DE MORTUIS, NIL NISI BONUM. JUSTIN WINSOR, a celebrated American critical historian. Born, 1831. No man craves more than Columbus to be judged with all the palliations demanded of his own age and ours. It would have been well for his memory if he had died when his master work was done. * * * ** * His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a new world; the New World is his monument. ON A PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS. GEORGE E. WOODBERRY, in the Century Magazine, May, 1892. By permission of the author and the Century Company. Was this his face, and these the finding eyes That plucked a new world from the rolling seas? His early vision, when with stalwart knees He on the waters dared to set his feet, And through believing planted earth's last race. GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT. JOSEPH EMERSon Worcester, a celebrated American lexicographer. Born at Bedford, N. H., 1758; died, 1865. The discovery of America was the greatest achievement of the kind ever performed by man; and, considered in connection with its consequences, it is the greatest event of modern times. It served to wake up the unprecedented spirit of enterprise; it opened new sources of wealth, and exerted a powerful influence on commerce by greatly increasing many important articles of trade, and also by bringing into general use others before unknown; by leading to the discovery of the rich mines of this continent, it has caused the quantity of the precious metals in circulation throughout the world to be exceedingly augmented; it also gave a new impulse to colonization, and prepared the way for the advantages of civilized life and the blessings of Christianity to be extended over vast regions which before were the miserable abodes of barbarism and pagan idolatry. The man to whose genius and enterprise the world is indebted for this discovery was Christopher Columbus of Genoa. He conceived that in order to complete the balance of the terraqueous globe another continent necessarily existed, which might be reached by sailing to the west from Europe; but he erroneously connected it with India. Being persuaded of the truth of his theory, his adventurous spirit made him eager to verify it by experi ment. THE FATE OF DISCOVERERS. It is remarkable how few of the eminent men of the discoverers and conquerors of the New World died in peace. Columbus died broken-hearted; Roldan and Bobadilla were drowned; Ojeda died in extreme poverty; Encisco was deposed by his own men; Nicuesa perished miserably by the cruelty of his party; Balboa was disgracefully beheaded; Narvaez was imprisoned in a tropical dungeon, and afterward died of hardship; Cortez was dishonored; Alvarado was destroyed in ambush; Pizarro was murdered, and his four brothers cut off; Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded by an ungrateful king; the noble and adventurous Robert La Salle, the explorer of the Mississippi Valley, was murdered by his mutinous crew; Sir Martin Frobisher died of a wound received at Brest; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's noble half-brother, "as near to God by sea as by land," sank with the crew of the little Squirrel in the deep green surges of the North Atlantic; Sir Francis Drake, "the terror of the Spanish Main," and the explorer of the coast of California, died of disease near Puerto Bello, in 1595. The frozen wilds of the North hold the bones of many an intrepid explorer. Franklin and Bellot there sleep their last long sleep. The bleak snow-clad tundra of the Lena delta saw the last moments of the gallant De Long. Afric's burning sands have witnessed many a martyrdom to science and religion. Livingston, Hannington, Gordon, Jamieson, and Barttelot are golden names on the ghastly roll. Australia's scrub-oak and blue-gum plains have contributed their quota of the sad and sudden deaths on the earth-explorers' roll. |