To declare my opinion herein, whatsoever hath heretofore been discovered by the famous travayles of Saturnus and Hercules, with such other whom the antiquitie for their heroical acts honoured as Gods, seemeth but little and obscure if it be compared to the victorious labours of the Spanyards. --Decad. ii, cap. 4, Lok's Translation. GENIUS TRAVELED WESTWARD. WILLIAM MASON, an English poet. Born at Hull, 1725; died in 1797. Old England's genius turns with scorn away, Ascends his sacred bark, the sails unfurled, And steers his state to the wide Western World. MISSION AND REWARD. J. N. MATTHEWS, in Chicago _Tribune_, 1892. Sailing before the silver shafts of morn, He bore the White Christ over alien seas-- The swart Columbus--into "lands forlorn," That lay beyond the dim Hesperides. Humbly he gathered up the broken chain Of human knowledge, and, with sails unfurled, He drew it westward from the coast of Spain, And linked it firmly to another world. Tho' blinding tempests drove his ships astray, And on the decks conspiring Spaniards grew More mutinous and dangerous, day by day, Than did the deadly winds that round him blew, Yet the bluff captain, with his bearded lip, His lordly purpose, and his high disdain, Stood like a master with uplifted whip, And urged his mad sea-horses o'er the main. Onward and onward thro' the blue profound, Into the west a thousand leagues or more, His caravels cut the billows till they ground Upon the shallows of San Salvador. Then, robed in scarlet like a rising morn, He climbed ashore and on the shining sod He gave to man a continent new-born; Then, kneeling, gave his gratitude to God. And his reward? In all the books of fate There is no page so pitiful as this-- A cruel dungeon, and a monarch's hate, And penury and calumny were his; Robbed of his honors in his feeble age, Despoiled of glory, the old Genoese Withdrew at length from life's ungrateful stage, To try the waves of other unknown seas. EAGER TO SHARE THE REWARD. Letter written by the Duke of MEDINA CELI to the Grand Cardinal of Spain, Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, dated March 19, 1493.