CHAP.
IV.J
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
147
Columbus had also some doubts of the kind, but refused to alter his westward course.
The people again uttered murmurs and
menaces; but on the following day they were visited by such flights of birds, and the various indications of land became so numerous, that from a state of despondency they pasged to one of confident expectation. Eager to obtain the promised pension, the seamen were con tinually giving the cry of land, on the least appearance of the kind.
To put a stop to these false alarms, which produced
continual disappointments, Columbus declared that should any one give such notice, and land not be discovered within three days afterwards, he should thenceforth forfeit all claim to the reward.. On the evening of the 6th of October, Martin Alonzo Pinzon began to lose confidence in their present course, and proposed that they should stand more to the southward.
Columbus, how
ever, still persisted in steering directly west.*
Observing this
difference of opinion in a person so important in his squadron as Pinzon, and fearing that chance or design might scatter the ships, he ordered that, should either of the caravels be separated from him, it should stand to the west, and endeavor as soon as possible to join company again: he directed, also, that the vessels should keep near to him at sunrise and sunset, as at these times the state of the atmosphere is most favorable to the discovery of distant land. On the morning of the 7th of October, at sunrise, several of the admiral's crew thought they beheld land in the west, but so indistinctly that no one ventured to proclaim it, lest he should be * Journ. of Columbus, Navarrete, torn. i. p. 17.
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