Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/20

' .COLUMBUS FALSIFIED. 9 deceiving tnem over one third. Of course tiad he failed to make good his assertion of being able to reach the Indies by sailing west, instead of east,then posterity would have condemned him as being a fraud, in fact in all probibiMty he would never have been heard of, as many another who do not succeed. Would not Aguinaldo have been the Father of his Country, had he succeeded in forming a government? Columbus was justified, for even in this enlighten- ed age sailors who went vrtth the Nares expedition to explore for the pole had the idea that if they did not have a child's caul with them they surely would be drowned. So is there any wonder that the uneducated seamen were doubtful, if not actually scared? and so Columbus must be excused for worrying, for all the professors of navigation who taught in the Royal College at Lisbon had no conception of such vari- ation of the needle. But now it is known how the earth's electrical currents var j in different parts of the globe. The map shows the Canary Islands to be in latitude 27 north and the seaman Triana called "Land ho! Land ho!" in latitude about 25, only tw6 degrees south of that of the Canaries, or about 140 miles; so the Ocean Pathfinder must have been imbued with the old adage, "Go West and grow up with the country." It is a peculiar coincidence that the capital of the World (Washington) should be exactly due north of the Island of San Salvador, being only about ten miles from the nearest point of the Island. While on the subject of coincidents, and to demonstrate that-