seventy years or more, expeditions had been going out to discover new
lands and coming back safely.

Columbus, therefore, found it difficult to induce the sea-going men of
Palos to share his enthusiasm. This difficulty of getting a crew
together must have been foreseen at court, for the royal secretary
issued an order intended to help Columbus, but which instead hurt his
cause and proved most unwise. The curious order in question was to the
effect that all criminals who would sign for the expedition would be
"privileged from arrest or further imprisonment for any offense or crime
committed by them up to this date, and during the time they might be on
the voyage, and for two months after their return from the voyage."

To criminals, apparently, being devoured by monsters rimming the western
Atlantic appeared a better fate than languishing in a cruel Spanish
prison, for the first men who enlisted were from this class. A more
unfortunate method of recruiting a crew could hardly be imagined. Such
men were undesirable, not only because of their lawless character, but
also because they had never before sailed on a ship; and the more this
class rallied to the front, the more the respectable sailors of Palos,
Moguer, Huelva, and other adjacent towns hung back. To go forth into the
unknown was bad enough; to go there in the society of malefactors was
even worse.

Here again Juan Perez, the good priest of La Rabida, and Pinzon, the
friendly navigator of Palos, came forward and helped. Friar Juan went
among the population exhorting them to have faith in Columbus as
_he_ had faith in him; he explained to them all that he understood
of geography, and how, according to his understanding, the Italian was
sure to succeed. As we know, a priest was often the only educated man in