CHAPTER XIX. 
The First Great Voyage of Columbus. He Solves the Dark Problem of the 
Ages. His Land Fall. The Whole Group Made Forever Memorable. The 
Spirits of Columbus and Blask Beard Indelibly Impressed Upon tie Islands. 
Eminently Good and Bad Men Not Deud When They Die. The Natives As 
Columbus Found and Described Them. The West India Islands Occupied by 
Substantially One People. The Caribe. The Search Among the Bahamas 
for the Fountain of Youth. 
“There are great deeds that will not pass away, 
And names that must not wither, though the earth 
Forgets her empires with a just decay.” —Brron. 
Tue Bahamas are objects of great historic interest to the whole 
civilized world, but to the inhabitants of the Western Hemi- 
sphere they have a peculiar charm. The life and voyages of 
Christopher Columbus, the son of a Genoese wool-comber, when 
faithfully recorded, give to literature a treasure of inestimable 
value, and to the department of fact, the absorbing attraction 
and dazzling brilliancy of fiction. For several weeks after our 
first arrival in Nassau, the great navigator and discoverer was 
almost constantly in mind. While yachting in the perfectly clear 
and transparent waters, so exquisitely colored, borrowing their 
rich hues not only from the skies but from the white sand beds 
and coral shelves and reefs over which they flow, we thought 
how, after his long and anxious voyage, he must have been im- 
pressed; and every ride we took over the hard limestone roads, 
upon the island of New Providence, now looking owt upon the 
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