Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery | Page 4

LIGHT
I THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
II THE HOME IN GENOA
III YOUNG CHRISTOPHER
IV DOMENICO

V SEA THOUGHTS
VI IN PORTUGAL
VII ADVENTURES BODILY AND SPIRITUAL
VIII THE FIRE KINDLES
IX WANDERINGS WITH AN IDEA
X OUR LADY OF LA RABIDA
XI THE CONSENT OF SPAIN
XII THE PREPARATIONS AT PALOS
XIII EVENTS OF THE FIRST VOYAGE
XIV LANDFALL

THE NEW WORLD
I THE ENCHANTED ISLANDS
II THE EARTHLY PARADISE
III THE VOYAGE HOME
IV THE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
V GREAT EXPECTATIONS
VI THE SECOND VOYAGE
VII THE EARTHLY PARADISE REVISITED

DESPERATE REMEDIES

I THE VOYAGE TO CUBA
II THE CONQUEST OF ESPANOLA
III UPS AND DOWNS
IV IN SPAIN AGAIN
V THE THIRD VOYAGE
VI AN INTERLUDE
VII THE THIRD VOYAGE (continued)

TOWARDS THE SUNSET
I DEGRADATION
II CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE
III THE LAST VOYAGE
IV HEROIC ADVENTURES BY LAND AND SEA
V THE ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
VI RELIEF OF THE ADMIRAL
VII THE HERITAGE OF HATRED
VIII THE ADMIRAL COMES HOME
IX THE LAST DAYS
X THE MAN COLUMBUS

THY WAY IS THE SEA, AND THY PATH IN THE GREAT

WATERS, AND THY FOOTSTEPS ARE NOT KNOWN.

THE INNER LIGHT
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I
THE STREAM OF THE WORLD
A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive
a symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive. Beneath his feet are the
stones and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in
some degree belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him. He has
place and condition there. Above him arches a world of immense void,
fleecy sailing clouds, infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and
dissolve; his day comes out of it, his source of light and warmth
marches across it, night falls from it; showers and dews also, and the
quiet influence of stars. Strange that impalpable element must be, and
for ever unattainable by him; yet with its gifts of sun and shower, its
furniture of winged life that inhabits also on the friendly soil, it has
links and partnerships with life as he knows it and is a complement of
earthly conditions. But at his feet there lies the fringe of another
element, another condition, of a vaster and more simple unity than
earth or air, which the primitive man of our picture knows to be not his
at all. It is fluent and unstable, yet to be touched and felt; it rises and
falls, moves and frets about his very feet, as though it had a life and
entity of its own, and was engaged upon some mysterious business.
Unlike the silent earth and the dreaming clouds it has a voice that fills
his world and, now low, now loud, echoes throughout his waking and
sleeping life. Earth with her sprouting fruits behind and beneath him;
sky, and larks singing, above him; before him, an eternal alien, the sea:
he stands there upon the shore, arrested, wondering. He lives,--this man
of our figure; he proceeds, as all must proceed, with the task and
burden of life. One by one its miracles are unfolded to him; miracles of
fire and cold, and pain and pleasure; the seizure of love, the terrible

magic of reproduction, the sad miracle of death. He fights and lusts and
endures; and, no more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last. But
throughout the days of his life, in the very act of his rude existence, this
great tumultuous presence of the sea troubles and overbears him.
Sometimes in its bellowing rage it terrifies him, sometimes in its
tranquillity it allures him; but whatever he is doing, grubbing for roots,
chipping experimentally with bones and stones, he has an eye upon it;
and in his passage by the shore he pauses, looks, and wonders. His eye
is led from the crumbling snow at his feet, past the clear green of the
shallows, beyond the furrows of the nearer waves, to the calm blue of
the distance; and in his glance there shines again that wonder, as in his
breast stirs the vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the
world.
What is there beyond? It is the eternal question asked by the finite of
the infinite, by the mortal of the immortal; answer to it there is none
save in the unending preoccupation of life and labour. And if this old
question was in truth first asked upon the sea-shore, it was asked most
often and with the most painful wonder upon western shores, whence
the journeying sun was seen to go down and quench himself in the sea.
The generations that followed our primitive man grew fast in
knowledge, and perhaps for a time wondered the less as they knew the
more;