in this tempest, the king and queen might have some news of his voyage, he took a parchment and wrote on it all that he could of his discoveries, and urgently begged that whoever found it would carry it to the king and queen.  He rolled up this parchment in a piece of waxed linen, closed this parcel tightly, and tied it up securely; he had brought to him a large wooden barrel, within which he placed it, without anybody’s knowing what it was.  Everybody thought the proceeding was some act of devotion.  He then caused it to be thrown into the sea."(*)

(*) Within a few months, in the summer of 1890, a well known English publisher has issued an interesting and ingenious edition, of what pretended to be a facsimile of this document.  The reader is asked to believe that the lost barrel has just now been found on the western coast of England.  But publishers and purchasers know alike that this is only an amusing suggestion of what might have been.

The sudden and heavy showers, and the squalls which followed some time afterwards, changed the wind, which turned to the west.  They had the wind thus abaft, and he sailed thus during five hours with the foresail only, having always the troubled sea, and made at once two leagues and a half towards the northeast.  He had lowered the main topmast lest a wave might carry it away.

With a heavy wind astern, so that the sea frequently broke over the little Nina, she made eastward rapidly, and at daybreak on the fifteenth they saw land.  The Admiral knew that he had made the Azores, he had been steadily directing the course that way; some of the seamen thought they were at Madeira, and some hopeful ones thought they saw the rock of Cintra in Portugal.  Columbus did not land till the eighteenth, when he sent some men on shore, upon the island of Santa Maria.  His news of discovery was at first received with enthusiasm.

But there followed a period of disagreeable negotiation with Castaneda, the governor of the Azores.  Pretending great courtesy and hospitality, but really acting upon the orders of the king of Portugal, he did his best to disable Columbus and even seized some of his crew and kept them prisoners for some days.  When Columbus once had them on board again, he gave up his plans for taking ballast and water on these inhospitable islands, and sailed for Europe.

He had again a stormy passage.  Again they were in imminent danger.  “But God was good enough to save him.  He caused the crew to draw lots to send to Notre Dame de la Cintra, at the island of Huelva, a pilgrim who should come there in his shirt.  The lot fell upon himself.  All the crew, including the Admiral, vowed to fast on bread and water on the first Saturday which should come after the arrival of the vessel.  He had proceeded sixty miles before the sails were torn; then they went under masts and shrouds on account of the unusual strength of the wind, and the roughness of the sea, which pressed them almost on all sides.  They saw indications of the nearness of the land; they were in fact, very near Lisbon.”