Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-10-10


them farther aud farther away from the
the shore of another country, if there IS
any.
After awhile there comes calm day,
and the attempt is made to fathom the
ocean, and they cannot touch bottom.
though the line and lead run down two
hundred fathoms. More delightful sen
sations for those who are not good sail
ors! A fathom is six feet, and two hun
dred fathoms, one thousand two hundred
feet, and below that it may be many
hundred feet deeper. To add interest to
the voyage, on the twentieth day out a
violent storm sweeps the sea, and the
Atlantic ocean tries what it can do with
the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the
Nina. Some of you know something of
what sea can do2w5th the Umbria, the
Majestic, the Teutonic and the City of
Paris, and you must imagine what the
ocean could do with those three small
ships of Olden time.
You may Judge what the ocean was
then by what it is now. 1t has never
changed its habits. It can smile like
hemo1ning, but often it is the archangel
of wrath, and its most rollicking fun is q
shipwreck. The mutinous crew would
have killed Columbus had it not been
for the general opinion on shipboard
that he was the only one that could take
them back home in safety. The promise
OF Il silk waistcoat and forty dollars in
money to the man who should first dis
cover land appeased them somewhat, but
the indignation and blasphemy and
g CT
awful Yet God sustained the great
sailor commanding the Santa Maria.
Every evening on shipboard they had
prayers and Sung a vesper hymn. But
after all the patience Of those on board
the ships had been exhausted, and the
great captain or admiral had been
cursed by every anathema that human
lips could frame, one night a sailor saw
g light moving along the shore, and then
moving up and down, and then disap-
-pearing On Friday morning at two
o'clock, just long enough after Thurs
day to make it sure that it was Friday,
and so give another blow at the worlds
idea of unlucky days-on Friday morn
ing, Oct. -, 1899, a gun from the Pinta
signaled Gland ahead"
Then the ships lay to, and the boats
were lowered, and Captain Christopher
Columbus first stepped upon the shore,
amid the song of birds and the air a
surge Of redolence, and took possession
in the name of the Father, and the Son
and the Holy Ghost. SO the voyage
that began with the sacrament ended
with s.Gloria in Excelsis Deo." From
that day onward you say there can be
nothing for Columbus but honors, re-
wards, lhapsodies, palaces and world
wide applause. No! no! On his way
back to Spain the ship was SO wrenched
by the tempest and so threatened with
destruction that he wrote a brief ac-
count of his discovery and put it in a
cask and threw it overheard that the
world might not lose the advantage of
his adventures.
Honors awaited him on the beach, but
he undertook a second voyage, and with
it came all maligning and persecution
and denunciation and poverty. He was
called land Srabber, a liar, a cheat, a
fraud, q deceiver Of nations. Specu-
lators robbed him of his good name,
courtiers deprecated his discoveries, and
there came to him ruined health and i'm
prisonment and chains. Of which he said
while he ratified them Oh his wrists, 81
will wear them as q IL ementO of the
gratitude of princes. Amid keen APP
probation of the worlds abuse and
cruelty, and with body writhing in the
fortunes Of govt he groaned oU5 his last
words. I'm InanuS tuaS Domino COM
mendo spilitUm meum INTO thy
hands. 0 Lord, | commend my spirit.
OF course he had regal ObseQuies.
That is the way the world tries to atone
for its mean treatment of great benefac-
tors. Many u man has had q fine ride
to his grave who during this life had to
walk all the way. A big funeral, and
instead of bread they give him stone
that is a tombstone. But death, that
brings quiet to the body of others, did not
bring quiet to his First buried in the
church Of Santa Maria. Seven years
afterward removed to Seville. Twenty
three years afterward removed to San
Domingo. Finally removed to Cuba.
Four postmortem journeys from sepul-
cher to sepulcher.
| wish his bones might be moved just
once more, and now that they have come
SO near to America as Cuba they might
during the great Columbian year be
transported to our own shores, where
they belong, and that in the fifth cen
fury after his decease the American con-
tinent might build q mausoleum worthy
of him who picked this jewel Of a hemi-
sphere out Of the sea and set it in the
crown of the worlds geography.
But the bright monday sun of that
old sailors prosperity went down in
thickest night, and though here and
there "a monument has been lifted in his
memory, and here and there city called
after him, the continent that he was the
means of founding was named after an
other name, and no fitting commemora-
ton of his work has been proposed until
1l1r fn11,. fta1. his hAd1r