The Voyage of Christopher Columbus.--The romantic and inspiring story of Columbus is told in many books,--his poverty, his genius, his long and discouraging pursuit of the means to carry out his plan. He first applied to Portugal; but, as we have seen, this country had been pursuing another plan steadily for a century, and, now that success appeared almost at hand, naturally the Portuguese king would not turn aside to favor Columbus's plan. For years Columbus labored to interest the Spanish court. A great event had happened in Spanish history. Ferdinand, king of Aragon, had wedded Isabella of Castile, and this marriage united these two kingdoms into the modern country of Spain. Soon the smaller states except Portugal were added, and the war for the expulsion of the Moors was prosecuted with new vigor. In 1492, Grenada, the last splendid stronghold of the Mohammedans in the peninsula, surrendered, and in the same year Isabella furnished Columbus with the ships for his voyage of discovery. Columbus sailed from Palos, August 3, 1492, reached the Canaries August 24, and sailed westward on September 6. Day after day, pushed by the strong winds, called the "trades," they went forward. Many doubts and fears beset the crews, but Columbus was stout-hearted. At the end of thirty-four days from the Canaries, on October 12, they sighted land. It was one of the groups of beautiful islands lying between the two continents of America. But Columbus thought that he had reached the East Indies that really lay many thousands of miles farther west. Columbus sailed among the islands of the archipelago, discovered Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti), and then returned to convulse Europe with excitement over the new-found way to the East. He had not found the rich Spice Islands, the peninsula of India, Cathay or Japan, but every one believed that these must be close to the islands on which Columbus had landed. The tall, straight-haired, copper-colored natives, whom Columbus met on the islands, he naturally called "Indians"; and this name they still bear. Afterwards the islands were called the "West Indies." Columbus made three more voyages for Spain. On the fourth, in 1498, he touched on the coast of South America. Here he discovered the great Orinoco River. Because of its large size, he must have realized that a large body of land opposed the passage to the Orient. He died in 1506, disappointed at his failure to find India, but never knowing what he had found, nor that the history of a new hemisphere had begun with him.