Columbus leaves a small colony on the island of Hispaniola, and with the trophies of his discoveries returns to Spain, without serious obstacles, except a short detention in Portugal, whither he was driven by a storm.  His stories fill the whole civilized world with wonder.  He is welcomed with the most cordial and enthusiastic reception; the people gaze at him with admiration.  His sovereigns rise at his approach, and seat him beside themselves on their gilded and canopied throne; he has made them a present worthy of a god.  What honors could be too great for such a man!  Even envy pales before the universal exhilaration.  He enters into the most august circles as an equal; his dignities and honors are confirmed; he is loaded with presents and favors; he is the most marked personage in Europe; he is almost stifled with the incense of royal and popular idolatry.  Never was a subject more honored and caressed.  The imagination of a chivalrous and lively people is inflamed with the wildest expectations, for although he returned with but little of the expected wealth, he has pointed out a land rich in unfathomed mines.

A second and larger expedition is soon projected.  Everybody wishes to join it.  All press to join the fortunate admiral who has added a continent to civilization.  The proudest nobles, with the armor and horses of chivalry, embark with artisans and miners for another voyage, now without solicitude or fear, but with unbounded hopes of wealth,—­especially hardy adventurers and broken-down families of rank anxious to retrieve their fortunes.  The pendulum of a nation’s thought swings from the extreme of doubt and cynicism to the opposite extreme of faith and exhilaration.  Spain was ripe for the harvest.  Eight hundred years’ desperate contest with the Moors had made the nation bold, heroic, adventurous.  There were no such warriors in all Europe.  Nowhere were there such chivalric virtues.  No people were then animated with such martial enthusiasm, such unfettered imagination, such heroic daring, as were the subjects of Ferdinand and Isabella.  They were a people to conquer a world; not merely heroic and enterprising, but fresh with religious enthusiasm.  They had expelled the infidels from Spain; they would fight for the honor of the Cross in any clime or land.

The hopes held out by Columbus were extravagant; and these extravagant expectations were the occasion of his fall and subsequent sorrows and humiliation.  Doubtless he was sincere, but he was infatuated.  He could only see the gold of Cipango.  He was as confident of enriching his followers as he had been of discovering new realms.  He was as enthusiastic as Sir Walter Raleigh a century later, and made promises as rash as he, and created the same exalted hopes, to be followed by bitter disappointments; and consequently he incurred the same hostilities and met the same downfall.