The chart by which the voyage of Columbus was made is supposed to have been a copy of Behaim's Globe, which indeed may be regarded as the exponent of geographical conceptions, those of Columbus as well as those of the learned men and practical navigators of the day. By an inscription on the original, the Asiatic coast is known to have been laid down from Marco Polo, and to the islands of Antilia and San Brandan are joined other inscriptions giving their history as I have before indicated. Sailing from Palos on the 3d of August, 1492, with one hundred and twenty men in three vessels commanded by himself and the two brothers Pinzon, Columbus was at last fairly launched on the Sea of Darkness. After a detention of three weeks at the Canaries, he sailed thence the 6th of September; marked, not without alarm, the variation of the needle on the 30th of September; and on the 12th of October discovered San Salvador, or Cat Island. So far all was well; all was as the bold navigator had anticipated; all accorded with current opinions, his own among the number; he had sailed certain days, had accomplished a certain distance, and had reached triumphantly one of the numerous islands mentioned by Marco Polo, and, God willing, would soon find the larger island of Zipangu. Alas for mathematical calculations, for that other third of the earth's circumference; alas for the intervening continent and broad Pacific sea, which baffled the great discoverer to the day of his death! Passing over the cruise through the Bahamas, or Marco Polo's archipelago of seven thousand islands, in which the discoverers touched successively at Concepcion, Exuma (Fernandina), and Isla Larga (Isabela), we find Columbus sailing from the last-mentioned island on the 24th of October for Zipangu, with the intention of proceeding thence to the main-land, and presenting his credentials to the great Khan.