set up the demand for himself; and to him it was promptly adjudged and paid by the king and queen. It is said that the poor sailor, thinking himself ignobly defrauded, renounced Christianity and went to live among the Mohammedans, whom he regarded as a juster people. It was then on Friday, October 12, that the fleet first came to land upon an island which the natives called Guanahani. Early in the morning Columbus and the brothers Pinzon and the notary entered a boat with the royal standard and made for the shore. The rest of the crews immediately followed. As soon as they had landed, the requisite formalities were performed, and witnesses were summoned to note that, before all others, Columbus took possession of the island for the king and queen, his sovereigns. He gave it the name of San Salvador. Over the question as to the spot where Columbus first landed there has been much difference of opinion. The narrative of the Admiral concerning this important part of his voyage, though it has been preserved entire, is not so free from ambiguities, or so definite in its positive statements, as to relieve the subject of doubt. The reckoning of Columbus, moreover, on the matter of longitude and latitude was not sufficiently accurate to throw much light on the subject. Accordingly, several of the Bahamas have had their advocates. The modern San Salvador, or Cat Island, was believed to be the place of landing by Humboldt and Irving. South of Cat Island lie Watling’s, Samana, Acklin, and the Grand Turk; and no one of them has been without its ardent supporters. Recently, however, the most careful students of the problem have unmistakably drifted toward the belief that the spot of the landfall should be confidently fixed upon Watling’s Island. The arguments in favour of this locality were first elaborately set forth by Captain Becher in a volume published in 1856, and were followed by Peschel two years later in his “History of Modern Discovery.” Mr. R. H. Major, a careful student of the subject, was for many years inclined to favour Turk’s Island; but in 1870 he conceded that the weight of evidence was in favour of Watling’s. Lieutenant Murdock of the American navy and Mr. Charles A. Schott of the United States Coast Survey reached the same conclusion by independent studies in 1884, as did also Mr. Clements R. Markham in 1889. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, the Bahamas were visited and this problem was carefully studied in November of 1890 by the German explorer Herr Rudolf Cronau, with the result of establishing Watling’s Island as the site of the landfall beyond any reasonable doubt.