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LIFE A N D VOYAGES OF
[BOOK
X.
CHAPTER IV. SPECULATIONS OF COLUMBUS CONCERNING THE COAST OF PARIA. [1498.]
THE natural phenomena of a great and striking nature presented to the ardent mind of Columbus in the course of this voyage, led to certain sound deductions and imaginative speculations. The immense body of fresh water flowing into the Gulf of Paria, and thence rushing into the ocean, was too vast to be produced by an island or by islands. It must be the congregated streams of a great extent of country pouring forth in one mighty river, and the land necessary to furnish such a river must be a continent. He now supposed that most of the tracts of land which he had seen about the Gulf were connected : that the coast of Paria ex足 tended westward far beyond a chain of mountains which he had beheld afar off from Margarita ; and that the land opposite to Trinidad, instead of being an island, continued to the south, far beyond the equator, into that hemisphere hitherto unknown to civilized man. He considered all this an extension of the Asiatic continent ; thus presuming that the greater part of the surface of the globe was firm land. In this last opinion he found himself supported by authors of the highest name, both ancient and mo-