WHAT IT COST TO DISCOVER AMERICA

Evening Star, Issue 20346, 30 November 1929, Page 9

WHAT IT COST TO DISCOVER AMERICA

Crossing the Atlantic with Columbus cost a little more, than an American millionaire pays for a suite de luxe on a pleasure trip to Europe, but not much more. Spain paid £1,125 at today’s prices for the New World. The actual sum worked out at 36,000 Eesetas, and a peseta in 1492 would uy more than it would now; 1,600 pesetas bought the services of Christopher Columbus for a year. His two captains received 900 pesetas; the crow received 12 pesetas a montin They cam© back richer by about £5 a man.

Then there were the food and the equipment, and when Columbus came back he presented Ferdinand and Isabella with a further hill of expenses. Its modest total was about £687. But Christopher himself, apart from any bonus, was paid only £1 a week; wbat would the Seamen and Firemen’s Union sav to that ?

What can anyone say? What would a 100-por-ccnt. American to-day say to the fact that the land of his great and free Republic was discovered for such a sum ? It would not to-day buy one of the great Christopher’s signatures. The most remarkable thing about the discovery is perhaps not its cheapness but its surprise. Columbus was sailing to find not a new country but a better way to the Spice Islands, where he went to find pepper and found the greatest bargain in land known to his? tory.