Such are a few of the most rational conjectures which have been formed on this subject. The reader may, with impunity, adopt that in which he sees, or fancies he sees, the greatest probability. Of this only we are certain, that, whatever was their origin, a numerous race of men had possessed America long before it was known to the Europeans. Leaving, therefore, conjectural opinions, we proceed to a subject of more certainty, namely, an account of the manner in which the New world was discovered.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.] The most important human discoveries have often originated in trivial and apparently accidental circumstances. He who discovered America was not in quest of new lands, but only purposed to explore a new way to lands already known. The maps of the age in which this great discovery was made were rudely sketched, and most inaccurate in their delineations. They place China, for example; no less than 15 hours, or 225 degrees, eastwards from the western coasts of Europe. This was an error of 85 degrees; but allowing it to have been accurate, it is evident that to proceed to China by a westward route was 135 degrees shorter, than to proceed eastwards, supposing both the voyages to be in a straight line. This was a truth sufficiently striking to a mind accustomed to reflection on such subjects, and early suggested the idea of sailing westwards to the rich countries known by the name of the East Indies, and opening a shorter passage for the trade which at that time enriched several of the commercial nations of Europe.

Norwegian Discoveries.] The earliest claim, however, to the honour of discovering the New world-as it was at first called-is that which has been advanced by Bayer, from a passage in the Chronicle of Olaus, published at Stockholm in 1697, on behalf of the Norwegians. We have already stated that Iceland was discovered by Norwegian mariners in A.D. 860. In 982, Snorro Sturlæus represents the Norwegians to have advanced as far as the coast of Greenland, when they are said to have "proceeded towards the W." and finding a more attractive coast, on which were some grape-vines, and, in the interior, several hospitable valleys, shaded with wood, they gave it the name of Winland or Findland, and settled some colonists there. The commanders of this expedition, Biorn and Lief, lived two centuries before Snorro, according to his own account; and, except from the tradition of the length of the days and nights at the place where they landed, it would be impossible to form any conjecture as to the spot. From this data, however, it would appear to be about the 58th or 59th degree of northern latitude, somewhere near the mouth of Hudson's straits, although grapes are there unknown. The latter parts of the tradition can only be solved by supposing that they actually did penetrate to some part of the eastern coast of North America.

Madoc's Voyage.] The Welsh bards and historians put in another claim to the honour of discovering America, on behalf of Madoc, one of their princes, who, they affirm, made a voyage to the shores of the New world in the 12th century. There was long a tradition in Wales of some Indians being still near the Missouri, who spoke a dialect of the Welch language; but this notion has no foundation whatever in fact. The curious reader may consult Lord Lyttleton's observations on this subject, in his history of England; and an article, by Mr Pennant, in the 58th volume of the Philosophical Transactions.

Martin Behaim.] A third claim to the honour of discovering America, of earlier date than the first voyage of Columbus, is of equally doubtful authority. Schedel, a German chronologist, of the 15th century, main

tains that his countryman, Martin Behaim, having been entrusted with the command of a Portuguese expedition of discovery, in 1483, made those discoveries, the communication of which to his intimate friend, Columbus, first excited that navigator to enter upon his splendid career of discovery. Columbus.] Several seamen, besides Behaim, who had been carried westerly far from their course, are said to have reported that in those remote seas they had seen an island; and it is particularly asserted by the Spanish historians, that the charts and journals of an old Andalusian pilot who died in his house, unequivocally informed Columbus of the discovery of land far to the westward.' Such hints, if they really were given, would, doubtless, supply his mind with additional arguments in support of his notions ; but the strong hope which carried him through an undertaking, in the performance of which he found so many obstacles, seems to have been founded on his knowledge of the true figure of the earth, joined to his accurate ideas of the geography of the world, as it was then delineated. The scheme of sailing to the East Indies by a westerly course was a favourite idea with Columbus during a great part of his life; and was not likely to be adopted in an instant; a conception so vast and daring must have been gradually matured, and continually strengthened by reflection, and supported by the discovery of new facts, till, from the possession of a mere theoretical notion, he became anxious to establish it as a practical truth, and, filled with this desire, dedicated the latter part of his life to the execution of so hazardous an enterprise, as the proof demanded.

