The Portland daily press., 1892-10-15

ocean, and they cannot touch bottom
though the line and lead run down 200
fathoms. More delightful sensations
for those who are not good sailors! A
fathom is six feet, and 200 fathoms
1900 feet, and below that it may be
many hundred feet deeper To add in
terest to the voyage, on the twentieth
day out, violent storm sweeps the sea,
and the Atlantic ocean tries what 1T can
do with the Santa Maria, the P1nta and
the Nina. Some of you know something
of what a sea can do with the Umbrla,
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; it has never changed its habits. 1t
can smile like the morning, but often it is
the archangel of wrath and its most
rollicking fun is shipwreck. The
mutinous crew would have killed Co
lum bus 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 a silk
WdlSUCOdU blei ioA W dOli1Ao Ill AAAohSJ
to the man who should first discover
land appeased them somewhat, but the
indignation and blasphemy and threats
of assassination must have been awful
Yet God sustained the great sailor COM
handing the Santa Maria. Every even
ing on shipboard they had prayers and
sung 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 sailor saw a light moving
along the shore and then moving up
and down, and then disappearing. On
Fridaysmorning at 2 o'clock, just long
enough after Thursday to make it sure
that it was Friday and SO give another
blow at the worlds idea of unlucky
days-on Friday morning, October 49,
1892, gun from the Pinta sig
nailed "land ahead" Then the
ships lay to, and the boats were low
cred, and Capt Christopher Columbus
first stepped upon the shore, amid
the song of birds and the air 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 Gloria
in Excelsis Dec. From that day on
ward, you say there can be nothing for
Columbus but honors, rewards, rhapso-
dies, palaces and worldwide 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 brief account OF his discov-
cry and put it in 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 second voyage, and with
it came all maligning and persecution
and denunciation and poverty. He was
called land grabber, a liar, d cheat, a
fraud, a deceiver of nations, Specula-
tors robbed him of his good name, court
iers deprecated his discoveries, and
there came to him ruined health and
imprisonment and chains, of which he
said while he ratified them on his wrists:
81 will wear them as a memento of the
gratitude of princes" Amid keen APP
probation of the worlds abuse and cru
city, and with body writhing in the tor
lures of govt, he groaned out his last
words: 'In manus tuas Domino com
mendo spiritum meum;" Unto Thy
hands, o Lord, commend my spirit.
Of course he had regal obsequies
That is the way the world tries to atone
for it's mean treatment of great bene-
factors. Many a man has had a fine
ride to his grave who during his life had
to walk all the way. A big funeral,
and instead of bread they give him e.
bone, that is curbstone. 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 post-mortem journeys from
sepulcher to sepulcher. l 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 trans
ported to our own shores, where they
belong, and that in the fifth century
a1Ger MS QoCodSe, Une AmeT1cdu cOuGl-
nent might build mausoleum worthy
of him who picked this jewel of hem
isphere 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 monument has been lifted in his
memory, and here and there a city
called after him, the continent that he
was the means of founding was named
after another name, and no fitting COM
memoration of his work has been pro-
posed until nearly four hundred years
after his body turned to dust May the
imposing demonstration now being
made in his honor on the Atlantic coast,
and to be made next year in his honor
mid-continent, be brilliant enough and
far-resounding enough and magnificent
enough to atone for the neglect of CEN
turtles May the good Lord allow that
most illustrious sailor of all time to look
over the amethystine battlement long
enough to see some of the garlands
wreathed around his name and hear
something of the hemisphere shout
4, - r1,.1 ~,,,oo+ !,