DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

(2) listened to his passionate appeal, and recommended him to the Confessor of Queen Isabella. On her the future discoverer made a favourable impression. In an interval of her massacres of Moors and Jews, Queen Isabella granted him an audience, and fur- nished him with the means of fitting out an expe- dition. The little fleet consisted of the Santa Muria, a decked ship with a crew of fifty men, and two small undecked vessels, the Pinta, with thirty men, and the Mina, with twenty-four men. On Friday, August 8rd, 1492, the discoverers set sail on the stormy, chartless, and mysterious ocean. After a voyage of upwards of two months, in craft in which you would hardly care to meet the chops of the Channel, and after endless privations and almost unconquerable difficulties, in the face of a super- stitious and mutinous crew, on another Friday, the 12th of October, a sailor on the mast of the Nina proclaimed to Columbus that the New World was discovered. On his return to Spain on the 15th of March in the following year, bearing with him the gold, the cotton, the parrots, the curious arms and gor- geous plants, the bright birds and wild beasts of the New World, and last, though not least, the first Indians ever seen in Europe, Columbus became, but for a brief while only, the hero of the day, and enjoyed well-deserved ovations and rewards; but