The conception of this idea, in an age of ignorance, required an accurate knowledge of the true figure of the globe, and a mind free from ordinary prejudices; and the execution of it demanded uncommon courage and perseverance. These qualities of mind were, in a very extraordinary degree, possessed by Christopher Columbus. He was born in an obscure village of Genoa; his father, and several of his ancestors, had been bred to the sea. The young Columbus received an education which, considering the times, must be reckoned good: he was taught arithmetic, navigation, astronomy, and drawing. At an early part of his life, he went to sea, and was in several engagements with the Turks and Venetians. In a voyage off the coast of Portugal, the ship in which he sailed took fire, and our young seaman with difficulty escaped ashore upon a plank, and travelled to Lisbon, where he found several of his countrymen. The Portuguese at this time were the most expert navigators in Europe; and by frequent voyages along the western coast of Africa, had added much to men's knowledge of that part of the world. The spirit of enterprise, and particularly of discovery, existed amongst them in vigour, and served to inflame that disposi tion which seems early to have distinguished the mind of Columbus. Enticed by the society of many of his countrymen, he was easily persuaded to remain in a nation which seemed, more than all others, to afford him opportunities of gratifying his ardent desire of visiting unknown regions. He therefore entered into the service of the Portuguese, and made several voyages both to the northward and southward, particularly along the coast of Africa.

In addition to his reasoning, founded on the supposed situation of the East Indies, Columbus is said to have been informed that a Portuguese pilot, named Martin Vincent, had picked up a piece of carved wood, 450 leagues to the westward of Cape St Vincent, and which, from the continued westerly wind that had prevailed, he judged to have come from land in that quarter. A similar piece of wood, together with some thick canes, is said to have been driven by the westerly winds to Porto Sancto, one of the Madeira islands.

Columbus thought it proper to make the first offer of his services to John II. king of Portugal. His proposal was to sail to the East Indies by the western ocean, and his reasons appeared to the king to carry conviction; but while he approved of the plan, he would not accede to the terms. Making, therefore, an ungenerous use of the information he had received, he is said privately to have despatched a ship on the projected expedition, while Columbus was employed in negotiation, and indulging fruitless hopes. The commander of this secret expedition, deficient in courage or capacity, perhaps in both, returned without effecting any discovery, and spread such accounts of the affair, that Columbus soon became the object of public ridicule. Provoked by this injurious treatment, be left the court of Lisbon, and despatched his brother Bartholomew to England to make proposals in his name to Henry VII. Bartholomew was taken captive by pirates on his voyage, and not heard of by his brother for ten years, eight of which Columbus himself was destined to consnine in fluctuating and most perplexing intercourse with the court of Spain, to whom he had made his overtures in person. At last, in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain consented to equip our adventurer, after the most frugal manner, and on the 3d of August 1492, he sailed with three miserable vessels, from Palos in Spain, for the Canaries.

First Voyage of Columbus.] The following account is given in the North American Review, of a journal of the first voyage of Columbus, recently discovered in the archives of the Duke del Infantado, which throws considerable light on the character and adventures of the discoverer of the new world. It is throughout in the handwriting of the celebrated Bartolomé de las Casas, who possessed many papers written by Columbus, which he made use of in the composition of his unpublished Historia de las Indias, and who unquestionably abstracted this journal from the admiral's log-book, giving a literal copy of the most important passages. Not the slightest doubt of its authenticity can exist. Indeed Las Casas inserted an abridgment of it in his manuscript history, which served as the basis of the works of Herrera and other standard historians of the new world. The introduction to the journal exhibits, in the very words of Columbus, the views and feelings with which he set sail upon this memorable voyage. We translate it word for word, leaving the original arrangement of the sentences untouched, because it would be difficult to break them without taking serious liberties with the text.

