Columbus and his heirs were to have the hereditary title of Admiral of all the islands and continents that he might discover, and should for ever hold the office of Viceroy and Governor-General over them. He and his heirs should receive one-tenth of all the wealth, whether metals, jewels, or spices, that should be acquired from these territories; and he and they should have a perpetual right of providing one-eighth of the expenses of every expedition sent to the West, receiving a corresponding profit from the results. These with extensive judicial and administrative privileges formed the basis of the document, in return for which Columbus promised to sail into the unknown and claim it in the name of Castile and her sovereign. The actual cost of the expedition was, in comparison to the stakes at issue, trifling; in all less than a thousand pounds of English money, of which the Crown contributed some £850, Columbus himself the rest. Three ships formed his fleet; two provided under compulsion by the town of Palos as punishment for some public offence, and as reluctantly manned by its inhabitants who looked on the proposed voyage with horror. Columbus’s own flagship, the _Santa Maria_, was a vessel of some hundred tons burden, by modern standards ill-fitted for aught but coasting work; while the _Pinta_ and the _Niña_, commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon and his brother Vicente Yañez, noted navigators of the neighbourhood, were mere merchant “caravels” of half its size. The story of this first voyage to the New World has been often told: the distrust and grumbling of the crew which, beginning before they left Palos on that morning of the 3d of August, 1492, grew ever in volume as they journeyed westwards, leaving the friendly Azores far in their rear; the complaints that the wind steadily driving from the east would never change and thus make any hope of return impossible; the extraordinary variations of the compass and the expanse of sea traversed, far in excess of the Admiral’s calculations, so that, puzzled and anxious at heart himself, he must yet keep a cheerful face and, lying skilfully, hold panic at bay by scientific falsehoods and carefully doctored charts. The many cries of “land! land!” heralding nought save clouds lying low on the horizon; the ever-doomed hopes aroused by birds and floating grass; and then the Sargasso Sea with its leagues of golden gulf-weed lapping against the ship’s side. Was this the impassable ocean where Atlantis had sunk to rest? Were they indeed destined to die here for their folly? Then, when patience and hope were alike exhausted, and only the Admiral’s faith rose triumphant above the general pessimism, unmistakable signs of land appeared at last; and, on the 12th of October the Spanish squadron came to anchor before the little island of Guanahani, one of the Bahamas.