I see a galleon of Spanish make, That westward like a winged creature flies, Above a sea dawn-bright, and arched with skies Expectant of the sun and morning-break. The sailors from the deck their land-thirst slake With peering o'er the waves, until their eyes Discern a coast that faint and dream-like lies, The while they pray, weep, laugh, or madly take Their shipmates in their arms and speak no word. And then I see a figure, tall, removed A little from the others, as behooved, That since the dawn has neither spoke nor stirred; A noble form, the looming mast beside, Columbus, calm, his prescience verified. THE BEAUTIES OF THE BAHAMA SEA. HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH, American author. Born in Rhode Island, 1839. From an article, "The Sea of Discovery," in _The Youth's Companion_, June 9, 1892. The Bahama Sea is perhaps the most beautiful of all waters. Columbus beheld it and its islands with a poet's eye. "It only needed the singing of the nightingale," said the joyful mariner, "to make it like Andalusia in April;" and to his mind Andalusia was the loveliest place on earth. In sailing among these gardens of the seas in the serene and transparent autumn days after the great discovery, the soul of Columbus was at times overwhelmed and entranced by a sense of the beauty of everything in it and about it. Life seemed, as it were, a spiritual vision. "I know not," said the discoverer, "where first to go; nor are my eyes ever weary of gazing on the beautiful verdure. The singing of the birds is such that it seems as if one would never desire to depart hence." He speaks in a poet's phrases of the odorous trees, and of the clouds of parrots whose bright wings obscured the sun. His descriptions of the sea and its gardens are full of glowing and sympathetic colorings, and all things to him had a spiritual meaning. "God," he said, on reviewing his first voyage over these western waters, "God made me the messenger of the new heavens and earth, and told me where to find them. Charts, maps, and mathematical knowledge had nothing to do with the case." On announcing his discovery on his return, he breaks forth into the following highly poetic exhortation: "Let processions be formed, let festivals be held, let lauds be sung. Let Christ rejoice on earth." Columbus was a student of the Greek and Latin poets, and of the poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures. The visions of Isaiah were familiar to him, and he thought that Isaiah himself at one time appeared to him in a vision. He loved nature. To him the outer world was a garment of the Invisible; and it was before his great soul had suffered disappointment that he saw the sun-flooded waters of the Bahama Sea and the purple splendors of the Antilles. [Illustration: THE PASEO COLON (COLUMBUS PROMENADE), BARCELONA, SPAIN. With the Columbus Monument in the background. See page 81]