The Santa Maria measured about ninety feet at the keel. She had four masts, two of them square-rigged, and two furnished with the lateen-sails of the Mediterranean. She had a deck extending from stem to stern, and a double deck at the poop, twenty-six feet long,--one-third, nearly, of her entire length. The double deck was pierced for cannon, the forward-deck being armed with smaller pieces, used for throwing stones and grape. From the journal of Columbus we know that he employed, in the manoeuvres, quite a complicated system of ropes and pulleys. Eight anchors hung over her sides. She represented in her general characteristics a modern vessel of twenty guns. She was manned by sixty-six men, not one of whom was from Palos,--one of them being an Englishman, and one an Irishman,--and was commanded by Columbus. The Pinta and the Nina were decked only forward and aft, the space in the middle being entirely uncovered. Their armament was equal to that of sloops of sixteen and ten guns respectively. Alonzo Pinzon commanded the Pinta, whose total crew, including the officers, numbered thirty men. The youngest of the three Pinzons, Vincent Yanez, commanded the Nina, with twenty-three men. The provisions of the fleet consisted of smoked beef, salt pork, rice, dried peas and other vegetables, herrings, wine, oil, vinegar, &c., sufficient for a year. As the day approached and the danger grew more imminent, the apprehension increased, and the sailors expressed a desire to reconcile themselves with Heaven and obtain absolution for their sins. They went in procession to the monastery of La Rabida, with Columbus at their head, and received the Eucharist from the hands of the Franciscan Marchena. Columbus, while waiting for the land-breeze, retired for a last time to the convent, to meditate upon the duties before him and to peruse his favorite book, the Gospel of St. John. At three o'clock in the morning of the 3d of August he was awakened by the murmuring of the long wished for wind in the tops of the pine-trees which bordered his cell. The coming day was Friday, a day inauspicious to sailors, but to him a day of good omen. He arose, summoned Marchena, from whom he received the communion, and then descended, on foot, the steep declivity which leads to Palos.