THE GREAT DISCOVERY. At last as the fleet was sailing onward in the bright moonlight Columbus saw a light moving as if carried by hand along a shore. A few hours later, about two o'clock on the morning of October 12, a sailor on the _Pinta_ saw land distinctly, and soon all beheld, a few miles away, a long, low beach. The vessels hove to and waited for daylight. Early the same day, Friday, October 12, 1492, they approached the land, which proved to be a small island. Columbus named it San Salvador, which means Holy Saviour. We do not know which one of the Bahama islands he first saw, but we believe it was the one now called Watling Island. Columbus went ashore with the royal standard and banners flying to take possession of the land in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. WHERE COLUMBUS THOUGHT HE WAS. The astonished inhabitants of the island soon gathered to see the strange sight--the landing of white men in the West Indies. They looked upon the ships as sea-monsters, and the white men as gods. Nor was Columbus less puzzled by what he saw. The people were a strange race--cinnamon colored, naked, greased, and painted to suit each one's fancy. They had only the rudest means of self-defense, and were almost as poor as the parrots that chattered in the trees above them. Such savages bore little resemblance to the people whom Marco Polo said inhabited the Spice Islands. Columbus thought that he had reached some outlying island not far from Japan. A cruise of a few days among the Bahamas satisfied him that he was in the ocean near the coast of Asia, for had not Marco Polo described it as studded with thousands of spice-bearing islands? He had not found any spices, but the air was full of fragrance and the trees and herbs were strange in appearance. Of course if the islands were the Indies, the people must be Indians. Columbus called them Indians, and this name clung to the red men, although their islands were not the true Indies. [Illustration: WATLING ISLAND, WHERE COLUMBUS FIRST LANDED] THE SEARCH FOR THE GOLDEN EAST. Columbus thought that the natives meant to tell him in their sign language of a great land to the south where gold abounded. He set off in search of this, and came upon a land the natives called Cuba. Its large size convinced him that he had at last found the Asiatic mainland, and he sent two messengers, one a Jew knowing many languages, in search of the Emperor of China. They found neither cities nor kingdoms, neither gold nor spices. This was a great disappointment to Columbus, but he patiently kept up his search for the riches which he expected to find.