CHAPTER X.
Arrival at Hispaniola; Bad Treatment by Bobadlilla

CHAPTER XI.
Columbus pleads his Cause at Court; New Enterprise; Ovando

CHAPTER XII.
Remarkable Despatch; Mutiny;
Eclipse predicted, and its influence; Mutiny quelled

CHAPTER XIII.
Falling Fortunes: Conclusion



CHAPTER I. Early Discoveries in the Fifteenth Century.


LEGENDS OF THE SEA.

Modern familiarity with navigation renders it difficult for us to
appreciate adequately the greatness of the enterprise which was undertaken
by the discoverers of the New World. Seen by the light of science and of
experience, the ocean, if it has some real terrors, has no imaginary ones.
But it was quite otherwise in the fifteenth century. Geographical
knowledge was but just awakening, after ages of slumber; and throughout
those ages the wildest dreams had mingled fiction with fact. Legends
telling of monsters of the deep, jealous of invasion of their territory;
of rocks of lodestone, powerful enough to extract every particle of iron