and they are apt, as we say, to "ride their hobby to death."

If this is true of certain boys and girls, it is even more true of men
and women. They get to be what we call people of one idea, and whatever
they see or whatever they do always turns on that one idea.

It was so with Columbus. All his life his one idea had been the finding
of Asia--the Indies, or Cathay, as he called it--by sailing to the west.
He did sail to the west. He did find land. And, because of this, as we
have seen, all his voyaging and all his exploring were done in the firm
belief that he was discovering new parts of the eastern coast of Asia.
The idea that he had found a new world never entered his head.

So, when he looked toward the west, as he sailed around the island of
Trinidad and saw the distant shore, he said it was a new part of Asia.
He was as certain of this as he had before been certain that Cuba was a
part of the Asiatic mainland.

But when he sailed into the mouth of the great Orinoco River he was
puzzled. For the water was no longer salt; it grew fresher and fresher
as he sailed on. And it rushed out so furiously through the two straits
at the northern and southern ends of Trinidad (which because of the
terrible rush of their currents he called the Lion's Mouth and the
Dragon's Mouth) that he was at first unable to explain it all.

Then he had a curious idea. Columbus was a great reader of the Bible;
some of the Bible scholars of his day said that the Garden of Eden was
in a far Eastern land where a mighty river came down through it from the
hills of Paradise; as Columbus saw the beautiful land he had reached,
and saw the great river sending down its waters to the sea, he fitted