It is our solemn duty, as Americans, to take a warm interest in Christopher Columbus, for the reason that he had the good taste and judgment to discover our beloved country. Efforts have frequently been made to deprive him of that honor. It has been urged that he was not the first man who crossed the Atlantic, that he never saw the continent of North America, and that he was not the original discoverer of South America. Most of this is undoubtedly true. It is now generally conceded the Norwegians landed on the coast of New England about six hundred years before Columbus was born; that Americus Vespuccius was the first European to discover the South American continent; that Sebastian Cabot rediscovered North America after the Norwegians had forgotten all about it; and that Columbus never saw any part of what is now the United States of America. For all that, Columbus is properly entitled to be called the discoverer of the New World, including the New England, Middle, Gulf, Western, and Pacific States. Who invented steamboats? And who invented the magnetic telegraph? Every patriotic American echo will answer, “Fulton and Morse.” There were nevertheless at least four distinct men who moved vessels by machinery driven by steam before Fulton built his steamboat, and nearly twice that number of men had sent messages over a wire by means of electricity before Morse invented the telegraph. The trouble with the steamboats invented by the pre-Fultonians, and the telegraphs invented by the predecessors of Morse, was that their inventions did not stay invented. Their steamboats and telegraphs were forgotten almost as soon as they were devised; but Fulton and Morse invented their steamboats and telegraphs so thoroughly that they have stayed invented ever since. Now, the Norwegians discovered America in such an unsatisfactory way that the discovery came to nothing. They did not keep it discovered. They came and looked at New England, and, deciding that they had no use for it, went home and forgot all about it. Columbus, who knew nothing of the forgotten voyage of the Norwegians, discovered the West India islands and the route across the Atlantic in such a workmanlike and efficient way that his discoveries became permanent. He was the first man to show people the way to San Domingo and Cuba, and after he had done this it was an easy thing for other explorers to discover the mainland of North and South America. He thus discovered the United States as truly as Fulton discovered the way to drive the _City of Rome_ from New York to Liverpool, or Morse discovered the method of sending telegrams over the Atlantic cable.