left on his mind cannot be accurately ascertained; certainly Toscanelli's opinions greatly influenced him. Unfortunately, the map has long since disappeared; the representation of it given herewith is simply an attempt to show the relation of Toscanelli's ideas to the actual fact. There is, however, a map, or rather a globe, which presents the globe. Win- ideas of the period just preceding the discovery of America. The maker was Martin Behaim, a German navigator, who had already sailed along the shores of eastern Africa;

Behaim's

sor's Colum

bus, 186-190; Winsor's America, II,

104.

Toscanelli

he probably completed the globe in 1492, certainly before he heard of Columbus's discovery. The portion of it which relates to the subject in hand is here reproduced. Both Behaim and Toscanelli greatly underestimated the size

of the earth; they thought that it was

only about two thirds

as large as it really is. It is not difficult to see how this miscalculation arose; they knew something about the size of the continent of Asia; they had no conception of the great masses of water which lie between western Europe and eastern Asia. One result of this error was to place Japan (called Cipango on Behaim's globe) somewhere between the western coast of Mexico and the island of Santo Domingo. Looking at the facsimile of Behaim's globe, it is easy to understand what it was that Columbus sought to accomplish when he sailed forth on his great voyage; it is also easy to comprehend how he was led to believe that he had fulfilled his purpose and had reached an outlying

Columbus's mistaken theories.

Asiatic land when, as a matter of fact, he was off the coast of Cuba. It is fortunate that this mistake arose, or Columbus would not have set out on his voyage. Japan is really about ten thousand miles west of Europe; Columbus maintained that it was only three thousand miles west of the Canaries. It was difficult to procure men and vessels for the shorter voyage; it might have been impossible to obtain either the one or the other for such

Clough's
Columbus.

Behaim's globe

a tremendous venture as the real problem demanded. As it was, the task to which Columbus set himself was without precedent. For a thousand years sage men had believed the earth to be a ball, and that Asia might be reached by sailing across the Sea of Darkness; until Columbus appeared, no one had deliberately set forth to test the validity of the theory:

What if wise men, as far back as Ptolemy,

Judged that the earth like an orange was round,
None of them ever said, come along, follow me,
Sail to the West and the East will be found.

1492]

Columbus's First Voyage

29

* Winsor's Columbus;

Columbus
(abridged
ed.), 55-119;
Fiske's Dis-
covery, 1,419;

American History Leaflets, No. 1;

15. Columbus's First Voyage, 1492. On the 3d of The voyage. August, 1492, the little fleet of three vessels passed out of the roadstead of Palos; on August 24 and 25 the triangular Irving's Peak of Teneriffe was in sight; and, on September 3, the Canaries were behind them. Westward they sailed, wafted along by light easterly breezes, with every now and then a calm; at one time the weeds of the Sargasso Sea were around them, and they steered northward to avoid them, and then westward again. On October 7, after they had been out of sight of land for more than a month, Martin Alonzo Pinzon, the captain of the Pinta, induced ries, I, No. the admiral to change the course of the fleet to the 17. southwest. It was well that he did so. Had the vessels continued longer on their westerly course, they would have passed north of the Bahamas, out of sight of land, have become involved in the current of the Gulf Stream, and have reached the American shores in the stormy region of the Carolina coasts.

As it happened, however,

on the evening of October 11, Columbus saw a light in the distance, and at two o'clock the Pinta, which was in advance, made land. When day dawned, the land was in plain sight; it proved to be an island, called by the Indians Guanahani; but which of the three thousand islands and islets of the Bahama group this island was, no one knows, nor, in all probability, ever will know. Sailing thence, Columbus reached the northern coast of Cuba, and, doubling back on his course, discovered the island of Santo Domingo, or Española (Little Spain), as it was called at the time; the Indian name was Haiti. After many adventures, great hardships, and imminent dangers, Columbus returned to Spain, having lost his largest ship off the coast of Española. At Barcelona, he was received by Ferdinand and Isabella with great splendor. He had most wonderful stories to tell, which lost nothing in the telling; he also had many interesting things to show them,— ornaments of gold, curious woods, and, above all, some natives of the Indian islands on the other side of the Ocean Sea,

and Hart's Contempora

The second

* Winsor's Columbus.

voyage, 1494. at once fitted out, and Columbus sailed at the head of a distinguished company to take possession of the magic islands; but his later career was not fortunate. There was little treasure to be found in the lands first occupied by the Spaniards, and Columbus's despotic temper, well suited

The third voyage, 1498. * Winsor's Columbus;

Higginson's Explorers, 31-50.

Map made by La Cosa, 1500

to the explorer, proved a misfortune to the founder of a colony. Harshness and a failure to fulfill his promises led to rebellion. In 1496 he returned to Spain for reinforcements. On this voyage he had explored the southern coasts of Cuba and had discovered the island of Jamaica.

The year 1498 saw him again on the western side of the Atlantic. This time he pursued a more southerly route, reached the northeastern corner of South America, and