Do you not think Columbus must have felt very fine as he sailed out of Cadiz Harbor on his second voyage to the West?  It was just about a year before, you know, that his feeble fleet of three little ships sailed from Palos port.  His hundred sailors hated to go; his friends were few; everybody else said he was crazy; his success was very doubtful.  Now, as he stood on the high quarter-deck of his big flag-ship, the Maria Galante, he was a great man.  By appointment of his king and queen he was “Admiral of the Ocean Seas” and “Viceroy of the Indies.”  He had servants, to do as he directed; he had supreme command over the seventeen ships of his fleet, large and small; fifteen hundred men joyfully crowded his decks, while thousands left at home wished that they might go with him, too.  He had soldiers and sailors, horsemen and footmen; his ships were filled with all the things necessary for trading with the Indians and the great merchants of Cathay, and for building the homes of those who wished to live in the lands beyond the sea.

Everything looked so well and everybody was so full of hope and expectation that the Admiral felt that now his fondest dreams were coming to pass and that he was a great man indeed.

This was to be a hunt for gold.  And so sure of success was Columbus that he promised the king and queen of Spain, out of the money he should make on this voyage, to, himself pay for the fitting out of a great army of fifty thousand foot soldiers and four thousand horsemen to drive away the pagan Turks who had captured and held possession of the city of Jerusalem and the sepulcher of Christ.  For this had been the chief desire, for years and years, of the Christian people of Europe.  To accomplish it many brave knights and warriors had fought and failed.  But now Columbus was certain he could do it.

So, out into the western ocean sailed the great expedition of the Admiral.  He sailed first to the Canary Isles, where he took aboard wood and water and many cattle, sheep and swine.  Then, on the seventeenth of October, he steered straight out into the broad Atlantic, and on Sunday, the third of November, he saw the hill-tops of one of the West India Islands that he named Dominica.  You can find it on your map of the West Indies.

For days he sailed on, passing island after island, landing on some and giving them names.  Some of them were inhabited, some of them were not; some were very large, some were very small.  But none of them helped him in any way to find Cathay, so at last he steered toward Hayti (or Hispaniola, as he called it) and the little ship-built fortress of La Navidad, where his forty comrades had been left.