to alarm which they might feel, began to adopt the plan of reporting on the log of the vessel a considerably smaller number of leagues each day than was actually run. He continued this system all the voyage. He kept a private account for himself, in which he entered the true numbers, but he showed to his men another account, in which the distance run each day was reduced, as much as he thought it would bear to be reduced without exciting suspicion. For twenty leagues he counted only sixteen, and for other numbers in proportion. Even his pilots were deceived by these false returns.

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He probably thought that this was all right, the deception being practiced for a good motive, and being in some respects of the nature of a stratagem of war. But among all high-minded and honorable men at the present day such a falsification of

his own official documents by the commander of an expedition, made for the purpose of aiding him in the discipline of his crew, would be considered wholly inexcusable. It was certainly inconsistent with the exalted sentiments of moral duty, and, still more, with the high Christian principles, which Columbus professed to entertain. If the subordinate members of an expedition cannot rely upon the honesty of documentary statements made to them formally by their commander in his official character, in what case can they confide in him where he has any interest to deceive them?

September 11 The crews of the ships, of course, kept a close and constant lookout, not only in the direction of the western horizon, for land, but also in every direction over the surface of the sea, for any birds, marine animals, sea-weed, or floating objects of any kind which might come into view. They saw several objects of this kind on different occasions, but on this day they were all greatly excited by the appearance of a large portion of a top-mast, which they saw floating in the water. They were going at such a rate of speed, and the sea was so high, that they could not get the mast, and they were obliged to content themselves with watching it with the eye as long as it continued in sight. It was probably the mast of

some vessel which had been wrecked in the European seas, and had been brought out to this distance from the land by the currents.

VARIATION OF THE NEEDLE.

Sept. 13. Of course the vessels were steered by the compass, and whenever the sky was overcast there was no other guide. The position of the sun, however, even without the compass, would have helped the navigator very much in determining his course, and in the night the north star furnished a means of guidance which could be still more easily followed. And as it was, every night when the stars were to be seen, they furnished the means of verifying the indications of the compass, so long as they were true. Thus far, whenever these comparisons between the direction of the needle and the position of the star had been made by night, no deviation had been observed, but now Columbus found, to his great uneasiness, that instead of pointing toward the north star, the needle declined from it very sensibly toward the north

west.

The pilots and the sailors soon observed this phenomenon too, and they were more alarmed by it than Columbus had been. Columbus himself had felt no real concern, for the deviation thus

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