recognition of this constant influence on him, and of whatever effect
lifelong association with so profound and mysterious an element may have
had on his conduct in the world of men. Better than many documents as an
aid to our understanding of him would be intimate association with the
sea, and prolonged contemplation of that face with which he was so
familiar. We can never know the heart of it, but we can at least look
upon the face, turned from us though it is, upon which he looked. Cloud
shadows following a shimmer of sunlit ripples; lines and runes traced on
the surface of a blank calm; salt laughter of purple furrows with the
foam whipping off them; tides and eddies, whirls, overfalls, ripples,
breakers, seas mountains high-they are but movements and changing
expressions on an eternal countenance that once held his gaze and wonder,
as it will always hold the gaze and wonder of those who follow the sea.

So much of the man Christopher Columbus, who once was and no longer is;
perished, to the last bone and fibre of him, off the face of the earth,
and living now only by virtue of such truth as there was in him; who once
manfully, according to the light that he had, bore Christ on his
shoulders across stormy seas, and found him often, in that dim light, a
heavy and troublesome burden; who dropped light and burden together on
the shores of his discovery, and set going in that place of peace such a
conflagration as mankind is not likely to see again for many a
generation, if indeed ever again, in this much-tortured world, such
ancient peace find place.