The Portland daily press., 1892-10-21

And murmured to the men: The sea is steep
Which slopes to westward q hard hill to
climb
Should the black caravel return, some time,
With aged creT deceased,
Across the distance of the Shadowy Deep.
And Teneriffes fire
Glowed like the gloomy portent of alfunera
pyre
The shifting compass wavered like the mind
OF men who feared to trust them to their
star
Doubling lest on the ocean, strange, i'm
menSe,
They might have passed beyond Gods provl
idence.
Exchanging blew the wind,
Aud all around the vessel, near and far,
Stretched adense tapestry,
The fowerage intricate of the Sargasso Sea.
XIV.
They brooded-those dull mariners, yet brave
Or spake out boldly of their discomfort,
Or suffering from wild desire for home,
And horror of the waters, would become
Half-mad. Columbus gave
Such consolation as his fancy lent,
Picmring Paradise as
On earth, and heather folk to ransom for the
skies.
Insolemn vigils of the sleepless hours,
The admiral held council with the night;
The deepeped dome of heaven with golden
lamps,
The breezes laden with the salt sea damps,
And the impressive powers
OF loneliness and the sidereal light
Confirmed his strength and will,
And babe him steer to westward and to west
ward still.
The friendly chorus of the ocean-birds
Beckoned him, with clear cries, to come to
land;
The broken leafy reed, the turtle-dove
Came floating flying, under and above
Land, hol And with the words
Cleaving dark silence like glad command,
A gun with fiery lips
Shouted the welcome news to all the watchful
ships.
Behold the triumph of enduring faith
At last new Atlantis from the sea,
To him who, trustful, sought twas arisen
Above the sombre waters which imprison
The ancient mournful wrath
OF the lost isle. Yea, it shall ever be
That to believing eyes
New worlds and worlds beyond continually
arise
President Baxter next read an able and
carefully prepared paper on certain in
teresting circumstances of the discovery
of America:
Three Suggestive Maps.
Four hundred years ago at this time,
the little ship which bore the immortal
discoverer, Christopher Columbus, was
nearing the shores of San Salvador, the
discovery of which was soon to lead to
the discovery and colonization of this
great continent.
The idea that land existed in the west
ern ocean was not original with Colum-
bus. More than sixteen centuries before
the great discoverer presented himself
a beggar at the convent of Santa Maria,
and impaired his theories to the good
prior of Rabida, Erasthosthenes, assum
ing the sphericity of the ear tn, had given
form to it; indeed, he had nearly calcula-
ted the size of the globe, and it was held
that if sit were not that the vast extent
of the Atlantic Sea, rendered it impossi-
BILE, one might even sail from the coast
of Spain to that of India along the same
parallel" Besides Martin Behaim, a
friend of Columbus, adopting the theory,
then generally accepted by geographers,
had constructed globe showing across
the Atlantic the eastern coast of the
Asiatic continent. What was not known
was the existence of the American con-
tinent between the eastern and western
shores of the then known world. See
map No. l.
This section of Behaim's globe shows
how near the truth he was. Nor was
Behaim by any means singular in his be-
lief. 1t had long been that of geograph-
ers, and the wonder is, that it's truth had
not been earlier established by ambitious
navigators Undoubtedly the American
Continent had been visited long before
the time of Columbus; notably by Scan
dinavians, and by the brothers Nicolo
and Antonio Zeno, and it is strongly
claimed that Columbus not only had Wis
tied Norway and heard the stories of
Scandinavian discovery in the western
ocean, but had seen that remarkable map
which in his day was hanging in the Zeno
palace in Venice. This map, the puzzle
more discussion than any map ever be-
fore discovered, shows without doubt,
the eastern coast of the American iConti-
nent, as well as Greenland and some of
the neighboring islands.
But it was reserved for Columbus to
bring the Western Continent to the at
tention of Europe, and to him should
the honor of so doing be awarded. That
he had not the honor of having his name
bestowed upon the New World has been
deplored by his admirers; yet, as the
first discoverer of the Western Cont
nent, Cabot's claim is the better, and
that great navigator's biographer, argues
with much force, that it should have
been named Cabotia, and the southern
Columbia. 1t seems a strange chance
that affixed to the New World the name
of America, and here another map
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