Looks of scorn, contempt, and bitter enmity were fixed upon the adventurous Genoese by the courtiers who surrounded her majesty, and it was evident that her presence alone restrained them from openly expressing their hatred of him, and disapproval of her decision. One cavalier in particular ground his teeth with rage, and muttered his vow of eternal enmity to him whose soul so overreached all human intellect had heretofore achieved. But Isabella’s royal word was pledged, and her powerful eloquence had won her regal Ferdinand of Aragon to espouse the cause of Columbus, and associate his name with hers in patronage of his great adventure. But the man of mighty soul had departed on his limitless voyage, and his scoffers continued to clamor against him, and predict the utter failure of his project, and destruction of his fleet and crews. Ferdinand and Isabella were holding their court in Barcelona, when a courier arrived with intelligence that Columbus with his fleet had made the harbor of Palos, from which he sailed about ten months previous. Various rumors followed the announcement, rumors of glory, and gold, and territories, rich and blooming as the garden of Eden. Then gushed in clamorous torrents the bitter waters of envy, hatred, and detraction; but Isabella heeded not their clamors, but awaited with hope and exultation the arrival of her protégé. At length a triumphant train approached the city. Loud shouts swelled up to heaven from the excited multitudes; the city poured out her torrents of living creatures to meet the mighty man who had wrested a world from the untraversed ocean floods. The monarchs, in their most glorious apparel, sat upon their throne in the magnificently furnished reception hall of their palace home. The procession approached; a herald announced the great discoverer. He entered the presence, and the monarchs arose and stood to greet him. With him came natives of his new world, with their strange features and unheard of complexions—habited in the grotesque costume of their native clime. In beautiful caskets and vases were borne gold, unwrought, and fashioned into curious ornaments, fruits and flowering plants, and strangely beautiful specimens of verdure and foliage, with articles of the manufacture of those far-off lands—all things strange to the admiring beholders, and different from aught that the eastern continent produced. All was wonder, admiration and delight, except in the black habitations of envy and murderous hate. But Columbus had achieved his triumph—he had discovered a new world; he had triumphed over the malice of his enemies, he had won for himself an imperishable fame; but he laid all his glories at the feet of his royal patroness, ISABELLA OF CASTILE, without whose aid the mighty soul of enterprise would have worn itself out in vain endeavors to spread its glorious pinions. Oh, that every mighty mind could find an Isabella.