IN THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 69 



but one of his sailors, Rodriguez of Tryana, put in a claim that he 

 had seen the land in the early morning before Columbus ; and 

 another sailor on Pinzon's ship, Juan Rodriguez Bermejo, there- 

 upon put in a claim that he had seen a sand beach reflecting the 

 moonlight in the evening of October ii. It also happens that 

 as the old calendar was still in use, the correct dates according to 

 our present chronology should be some ten days later, either October 

 20 or October 21. And there the matter stands ! We know neither 

 who it was of Columbus's expedition who first sighted an Ameri- 

 can shore, nor do we know exactly on what day this took place. 

 And this perforce must always remain a mystery, as the data are 

 insufficient to clear it up. 



Perhaps the queerest adjunct of Columbus's great discovery, 

 however, is the fact that Columbus himself never knew that he 

 had discovered a continent. Columbus till his dying breath believed 

 that he had reached outlying parts of India. And there is one 

 proof of this which can not be gainsaid and that is that he called 

 the copper-colored natives whom he met Indians. To this day, we 

 keep on repeating this error and call the original inhabitants of our 

 continent Indians, with the result that sometimes it is hard to 

 distinguish as to whether we are speaking of the natives of America 

 or of the swarthy races of Hindustan. But it does seem hard that 

 Columbus should have revealed to Europeans the existence of the 

 vast territory extending from Bradley Land to Tierra del Fuego 

 and yet have gone to his rest believing he had been on the shores 

 of Hindustan. 



But the very ignorance of Columbus in regard to the American 

 continent is evidence in favor of earlier discoverers. The early 

 maps always show islands. No one dreamed of a new continent. 

 A mariner sighted a coast and told of it and the map-makers charted 

 it as an island. Maps before Columbus indicated numerous islands 

 in the western ocean corresponding roughly with parts of America. 

 It certainly seems far more likely that these islands were based on 

 some foundation of genuine exploration and of actual perception 

 by early mariners than that they should have been invented cor- 

 rectly in cartographic workshops in Europe. Especially probable 



