When I look back upon my own voyages and recall the many anxious moments I have passed when looking for a port at night, and when I compare my own situation, supplied with accurate charts, perfect instruments, good sailing directions, everything, in short, that science can supply, and then think of Columbus in his little bark, his only instruments an imperfect compass and a rude astrolabe, _sailing forth upon an unknown sea_, I must award to him the credit of being the boldest seaman that ever "sailed the salt ocean." * * * * * Columbus, then, had made three discoveries before he discovered land--the trade-winds, the Sargasso Sea, and the variation of the compass. COLUMBUS THE PATRON SAINT OF REAL-ESTATE DEALERS. At a banquet in Chicago of the real-estate brokers, a waggish orator remarked that Columbus, with his cry of "Land! Land!" was clearly the patron saint of American real-estate dealers. THE MUTINY. HORATIO J. PERRY, an American author. From "Reminiscences." When those Spanish mutineers leaped upon their Admiral's deck and advanced upon him sword in hand, every man of them was aware that according to all ordinary rules the safety of his own head depended on their going clean through and finishing their work. No compromise that should leave Columbus alive could possibly have suited them then. Nevertheless, at the bottom of it all, the moving impulse of those men was terror. They were banded for that work by a common fear and a common superstition, and it was only when they looked in the clear face of one wholly free from the influences which enslaved themselves, when they felt in their marrow that supreme expression of Columbus at the point of a miserable death--only then the revulsion of confidence in him suddenly relieved their own terrors. It was instinctive. This man knows! He does not deceive us! We fools are compromising the safety of all by quenching this light. He alone can get us through this business--that was the human instinct which responded to the look and bearing of Columbus at the moment when he was wholly lost, and when his life's work, his great voyage almost accomplished, was also to all appearance lost. The instinct was sure, the response was certain, from the instinct that its motive was also there sure and certain; but no other man in that age could have provoked it, no other but Columbus could be sure of what he was then doing.