CHAPTER III.  First Voyage.

At length all the preparations were complete, and on a Friday (not inauspicious in this case), the 3rd of August, 1492, after they had all confessed and received the sacrament, they set sail from the Bar of Saltes, making for the Canary Islands.  One can fancy how the men and the women of Palos watched the specks of white sails vanishing in the west, and how, as each frail bark in turn disappeared in the great ocean, mothers and sisters turned weepingly away as if from a last farewell at the grave of their sailor kinsmen.

Columbus was now fairly afloat, and we may say with Milton, that—­

  The world was all before him, where to choose. 
  And Providence his guide.

His choice was made, however; and his Guide did not fail him.

  Canary islands reached.

He was about to change the long-continued, weary, dismal life of a suitor, for the sharp intense anxiety of a struggle in which there was no alternative to success but deplorable, ridiculous, fatal failure.  Speaking afterwards of the time he spent as a suitor at court, he says, “Eight years I was torn with disputes, and in a word, my proposition was a thing for mockery.”  It was now to be seen what mockery was in it.  The following account of the voyage is mainly taken from an abridgment of Columbus’s own diary made by Las Casas, who in some places gives the admiral’s own words.

The little squadron reached the Canary Islands in a few days, with no event worth recording, except that the caravel “Pinta,” commanded Martin Alonzo Pinzon, unshipped her rudder.  This was supposed to be no accident, but to have been contrived by the owners of the vessel, who did not like the voyage.  The admiral (from henceforth Columbus is called “the admiral”) was obliged to stay some time at the Canary Islands, to refit the “Pinta,” and to make some change in the cut of her sails.  While this was being done, news was brought that three Portuguese government vessels were cruising in the offing with the intention of preventing the expedition.  However, on the 6th of September, Columbus set sail from Gomera, and struck boldly out to sea, without meeting with any of his supposed enemies.

  Rumors of land seen.

In the abridgment of the diary, under the date of the 19th of August, the admiral remarks that many Spaniards of these islands, “respectable men,” swear that each year they see land; and he remembers how, in the year 1484, some one came from the island of Madeira to the King of Portugal to beg a caravel in order to go and discover that land which he declared he could see each year, and in the same manner.  Had not the admiral been conscious of the substantial originality of his proceedings, he would hardly have been careful to collect these scattered notices which might afterwards be used, as many like them were used,