To Columbus, with his well-defined faith in the form of the earth which gave him confidence to steer boldly westward in search of the Asiatic Cipango: the existence of a continent beyond the Atlantic was no mere possibility. So early, at least, as 1474 he had conceived the design of reaching Asia by sailing to the West; and in that year he is known to have expounded his plans to Paolo Toscanelli, the learned Florentine physician and cosmographer, and to have received from him hearty encouragement. Assuming the world to be a sphere, he fortunately erred alike in under-estimating its size, and in over-estimating the extent to which the continent of Asia stretched eastward. In this way he diminished the distance between the coasts of Europe and Asia; and so, when at length he sighted the new-found land of the West, so far from dreaming of another ocean wider than the Atlantic between him and the object of his quest, he unhesitatingly designated the natives of Guanahani, or San Salvador, “Indians,” in the confident belief that this was an outlying coast of Asiatic India. Nor was his reasoning unsound. He sought, and would have found, a western route to that old east by the very track he followed, had no American continent intervened. It was not till his third voyage that the great Admiral for the first time beheld the new continent,—not indeed the Asiatic mainland, nor even the northern continent,—but the embouchures of the Orinoco river, with its mighty volume of fresh water, proving beyond dispute that it drained an area of vast extent, and opened up access far into the interior of a new world. Columbus had realised his utmost anticipations, and died in the belief that he had reached the eastern shores of Asia. Nor is the triumph in any degree lessened by this assumption. The dauntless navigator, pushing on ever westward into the mysterious waters of the unexplored Atlantic in search of the old East, presents one of the most marvellous examples of intelligent faith that science can adduce. To estimate all that it implied, we have to turn back to a period when his unaccomplished purpose rested solely on that sure and well-grounded faith in the demonstrations of science.