CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY

A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG



TO
THE RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
K.C.V.O., D.C.L., F.R.S.

MY DEAR HORACE,

Often while I have been studying the records of colonisation in the New
World I have thought of you and your difficult work in Ireland; and I
have said to myself, "What a time he would have had if he had been
Viceroy of the Indies in 1493!" There, if ever, was the chance for a
Department such as yours; and there, if anywhere, was the place for the
Economic Man. Alas! there war only one of him; William Ires or Eyre, by
name, from the county Galway; and though he fertilised the soil he did it
with his blood and bones. A wonderful chance; and yet you see what came
of it all. It would perhaps be stretching truth too far to say that you
are trying to undo some of Columbus's work, and to stop up the hole he
made in Ireland when he found a channel into which so much of what was
best in the Old Country war destined to flow; for you and he have each
your places in the great circle of Time and Compensation, and though you
may seem to oppose one another across the centuries you are really
answering the same call and working in the same vineyard. For we all set
out to discover new worlds; and they are wise who realise early that