« In nomine D.N. Jesu Christi.—Whereas, most Christian, most high, most excellent, and most powerful princes, our lords, king and queen of the Spains and the isles of the sea, this present year 1492, after your highnesses had ended the war against the Moors who reigned in Europe, and had finished the war in the great city of Granada, where this present year on the second day of January I saw the royal banners of your highnesses planted by force of arms on the towers of Alhambra, which is the fortress of the said city, and saw the Moorish king come out of the gates of the city and kiss the royal hands of your highnesses and of my lord the prince; and then in that same month, by the infor mation which I had given your highnesses of the lands of India, and of a prince called Gran Can, which signifies in our language king of kings,' how he and his predecessors had often sent to Rome to solicit teachers of our holy faith to instruct him in it, and the holy father had never provided him any, and thus many people were lost by believing in idolatries, and harbouring doctrines of perdition; -your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes, who are lovers of the holy Christian faith and promoters of it, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet, and of all idolatries and heresies, thought to bend me, Christopher Columbus, to said regions of India, to see the said princes, and the people and country, and the disposition of them and of the whole, and the course to be adopted for their conver sion to our holy faith; and ordained that I should not proceed by land to the East, a castomary to go, but by way of the West, in which direction we have to this day no that any person has passed. So after having expelled all the Jews from your kin in the same month of January, your highnesses commanded me to proceed to

with a sufficient armament; and for this granted me great favours, and enno

n

forth in time to come I might style myself Don, and should be high-admiral of the ocean, and viceroy and perpetual governor of all the islands and mainland which I should discover and acquire, and which should thereafter be discovered and acquired in the ocean, and so my oldest son should succeed me, and from degree to degree for ever; and I left the city of Granada the 12th day of the month of May of the same year 1492, on Saturday; I went to the town of Palos, a seaport, where I equipped three vessels very suitable for such a purpose; and departed from the said port, well supplied with much provisions and many seamen, the third day of the month of August of the said year on Friday, half an hour before sun-rise, and steered for the Canary islands of your highnesses, which are in the said ocean, thence to take my departure, and navigate until I should reach the Indies, and deliver the embassy of your highnesses to those princes, and thus accomplish what you had commanded me; and therefore I thought to write all this voyage very exactly from day to day, every thing which I should do, or see, or experience, as will be seen in the sequel. And beside describing every night what passes in the day, and every day how we sail in the night, I design to construct a new chart for navi. gation, in which I will mark the waters and lands of the ocean in their proper places under their points; and moreover to compose a book, and represent the whole by picture, in latitude from the equator, and longitude from the west; and above all it is very necessary that 1 forgo sleep and attempt much in navigation in order to accomplish it, which things will require great toil."—Tom, i. p. 1–3

The first thing which strikes us in the journal is the artifice to which Columbus was continually driven, to sustain the sinking courage of his crews. Nowhere is the exalted character of this truly great man more strikingly displayed, than in the fortitude and magnanimity with which he bore up against the manifold obstacles to the prosecution of his magnificent undertaking. He had suffered the hardships of penury and oppression, with spirits unbroken, with hopes unrepressed. Animated by the conviction that undiscovered worlds lay hidden in the Western sea, and that he was the instrument ordained to discover and explore them, he had happily overcome the superstitions of the priesthood, who in the outset stigmatized his hypothesis by the odious name of heresy. The incredulity of the government had yielded to the force of truth; and its parsimony was melted by his ardour. The narrow-minded individuals, who, unable to rise themselves, hung the weight of their jealousy around his neck as usual, to hold down his lofty genius to the level of their own lowly career, he had shaken off at last in triumph. He was now floating upon the full tide of adventurous experiment. But here also the ignorance and envy of his fellows pursued him at every hour. His unalterable belief in the existence of the lands he sought, would have availed him little, had not his pre-eminent nautical skill exacted the confidence of those around him, and his intellect and courage proved equal to any emergency of fortune. For when his daring prow was pointed to the west, and his companions felt themselves on the bosom of the great deep, leaving home if not life behind, and sailing they knew not whither, it demanded a rare combination of extraordinary talents for one man, an obscure foreigner, to retain the obedience of his turbulent but faint-hearted followers. Their terrors began to be troublesome a few days after quitting Gomera, on perceiving the variation of the magnetic needle. Columbus deserves the honour of being the first to observe this phenomenon, which still remains among the unexplained mysteries of nature. The surprise and consternation of his officers and men on the occasion are sufficient proof that it was unnoticed until then. Some writers have ascribed the credit of making this observation to Cabot, in 1497; but Las Casas, Ferdinand Columbus, Herrera, and Munoz, had all concurred in claiming it for the admiral; and the following extract from the journal of his first voyage, dated Sept. 13, taken in connexion with a passage in his account of his third voyage, is considered by Senor Navarrete as establishing the fact. He succeeded in quieting the apprehensions of his people by an ingenious explanation, which, however, was unsatisfactory to his own mind. In reading the passages we are about to cite, it should be observed, that they are not taken from the ori

ginal journal of Columbus, but from a mere abstract in the words of Las Casas; and as it appears from Munoz's unfinished Historia del Nuovo Mundo, that Columbus kept two journals, one private and authentic, and the other with false reckoning and specious statements, it would seem that both were used in making this abstract, the phrase, the admiral says,' often introducing not what he thought, but what he wished his companions to believe. Las Casas has given some long passages in the very words of Columbus, but such are accompanied by a notice to that effect, and in Senor Navarrete's book are distinguished by inverted commas.

