CHAPTER II
HOW COLUMBUS SOUGHT FOR THE STRAIT
IF you go to Panama by ship from one of our Atlantic ports, the first land you will see is Watling's Island, or San Salvador, where Columbus caught his first glimpse of the New World in 1492. We know that this is one of the Bahamas, but Columbus died in the belief that it was an island off the coast of Asia. For though he rightly supposed the world to be round so that by sailing long enough to the west you could reach the east, neither he nor any one else in Europe at the time realized how long a voyage that would be. And the last thing Columbus imagined was that he should find a whole New World.
According to his calculations, Japan must lie just about where he found Cuba, and so Columbus told his crew, and made them all take oath that Cuba was Japan. Now, he reasoned, it could be only a little distance further to the rich cities and kingdoms of the Far East. Wonderful stories of their wealth and luxury had been brought back to Europe by Marco Polo, the Venetian, and other travelers, who had made the long difficult journey overland from Europe to India, or even China. And for countless centuries the silks and spices, the gold and jewels, of the East had been carried to the West over caravan-trails that were trodden deep before the
