THE LAND FALL OF COLUMBUS. 803 
carefully followed the great navigator’s every movement, as min- 
utely described by himself, from his first landing upon the island 
which the natives called Guanahani, until he anchored off the 
island of Cuba. He arrives at the conclusion that Columbus 
first landed upon Watling’s Island and named it San Salvador, 
and that he did not visit at all the island now known by that 
name. After carefully considering the facts which lead to this 
result, we are clearly of the opinion the author of the ‘Land 
Fall” is entitled to the credit of exposing a great historical error 
after it had received the sanction of eminent writers, and been 
hallowed by time. 
Watling’s Island is one of the Bahamas, and nearly or quite two 
hundred miles distant in a north-easterly direction from Nassau. 
The great importance of this discovery as seen in the light of the 
four centuries which will soon be completed—so apparent to us— 
far exceeds all that Columbus had imagined in his wildest dreams. 
No wonder that Europe was thrown into a ferment of intense 
excitement when the intelligence of his wonderful success was 
made known. Many a long cycle of a thousand years had been 
completed, during all which time no human being, stunding upon 
the eastern shores of the Atlantic, could discern anything in or be- 
yond the illimitable waste of waters buta Great UNKNOWN. A 
deep and profound mystery, like the pall of the darkest night, 
ever brooded over the billows that received the setting sun. 
Philosophers gazed but to speculate, men of fervid imaginations 
to dream, and poets, in measured numbers, to sing their weird 
and wildest songs. 
Upon the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates,—in Abyssinia 
and Upper Egypt,—down the fertile valley of the Nile,—and 
upon both shores of the Mediterranean Sea, civilization, empire 
and imperial power had for thousands of years made their slow 
but grand and solemn march, only to be at last barred and baffled 
by a vast and unknown waste of waters, 