“Thursday Sept. 13th.—This day and night, continuing their course west, they sailed 33 leagues, and counted three or four less. The currents were contrary. This day, at the commencement of night, the needles varied (noruesteaban) to the N.W. and they also varied somewhat to the N. W. in the morning."

“Monday, Sept. 17th.—Continued their course W., and sailed in the day and night 50 leagues and upwards; noted down but 47; the current favoured them; they saw many weeds and very frequently; it was rockweed, and came from towards the W.; they judged that land was near. The mates took the N. by marking it, and found that the needles varied to the N. W. (las agujas noruesteaban) a whole quarter, which terrified the mariners, who stood in suspense, without saying for what. The admiral perceived it, and ordered them to mark the N. anew at day-break, and they found that the needles pointed aright; the cause was that the star which appears has motion, and not the needles. At daybreak this day saw many more weeds, which appeared to be river-weeds, in which they found a live crab, which the admiral kept, and says that these are sure signs of land, because they are never found 90 leagues from shore. They found the sea water less salt since they left the Canaries, the air more and more mild; they were all in good spirits, and the vessels contended which should go fastest, to be the first to descry land; they saw many tunny fish, and the crew of the Nina killed one. Here the admiral says those signs were from the W., where I hope in that high God, in whose hand is all victory, that he will very soon give us land. This morning he says he saw a white bird, called Rabo de Junco, which is not wont to sleep at sea."

"Sunday, Sept. 30.—At night the needles varied a quarter,to the N. W., and at day-break they agreed exactly with the star; by which it appears that the star has motion like the other stars, and that the needles always indicate the true point."-Tom. i. p. 8, 9, 15.

It has been generally understood that Columbus was compelled to deceive his companions in regard to the distance they sailed, and the various signs of proximity to land. The birds they saw were land-birds; the weeds were freshly disengaged from rocks; and the fish were river-fish, that never ventured far into salt water; sometimes the wind was a breeze from shore; and thus it was that every possible expedient was tried to counteract the fears and feed the credulity of ignorant mariners. We translate several passages of the journal which illustrate these remarks: "Sunday, Sept. 9th.-Sailed that day 19 leagues, and determined to count less than was sailed, so that, if the voyage should be long, the people should not be terrified or dismayed."

"Wednesday, Sept. 19th.—Continued their course, and between day and night sailed 25 leagues, because there was a calm; wrote down 22. At 10 this day a pelican came to the ship, and another towards evening, which are not wont to fly 20 leagues from land; it drizzled without wind, which is a sare sign of land; the admiral would not stop to beat up and down to ascertain whether there was land; but he held for certain that to the north and south there were islands, as in truth there were, and he was sailing in the midst of them; because his wish was to proceed on to the Indies." [Colum bus was in fact at this time only 10 leagues from some small islets or rocks, in lat, 28° or 29o.

"Saturday, Sept. 22d.-Sailed northwesterly, beating up and down; sailed 30 leagues; saw hardly any weeds. Here the Admiral says 'This head wind was very necessary for me; because my people had become highly excited, in the idea that over these seas no wind blew by which they could return to Spain.""

"Sunday, Sept. 23d.-The weeds were in great quantities, and they found crabs in them, and as the sea was smooth and tranquil, the people murmured, saying that they had lost the deep water, and there never would be a wind for returning to Spain; but after a while the sea rose without wind, which astonished them."-Tom. 1. p. 7, 11, 12.

We pass over many entries in the journal of like import, and come to the time when the vessels actually approached their destination.

Wednesday, Oct. 10th-Sailed W. S. W., went 10 miles the hour, occasionally 12, and some. times 7, and in the 24 hours 59 leagues; reckoned to the people only 44. Here the crews could endure