Edward A. Freeman calls the Norman conquest "the most important event in English history since the first coming of the English and their conversion to Christianity." If the succession of native kings had continued, says the same authority, "freedom might have died out step by step, as it did in some other lands. As it was, the main effect of the conquest was to call out the ancient English spirit in a new and antagonistic shape, to give the English nation new leaders in the conquerors who were gradually changed into countrymen, and by the union of the men of both races, to win back the substance of the old institutions under new forms." In other words, the Norman Princess Emma brought with her John Bull as a part of her dowry, when she came to weak Ethelred as his bride. CHAPTER IV IF COLUMBUS HAD KEPT HIS STRAIGHT COURSE WESTWARD On the morning of the 7th day of October, 1492, Christopher Columbus, sailing unknown seas in quest of "Cipango," the Indies, and the Grand Khan, still held resolutely to a course which he had laid out due to the westward. This course he held in spite of the murmurings of his crew, who wished to turn back, and contrary to the advice of that skilled and astute navigator, Martin Alonzo Pinzon, who commanded the _Pinta_. Pinzon had repeatedly advised that the course be altered to the southwestward. Columbus was sailing on a theory. Pinzon, like any other practical navigator in a strange sea, was feeling his way, and answering the indications of the waters, the skies, the green grasses that drifted on the surface of the waves, the flocks of birds that wheeled, and dipped, and showed their heels to the far-wandered navigators, and seemed to know their way so well over that remote and uncharted wilderness of the deep. Columbus had said, "We will sail to the west, and ever to the west, until the west becomes the east." Which to the men before the mast was sheer lunacy. But Pinzon had already found strange Afric lands. The scent of their leaves and flowers seemed to lie in his nostrils. Martin Alonzo Pinzon put off in a boat, later on that 7th day of October, and came back to the _Santa Maria_, in which was the Admiral. He brought the information that he had seen "a great multitude of birds passing from the north to the southwest; from which cause he deemed it reasonable to suppose that they (the birds) were going to sleep on land, or were perhaps flying from winter which must be approaching in the countries from which they came." The Admiral knew it was by the aid of the flight of birds that the Portuguese had discovered the greater part of the new lands which they had found. Columbus hesitated, wavered.