CHAP, i.] WEST INDIES. 13 



lofty mountains form a stupendous and awful picture; 

 the subject both of wonder and contemplation.* 



Nor did these promising territories disappoint ex- 

 pectation on a nearer search and more accurate in- 

 spection. Columbus, whose veracity has never been 



* To the first voyagers to the West Indies, many must have been the 

 objects of astonishment, and in some respects of terror, even before the 

 appearance of land; such as the variation of the compass, the regularity 

 of the winds, the water spout, and other phenomena j of the existence 

 of which they were previously unapprized. It is in such cases that terror 

 exerts its power over the mind with uncontrolable ascendency ; for reason 

 and reflection can furnish no argument to oppose to its progress. Co- 

 Jumbus in truth found himself amidst a new creation. What, for in- 

 stance, could have more strongly excited curiosity than the first sight of 

 that wonderful little animal the flying fish ? Who would have believed 

 that the natives of the deep had power to quit their watery element, and 

 fly aloft with the birds of the air! It was an sera of miracles, and con- 

 sidering the propensity of mankind to magnify what truly is strange, the 

 modesty displayed by Columbus in speaking of his enterprises and disco- 

 veries, and the strict adherence to truth which he appears on all occasions 

 to have manifested, form a very distinguished feature in his character. 

 In general the travellers of those days not only reported wonderful things 

 which never existed, but sometimes even really believed what they reported. 

 In i 512 John Ponce de Leon, a Spaniard of distinction, (as we are inform- 

 ed by Herrera), actually took a voyage to Florida for the purpose of bathing 

 in the river Bimini, which he had been told and believed would restore 

 him to youth, like the cauldron of Medea. If we laugh at the credulity 

 of this old man, what shall we say to our own learned countryman Sir 

 Walter Raleigh, who sixty years afterwards, in the history of his voyage 

 to Guiana, gives an account of a nation who were born 'without keads, 

 and whose eyes were placed in their shoulders! Raleigh does not indeed 

 pretend that he had seen any of these strange people himself, but he re- 

 peats what he had heard from others with a gravity and solemnity which 

 evince that he seriously believed their existence. See his account of 



* . 



Guiana in Hakluyt's Collection, vol. ii, 



