COLUMBUS AT PANAMA. 



179 



eovery irrepressible. He had convinced himself, and now sought 

 to convince the queen, that to the westward of the regions he 

 had visited the land converged, leaving a narrow passage 

 through which he hoped to pass, and proceed to the Indies be- 

 yond. This convergence of the land did in reality exist, but the 

 strait of water he expected to find was, and is, a strait of land 

 — the Isthmus of Panama. However, the queen approved of 

 the plan, and gave him four ships, equipped and victualled for 

 two years. Columbus had conceived the immense idea of passing 

 through the strait, and returning by Asia and the Cape of Good 

 Hope, thus circumnavigating the globe and proving its spherical « 

 form. He departed from Cadiz on the 8th of May, 1502. 



He touched at, and named, Martinique early in J une, and after- 

 wards at St. Jean, now Porto Ricco. Ovando refused his request 

 to land at Isabella to repair his vessel and exchange one of them 

 for a faster sailer. Escaping a terrible storm, which wrecked 

 and utterly destroyed the splendid fleet in which the rapacious 

 pillagers of the island had embarked their ill-gotten wealth, he 

 was driven by the winds to Jamaica, and thence by the currents 

 to Cuba. Here a strong north wind enabled him to sail south 

 southwest, towards the latitude where he expected to find the 

 strait. He touched the mainland of North America at Trux- 

 illo, in Honduras, and coasted thence southward along the 

 Mosquito shore, Nicaragua, Costa Ricca, and Panama. Here he 

 explored every sinuosity and indentation of the shore, seeking 

 at the very spot where civilization and commerce now require 

 a canal, a passage which he considered as demanded by Nature 

 and accorded by Providence. He followed the isthmus as far as 

 the Gulf of Darien, and then, driven by a furious tropical tem- 

 pest, returned as far as Veragua, in search of rich gold mines 

 of which he had heard. The storm lasted for eight days, con- 

 cluding with a terrible display of water-spouts, which Columbus 

 is said to have regarded as a work of the devil, and to have 

 dispelled by bringing forth the Bible and exorcising the demon. 



