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^ 

 I., p. 430.) 



