A strange thing! We were borne westward ever upon a
vast current of the sea, taking us day and night, so that
though the winds were light we went as though every sail
was wholly filled.
Christopherus Columbus talked of these rivers in ocean.
"A day will come when they will be correctly marked. Aye,
in the maps of our descendants! Then ships will say, `Now
here is the river so and so,' as to-day the horseman says,
`Here is the Tagus, or the Guadalquiver!' "
Another thing he said was that to his mind all the islands
that we had found in six years, from San Salvador to Cubagua,
had once been joined together. Land from this shore
to Cuba and beyond. So the peoples were scattered.
He talked to us much upon this voyage of the great earth
and the shape of it, and its destinies; of the stars, the needle,
the Great Circle and the lesser ones, and the Ocean. He
had our time's learning, gained through God knows how
many nights of book by candle! And he had a mind that
took eagle flights with spread of eagle wings, and in many
ways he had the eagle's eye.
It was not Cipango and Cathay that now he talked of,
but of this great land-mass before us which he would have
rise to Equator and all Wonder. And he talked also of some
water passage, some strait lying to the westward, by which
we might sail between lands and islands to the further Indian
Ocean, and so across to the Sea of Araby, and then
around Africa by Good Hope and then northward, northward,
to Spain, coming into Cadiz with banners, having
sailed around the world!
He talked, and all the time his pain ate him, and he must
cover eyes to keep the sword-light out.
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