OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 263 



Pinzon owed, as was related by an old sailor of Moguez, at 

 the same trial, to the flight of a flock of parrots which he had 

 observed in the evening flying toward the southwest, in order, 

 as he might well have conjectured, to roost on trees on the 

 land. Never has a flight of birds been attended by more im- 

 portant results. It may even be said that it has decided the 

 first colonization in the New Continent, and the original dis- 

 tribution of the Roman and Germanic races of man,*" 



The course of great events, like the results of natural phe- 

 nomena, is ruled by eternal laws, with few of which we have 

 any perfect knowledge. The fleet which Emanuel, king of 

 Portugal, sent to India, under the command of Pedro Alvarez 

 Cabral, on the course discovered by Gama, was unexpectedly 

 driven on the coast of Brazil on the 22d of April, 1500. From 

 the zeal which the Portuguese had manifested, since the ex- 

 pedition of Diaz in 1487, to circumnavigate the Cape of Good 

 Hope, a recurrence of fortuitous circumstances similar to those 

 exercised by oceanic currents on Cabral's ships could hardly 

 fail to manifest itself. The African discoveries would thus 

 probably have brought about that of America south of the 

 equator : and thus Robertson was justified in saying that it 

 was decreed in the destinies of mankind that the New Con- 

 tinent should be made known to European navigators before 

 the close of the fifteenth century. 



Among the characteristics of Christopher Columbus we 

 must especially notice the penetration and acuteness with 

 which, without intellectual culture, and without any knowl- 

 edge of physical and natural science, he could seize and com- 

 bine the phenomena of the external world. On his arrival in 

 a new world and under a new heaven.t he examined with care 

 the form of continental masses, the physiognomy of vegetation, 

 the habits of animals, and the distribution of heat and the 

 variations in terrestrial magnetism. While the old admiral 

 strove to discover the spices of India, and the rhubarb {rui- 

 barba), which had already acquired a great celebrity through 



* Navarrete, Doaimentos,'^o. 69, in t. iii. of the Viages y Discuhr., p. 

 565-571 ; Examen CriL, t. i., p. 234-249 and 252; t. iii., p. 158-165 

 and 224. On the contested spot of the first landing in the West Indies, 

 see t. iii., p. 186-222. The map of the world of Juan de la Cosa, made 

 six years before the death of Columbus, which was discovered by Valck- 

 enaer and myself in the year 1832, during the cholera epidemic, and has 

 since acquired so much celebrity, has thrown new light on these moot 

 ed questions. 



+ On the graphical and often poetical descriptions of nature found in 

 Columbus, see ante, p. 66, 67. 



