The artist has chosen the inspiring moments of these two events to immortalize them in these two pictures: in the one, the three tiny barks in the shadow of the evening, still in the gloom and uncertainty of what the morrow would bring forth--and then, in the other, the brilliant spectacle of Columbus with cross uplifted, in magnificent regalia of scarlet and gold and purple, and his officers with the standards of Castile and Leon, and the white and green colors of the expedition, disembarking with his men when his hopes had become a reality, for the purpose of claiming the newly discovered land. I quote from Emilio Castelar the following description of the events illustrated by these pictures: "Land! land! the cry fell as a joyous peal upon the ears of these mariners who had given themselves up as lost and doomed to die in the fathomless vast. "When Columbus heard the glad cry he knelt in rapture on the deck and with clasped hands lifted his joy-filled eyes to Heaven and intoned the 'Gloria in Excelsis' to the Author of all things. "The signs of land now made it high time to prepare for the debarkation for which all measures had been wisely planned by the admiral, who had never doubted the realization of his predictions. "Each moment brought a revelation. A solitary, half-tamed turtle-dove flew near them and was followed by a floating, leafy reed. "About two in the morning of October 12th, amid the sheen of the stars and phosphorescence of the sea, one of the crew, with eyes accustomed, like some nocturnal creature, to the darkness, cried 'Land! land!' * * * * * * * * * "Columbus donned his richest apparel, upon his shoulders a cloak of rosy purple, and grasped in one hand the sword of combat and in the other the Redeemer's cross; then, disembarking, he knelt upon the land, and, with uplifted arms, joined with his followers in the Te Deum." In these paintings much is left to the imagination, which renders them all the more beautiful and poetical, although also in them the artist has accurately portrayed the caravels, costumes, figures and indications of the nearby shore, so that the scenes are vividly brought to mind as actually described in the journals of the great navigator himself and his first biographer, his own son Ferdinand.