FRANK M. CHAPMAN. 183 
Irving states that on September 20th, Columbus recorded 
the visit of several small birds to the ships: “ Three of a 
small kind which keep about groves and orchards, came 
singing in the morning and flew away again in the evening, 
Their song cheered the hearts of the dismayed mariners, 
who hailed it as a voice from land. The larger fowl, they 
observed, were strong of wing and might venture far to sea; 
but such small birds were too feeble to fly far, and their 
singing showed they were not exhausted by flight.” 
We cannot now guess at the identity of these birds, but 
we can readily see what a source of encouragement they 
were to Columbus and his sadly troubled companions. For 
nearly two weeks they were now denied the mental comfort _ 
which their small-winged visitors had given them; this was 
the critical period of Columbus’s voyage. His men were on 
the verge of mutiny, and each day his influence over them 
was lessened, On October 3d we find them uttering 
“ murmurs and menaces;” but on the following day they 
were visited “ by such flights of birds, and the various in- 
dications of land became so numerous, that from a state of 
despondency they passed to one of confident expectation.” 
They were now about twenty-one hundred miles from the 
Canaries, and within about six hundred and fifty miles of 
the Bahamas. 
Finally, on October 7th, birds became so numerous, and 
the direction of their flight was so uniformly southwest, that 
they became not only harbingers of land to the explorer, but 
actually caused him to change his course to correspond with 
their line of flight. Fiske remarks: “ The change of direc- 
tion was probably fortunate. If he had persisted in keep- 
ing on the parallel, seven hundred and twenty miles would 
have brought him to Florida, a little south of Cape Malabar. 
After the change he had but five hundred’ and five miles of 
water before him, and the temper of the sailors was growing 
more dangerous with every mile.” (Discovery of America, 
L., p. 430.) 
