On September 25th Pinzon reported to him that he thought he saw land; but it proved to be only clouds. With great difficulty he kept down his mutinous crew. On October 2nd he observed the seaweeds drifting from east to west. Pinzon, in the Pinta, having seen a flight of parrots going to the south-west, the course was altered on October 7th, and he steered after them west-south-west; he had hitherto been on the parallel 26° N. On the evening of October 11th the signs of land had become so unmistakable that, after vesper hymn to the Virgin, he made an address of congratulation to his crew, and commended watchfulness to them. [Sidenote: Discovery of America.] His course was now due west. A little before midnight, Columbus, on the fore-castle of his ship, saw a moving light at a distance; and two hours after a signal-gun was fired from the Pinta. A sailor, Rodrigo de Triana, had descried land. The ships were laid to. As soon as day dawned they made it out to be a verdant island. There were naked Indians upon the beach watching their movements. At sunrise, October 12, 1492, the boats were manned and armed, and Columbus was the first European to set foot on the new world.
[Sidenote: Events of the voyage.] The chief events of the voyage of Columbus were, 1st. The discovery of the line of no magnetic variation, which, as we shall see, eventually led to the circumnavigation of the earth. 2nd. The navigability of the sea to the remote west, the weeds not offering any insuperable obstruction. When the ships left Palos it was universally believed that the final border or verge of the earth is where the western sky rests upon the sea, and the air and clouds, fogs and water, are commingled. Indeed, that boundary could not actually be attained; for, long before it was possible to reach it, the sea was laden with inextricable weeds, through which a ship could not pass. This legend was perhaps derived from the stories of adventurous sailors, who had been driven by stress of weather towards the Sargasso Sea, and seen an island of weeds many hundreds of square miles in extent--green meadows floating in the ocean. 3rd. As to the new continent, Columbus never knew the nature of his own discovery. He died in the belief that it was actually some part of Asia, and Americus Vespucius entertained the same misconception. Their immediate successors supposed that Mexico was the Quinsay, in China, of Marco Polo. For this reason I do not think that the severe remark that the "name of America is a monument of human injustice" is altogether merited. Had the true state of things been known, doubtless the event would have been different. The name of America first occurs in an edition of Ptolemy's Geography, on a map by Hylacomylus.
