394 CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS. 



man, which would now be considered a weakness, is in 

 the universal spirit of the age in which, and the people 

 among whom, he lived. He might go beyond them in 

 knowledge or in enterprise ; but the science which un- 

 dermines superstition had been less a subject of his at- 

 tention, while his susceptible temperament exposed him 

 more than most men to the influence of mere impression, 

 individual and contagious. We must consider also the 

 extraordinary circumstances under which he encountered 

 these impressions, on the shores of an undiscovered 

 world, where everything on land and sea, animate and 

 inanimate, wore in itself the appearance of novelty and 

 of mystery, independently of the excited expectation of 

 the individuals concerned. Ill health, and a shattered 

 nervous system, are circumstances also of this case. But 

 above all, we should estimate the influence upon the 

 mind of Columbus, of his own early, favorite, deep-fixed 

 theory, with the ten thousand hopes, recollections and 

 reveries so intimately, so constantly associated with his 

 intense and ceaseless study of the subject. It is no 

 wonder, then, that his imagination partook of the almost 

 supernatural excitement of every other faculty of his 

 soul : it would have been wonderful if it had not. 



It is a matter of strong interest, under these circum- 

 stances, to observe the enthusiasm of his specula- 

 tions ; and how closely this quality follows upon his 

 shrewdness and his science, frequently passing and out- 

 stripping them, though seldom with any jostling or con- 

 fusion. In exploring, for the first time, the great gulf 

 of Paria, for example, he formed one of his simple and 

 grand conclusions from the strict rules of science, and 

 the laws and the phenomena of nature. The vast body 

 of fresh water which he found rushing into that gulf, could 

 not be produced by an island or by islands. It must be 

 some mighty river, he believed, which had wandered 

 through a great extent of country, collecting its many 

 streams. The land, therefore, must be a continent. 

 The various tracts he had touched in various places, 

 must have some connexion with each other. The coast 

 of Paria, off Margarita, must extend far westward ; and 

 the land seen from Trinidad far southward, into an un- 

 known tract of ocean. Thus far he argued like Colum- 



