Even Columbus may be regarded in the light of a martyr. He sacrificed his life to the discovery of a new world. The poor wool-carder's son of Genoa had long to struggle unsuccessfully with the petty conditions necessary for the realization of his idea. He dared to believe, on grounds sufficing to his reason, that which the world disbelieved, and scoffed and scorned at. He believed that the earth was round, while the world believed that it was flat as a plate. He believed that the whole circle of the earth, outside the known world, could not be wholly occupied by sea; but that the probability was that continents of land might be contained within it. It was certainly a Probability; But the Noblest Qualities of the Soul Are Often Brought Forth by the Strength of Probabilities That Appear Slight To Less Daring Spirits. In the Eyes of His Countrymen, Few Things Were More Improbable Than That Columbus Should Survive the Dangers of Unknown Seas, and Land On The Shores of a New Hemisphere. DIFFICULTIES BY THE WAY. ROYALL BASCOM SMITHEY, in an article. "The Voyage of Columbus," in _St. Nicholas_, July, 1892. So the voyage progressed without further incident worthy of remark till the 13th of September, when the magnetic needle, which was then believed always to point to the pole-star, stood some five degrees to the northwest. At this the pilots lost courage. "How," they thought, "was navigation possible in seas where the compass, that unerring guide, had lost its virtue?" When they carried the matter to Columbus, he at once gave them an explanation which, though not the correct one, was yet very ingenious, and shows the philosophic turn of his mind. The needle, he said, pointed not to the north star, but to a fixed place in the heavens. The north star had a motion around the pole, and in following its course had moved from the point to which the needle was always directed. Hardly had the alarm caused by the variation of the needle passed away, when two days later, after nightfall, the darkness that hung over the water was lighted up by a great meteor, which shot down from the sky into the sea. Signs in the heavens have always been a source of terror to the uneducated; and this "flame of fire," as Columbus called it, rendered his men uneasy and apprehensive. Their vague fears were much increased when, on the 16th of September, they reached the Sargasso Sea, in which floating weeds were so densely matted that they impeded the progress of the ships. Whispered tales now passed from one sailor to another of legends they had heard of seas full of shoals and treacherous quicksands upon which ships had been found stranded with their sails flapping idly in the wind, and manned by skeleton crews. Columbus, ever cheerful and even-tempered, answered these idle tales by sounding the ocean and showing that no bottom could be reached. DESIGN FOR THE SOUVENIR COINS.[57]