This etext was prepared by David Widger
The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 2
I should not like to ask an indulgent and idle public to saunterabout with me under a misapprehension. It would be more agreeable toinvite it to go nowhere than somewhere; for almost every one has beensomewhere, and has written about it. The only compromise I cansuggest is, that we shall go somewhere, and not learn anything aboutit. The instinct of the public against any thing like information ina volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable; and the reader willperhaps discover that this is illy adapted for a text-book inschools, or for the use of competitive candidates in thecivil-service examinations.
Years ago, people used to saunter over the Atlantic, and spend weeksin filling journals with their monotonous emotions. That is allchanged now, and there is a misapprehension that the Atlantic hasbeen practically subdued; but no one ever gets beyond the rollingforties" without having this impression corrected.
I confess to have been deceived about this Atlantic, the roughest andwindiest of oceans. If you look at it on the map, it does n't appearto be much, and, indeed, it is spoken of as a ferry. What with theeight and nine days' passages over it, and the laying of the cable,which annihilates distance, I had the impression that its tediousthree thousand and odd miles had been, somehow, partly done awaywith; but they are all there. When one has sailed a thousand milesdue east and finds that he is then nowhere in particular, but isstill out, pitching about on an uneasy sea, under an inconstant sky,and that a thousand miles more will not make any perceptible change,he begins to have some conception of the unconquerable ocean.Columbus rises in my estimation.
I was feeling uncomfortable that nothing had been done for the memoryof Christopher Columbus, when I heard some months ago that thirty-seven guns had been fired off for him in Boston. It is to be hopedthat they were some satisfaction to him. They were discharged bycountrymen of his, who are justly proud that he should have beenable, after a search of only a few weeks, to find a land where thehand-organ had never been heard. The Italians, as a people, have notprofited much by this discovery; not so much, indeed, as theSpaniards, who got a reputation by it which even now gilds theirdecay. That Columbus was born in Genoa entitles the Italians tocelebrate the great achievement of his life; though why they shoulddischarge exactly thirty-seven guns I do not know. Columbus did notdiscover the United States: that we partly found ourselves, andpartly bought, and gouged the Mexicans out of. He did not evenappear to know that there was a continent here. He discovered theWest Indies, which he thought were the East; and ten guns would beenough for them. It is probable that he did open the way to thediscovery of the New World. If he had waited, however, somebody elsewould have discovered it,—perhaps some Englishman; and then we mighthave been spared all the old French and Spanish wars. Columbus letthe Spaniards into the New World; and their civilization hasuniformly been a curse to it. If he had brought Italians, whoneither at that time showed, nor since have shown, much inclinationto come, we should have had the opera, and made it a payinginstitution by this time. Columbus was evidently a person who likedto sail about, and did n't care much for consequences.
Perhaps it is not an open question whether Columbus did a good thingin first c