West Indies) on the twelfth of October, 1492. But, according to the New
Style, adopted nearly one hundred years after his discovery, the right
date would be the twenty-first of October. And this is why, in the
Columbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated the four hundredth
anniversary of the discovery of America on the twenty-first of October;
which, as you see, is the same as the twelfth under the Old Style of
reckoning time.

But did Columbus discover America? What was this land that greeted his
eyes as the daylight came on that Friday morning, and he saw the low
green shores that lay ahead of his caravels.

As far as Columbus was concerned he was sure that he had found some one
of the outermost islands of Cipango or Japan. So he dropped his anchors,
ordered out his rowboat, and prepared to take possession of the land in
the name of the queen of Spain, who had helped him in his enterprise.

Just why or by what right a man from one country could sail up to the
land belonging to another country and, planting in the ground the
flag of his king, could say, "This land belongs to my king!" is a hard
question to answer. But there is an old saying that tells us, Might
makes right; and the servants of the kings and queens--the adventurers
and explorers of old--used to go sailing about the world with this idea
in their heads, and as soon as they came to a land they, had never seen
before, up would go their flag, and they would say, This land is mine
and my king's! They would not of course do this in any of the well-known
or "Christian lands" of Europe; but they believed that all "pagan
lands" belonged by right to the first European king whose sailors should
discover and claim them.