THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 1892.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8960, 18 August 1892, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 1892.

They have jpust commemorated in a Spanish gf Alport that morning in August, fq us 1 hundred years back, when a mai imer, regarded as the wildest of theoi •lists', pushed out over the unknown a'Bid seemingly measureless waste of wat tecs, in a search of t/nat new world which lie believed could be found beyo nd. From first to last what a task waj ? that of Columbus ! After wandering for years almost enniless, from court to court—amid the sneers of philosophy rs and the frowns of distrustful divine? j—offering to princt to discover foir them new continents and islands with the boundless treasures of a hemisphere, when he finally obtained the tardy c ountenance and Vielp of the Spanish so vereigns, Isabella ; and Ferdinand, lie c< mid only start on his mysterious enterprise with a scared and mutinous crew, and in three of the frailest baj-iqueg that ever carried sail on the opeiii ocean. His men, in despair of ever reaching land, were about to j throw him overboard, when an insular shore of the future America was hit , upon. | /'

Columbus had vainly lai'd his pre >- posals before King John 11. < >f Portugal, before the Republican Cjrovernmei it of his native Genoa, j:ilso before that of Venice, and he h ad sent his brother to submit the 'undertaking to Henry VII. of England. It -was for years under consideration in / the Spanish Court; " before ii was sanctioned ; and in the end two pi.ii.vate individuals—the brothers jPinzon, "shipOwners and sea captains,! of the. 'little port of Palos—proved tine best promoters of an enterprise vrhich doubled the size of the world It nown Sio our civilisation. Now, on the fourtjii centenary of such aft achievement/under the Spanish flag, the other Governments appropriately forward tiheir congratulations to Madrid, and j of Queeln Victoria's complimentary ; despatch Ave heard by wire a c»oupl>3 of da] -s ago. The United States as a great j European nation groyrn up in Ajmerica, and already one i«f the Great IPowers of the globe—<»nsiqler theijrnselves in duty bound to celebrate tj.uch an event by soma demq nstratio on a scale of suitable magnitude./ Hence they are getting ready an international exhibition, in its di measions axLd accompanying features to tij-anscendl all previous things of the kind ; and /they have chosen for its site , Chicago as fcheir most marvellous city in three ways]. Marvellous, because it is the only f seaport in the world which 'lies in the i heart of a continent, thanks to its p» ssition on the line of the great lakes, navigably connected with the ocean ' by the St. Lawrence; wonderful also, because holding to-day a population elf a million and a quarter, -while it had J only four thousand souls half a centaury back ; and marvellous again, becifiuse of the engineering feat a few yea* ago, when to remedy its defective foundation, the greater part of the huge citiy was bodily lilted up ancl its fqunclatioi|a elevated. Columbus was the first f to make full use of the introduction of I the compass, by turning: his back to all: known land and boldly' launching out; on the trackless wilderness of ocean. Nowadays, if a balloon expedition were to. start

into space, in quea* of a path to one of ■the other planets, it could not excite more astonishment or alarm, .as the undertaking of a madman, than was excited among his cotemporaries by the expedition of Co'mmbus. If, with the help of the compass, all shores of the globe became connected, and the difficulties of marine space were overcome, so by the invention of the -engine distance has ken abridged both on land and sea. We live in what is preeminently the age of extraordinary scientific inversion and mechanical contrivance. I'et, despite much intellectual perform Lance and great advances in knowledge 'and, material civilisation, it is too true tlhrafe modern civilised man can in some other respects figure in quite as ugly a light as his benighted forefathers in what are now spoken of as the darker ages. If Spain acquired honour as we'l as riches by aiding discovery of the Western World, Spaniards also acquirer! infamy by their treatment of the native inhabitants. The Lucayos or Bahama Islands were the first American land touched by Columj bus,, but of i;he gentle inhabitants who then welcou aed the strangers, chroniclers say that only one aged woman was found in fjhose islands within twelve years after. They were expert divers, and were < xirried off to dive for pearls in the Gulf of Paria. Of the great island oi; Hayti Columbus wrote home " I swear to your Majesties that then 3 is not in the world a better people ok- a better land." But the kindly. H aytians were cruelly used, and they, ant I the more warlike Caribs of the lesser Antilles are now almost wholly -e<xtinct. But we cannot cast a stone, at the Spaniards, or. scowl upon a bygone age, in .view of such facts ai a the Kanaka labour traffic and its concomitant circumstances, and the shot Dting down of helpless blacks in Austral ia.