Give me white paper! One storm-trained seaman listened to the word; What no man saw he saw, and heard what no man heard. For answer he compelled the sea To eager man to tell The secret she had kept so well; Left blood and woe and tyranny behind, Sailing still West that land newborn to find, For all mankind the unstained page unfurled, Where God might write anew the story of the world. _Edward Everett Hale_ [Illustration: Columbus "Admiral at the Helm"] The fame of Columbus is not local or limited. It does not belong to any single country or people. It is the proud possession of the whole civilized world. In all the transactions of history there is no act which for vastness and performance can be compared with the discovery of the continent of America, "the like of which was never done by any man in ancient or in later times." _James Grant Wilson_ With boldness unmatched, with faith in the teachings of science and of revelation immovable, with patience and perseverance that knew no weariness, with superior skill as a navigator unquestioned, and with a lofty courage unrivaled in the history of the race, Columbus sailed from Palos on the 3d of August, with three vessels, the largest (his flagship) of only ninety feet keel, and provided with four masts, eight anchors, and sixty-six seamen. Passing the Canaries and the blazing peak of Teneriffe, he pushed westward into the "sea of darkness," in defiance of the fierce dragons with which superstition had peopled it, and the prayers and threats of his mutinous seamen, and on the 12th of October landed on one of the Bahama Islands. _Benson J. Lossing_ COLUMBUS[B] [B] From complete works of Joaquin Miller, published by the Harr Wagner Publishing Company of San Francisco. Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Admiral, speak; what shall I say?" "Why, say 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why, you shall say at break of day, 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'"