THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 



185 



of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama was a greater 

 achievement than the crossing of the Atlantic by Columbus. 

 He offered a prize for disquisitions upon the question, "Has 

 the discovery of America been useful or prejudicial to the 

 human race?" Buffon seems, too, to have considered the dis- 

 coveries of the Portuguese in the East as more important than 

 those of Columbus in the West. Robertson, in his History of 

 America, says that even without Columbus some happy acci- 

 dent would have discovered the New World a few years later. 

 Fontenelle, and many others, attribute the first notice of the 

 variation of the compass to Cabot in 1497, though Columbus 

 distinctly mentions noticing it in his journal on the 13th of 

 September, 1492. A late Spanish historian writes: — " Co- 

 lumbus made nothing but discoveries in these regions ; con- 

 quest was reserved for Cortez and Pizarro." Lamartine makes 

 an error of fifteen years in stating the period of the return of 

 Columbus to Spain. Dumas asserts that Columbus passed "a 

 portion of his life in prison," — an expression he would not pro- 

 bably have used, knowingly, to designate a period of three 

 months. Granier de Cassagnac places the last voyage of Co- 

 lumbus in 1493, instead of 1502. St. Hilaire makes the cele- 

 brated Las Casas cross the sea with Columbus nine years too 

 soon. These mis-statements, though not resulting in distortion 

 or misrepresentation of character, are the effects of that indif- 

 ference which for centuries history has manifested towards the 

 life, services, and death of Columbus. 



Columbia is the poetic and symbolical name of America, 

 occurring in the National Anthem and in numerous effusions 

 of patriotic verse. An effort to avenge the memory of the dis- 

 coverer was made by giving his name, officially, to a tract bor- 

 rowed from Virginia and Maryland, and measuring one hundred 

 miles square, — the seat of the American Government. So far 

 from this tardy acknowledgment being a reparation, however, 

 it is probable that the spirit of the departed benefactor, if sum- 



