A popular history of the United States : from the first discovery of the western hemisphere by the Northmen, to the end of the first century of the union of the states ; preceded by a sketch of the prehistoric period and the age of the mound builders . ar the glad tidings of salvation to millions of his fellow-men before the heavens should be rolled together as a scroll, thatnear time when the first heaven and the first earth should have passedaway, and when there should be no more sea. The geographical theory which alone saved the proposition of awestern passage to Cathay, or China, from bein
A popular history of the United States : from the first discovery of the western hemisphere by the Northmen, to the end of the first century of the union of the states ; preceded by a sketch of the prehistoric period and the age of the mound builders . ar the glad tidings of salvation to millions of his fellow-men before the heavens should be rolled together as a scroll, thatnear time when the first heaven and the first earth should have passedaway, and when there should be no more sea. The geographical theory which alone saved the proposition of awestern passage to Cathay, or China, from being preposterous, and onwhich he based his faith in his divine mission and all his hopes of PERSEVERANCE OF COLUMBUS. 105 worldly greatness, he never abandoned. Even after his last voyage,when he had four times crossed and recrossed the Atlantic, he said: The world is but small; out of seven divisions of it the dry partoccupies six, and the seventh is entirely covered with water. In allhis voyages he was constantly finding some fancied resemblance in thenames of persons and places among the Indians to cities or provincesor princes of the East mentioned by Marco Polo. The impressionwhich the wonderful stories of that traveller had made upon a mind. Columbus on Shipboard. always ruled by a poetic temperament and a vivid imagination,and the confidence he had in the importance and magnificence ofthe discovery he proposed to make, were deepened by still anotherconviction. The wealth of David and Solomon in gold and silver, ofwhich he read in Scripture, he believed came from those parts of theworld he expected to reach. Had he only hoped to find a new con-tinent, inhabited by some nations of savages, though he might stillhave represented to the sovereigns of Portugal, of England, and ofSpain the importance and the glory of such a discovery, he wouldhave had little of that enthusiasm and perseverance with which hisbelief in the certainty of arriving, in little more than a month, on the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1876
