The Complete Writings, vol 2 | Page 4

Genoa entitles the Italians to celebrate the great achievement of
his life; though why they should discharge exactly thirty-seven guns I
do not know. Columbus did not discover the United States: that we
partly found ourselves, and partly bought, and gouged the Mexicans out
of. He did not even appear to know that there was a continent here. He
discovered the West Indies, which he thought were the East; and ten
guns would be enough for them. It is probable that he did open the way
to the discovery of the New World. If he had waited, however,
somebody else would have discovered it,--perhaps some Englishman;
and then we might have been spared all the old French and Spanish
wars. Columbus let the Spaniards into the New World; and their
civilization has uniformly been a curse to it. If he had brought Italians,
who neither at that time showed, nor since have shown, much
inclination to come, we should have had the opera, and made it a
paying institution by this time. Columbus was evidently a person who
liked to sail about, and did n't care much for consequences.
Perhaps it is not an open question whether Columbus did a good thing
in first coming over here, one that we ought to celebrate with salutes
and dinners. The Indians never thanked him, for one party. The
Africans had small ground to be gratified for the market he opened for
them. Here are two continents that had no use for him. He led Spain
into a dance of great expectations, which ended in her gorgeous ruin.
He introduced tobacco into Europe, and laid the foundation for more
tracts and nervous diseases than the Romans had in a thousand years.

He introduced the potato into Ireland indirectly; and that caused such a
rapid increase of population, that the great famine was the result, and
an enormous emigration to New York--hence Tweed and the
constituency of the Ring. Columbus is really responsible for New York.
He is responsible for our whole tremendous experiment of democracy,
open to all comers, the best three in five to win. We cannot yet tell how
it is coming out, what with the foreigners and the communists and the
women. On our great stage we are playing a piece of mingled tragedy
and comedy, with what denouement we cannot yet say. If it comes out
well, we ought to erect a monument to Christopher as high as the one at
Washington expects to be; and we presume it is well to fire a salute
occasionally to keep the ancient mariner in mind while we are trying
our great experiment. And this reminds me that he ought to have had a
naval salute.
There is something almost heroic in the idea of firing off guns for a
man who has been stone-dead for about four centuries. It must have had
a lively and festive sound in Boston, when the meaning of the salute
was explained. No one could hear those great guns without a quicker
beating of the heart in gratitude to the great discoverer who had made
Boston possible. We are trying to "realize" to ourselves the importance
of the 12th of October as an anniversary of our potential existence. If
any one wants to see how vivid is the gratitude to Columbus, let him
start out among our business-houses with a subscription-paper to raise
money for powder to be exploded in his honor. And yet Columbus was
a well-meaning man; and if he did not discover a perfect continent, he
found the only one that was left.
Columbus made voyaging on the Atlantic popular, and is responsible
for much of the delusion concerning it. Its great practical use in this fast
age is to give one an idea of distance and of monotony.
I have listened in my time with more or less pleasure to very rollicking
songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the spray and the tempest's roar,
the wet sheet and the flowing sea, a life on the ocean wave, and all the
rest of it. To paraphrase a land proverb, let me write the songs of the
sea, and I care not who goes to sea and sings 'em. A square yard of
solid ground is worth miles of the pitching, turbulent stuff. Its inability
to stand still for one second is the plague of it. To lie on deck when the
sun shines, and swing up and down, while the waves run hither and

thither and toss their white caps, is all well enough to lie in your narrow
berth and roll from side to side all night long; to walk uphill to your
state-room door, and, when you get there, find you have got to the
bottom of the hill, and opening the