the shore of the United States a little north of the spot where St.
Augustine now is, about the northern line of Florida.

(*) The computations from Santa Cruz, in the Canaries, to
San Salvador give this result, as kindly made for us by
Lieutenant Mozer, of the United States navy.

Had the coast of Asia been, indeed, as near as Toscanelli and Columbus
supposed, this latitude of the Canary islands would have been quite near
the mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang river, in China, which was what Columbus
was seeking. For nearly a generation afterwards he and his followers
supposed that the coast of that region was what they had found.

It was on Saturday, the eighth of September, that they lost sight of
Teneriffe. On the eleventh they saw a large piece of the mast of a ship
afloat. On the fourteenth they saw a "tropic-bird," which the sailors
thought was never seen more than twenty-five leagues from land; but
it must be remembered, that, outside of the Mediterranean, few of the
sailors had ever been farther themselves. On the sixteenth they began
to meet "large patches of weeds, very green, which appeared to have been
recently washed away from land." This was their first knowledge of the
"Sargasso sea," a curious tract in mid-Atlantic which is always green
with floating seaweeds. "The continent we shall find farther on," wrote
the confident Admiral.

An observation of the sun on the seventeenth proved what had been
suspected before, that the needles of the compasses were not pointing
precisely to the north. The variation of the needle, since that time,
has been a recognized fact. But this observation at so critical a time
first disclosed it. The crew were naturally alarmed. Here was evidence