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Page 11
THE ISTHMUS AND SEA POWER.[1]
_June, 1898._
For more than four hundred years the mind of man has been possessed
with a great idea, which, although by its wide diffusion and prophetic
nature resembling one of those fundamental instincts, whose very
existence points to a necessary fulfilment, first quickened into life
in the thought of Christopher Columbus. To him the vision, dimly seen
through the scanty and inaccurate knowledge of his age, imaged a close
and facile communication, by means of the sea, that great bond of
nations, between two ancient and diverse civilizations, which centred,
the one around the Mediterranean, the birthplace of European commerce,
refinement, and culture, the other upon the shores of that distant
Eastern Ocean which lapped the dominions of the Great Khan, and held
upon its breast the rich island of Zipangu. Hitherto an envious waste
of land, entailing years of toilsome and hazardous journey, had barred
them asunder. A rare traveller now and again might penetrate from one
to the other, but it was impossible to maintain by land the constant
exchange of influence and benefit which, though on a contracted scale,
had constituted the advantage and promoted the development of the
Mediterranean peoples. The microcosm of the land-girt sea typified
then that future greater family of nations, which one by one have been
bound since into a common tie of interest by the broad enfolding
ocean, that severs only to knit them more closely together. So with a
seer's eye, albeit as in a glass darkly; saw Columbus, and was
persuaded, and embraced the assurance. As the bold adventurer, walking
by faith and not by sight, launched his tiny squadron upon its voyage,
making the first step in the great progress which was to be, and still
is not completed, he little dreamed that the mere incident of
stumbling upon an unknown region that lay across his route should be
with posterity his chief title to fame, obscuring the true glory of
his grand conception, as well as delaying its fulfilment to a far
distant future.
[1] The Map of the Gulf and Caribbean, p. 31, will serve
for geographical references of this article.
The story of his actual achievement is sufficiently known to all
readers, and need not be repeated here. Amid the many disappointments
and humiliations which succeeded the brief triumphant blaze of his
first return, and clouded the latter years of his life, Columbus was
spared the pang of realizing that the problem was insoluble for the
time. Like many a prophet before him, he knew not what, nor what
manner of time, the spirit that was in him foretold, and died the
happier for his ignorance. The certainty that a wilderness, peopled by
savages and semi-barbarians, had been added to the known world, would
have been a poor awakening from the golden dreams of beneficent glory
as well as of profit which so long had beckoned him on. That the
western land he had discovered interposed a barrier to the further
progress of ships towards his longed-for goal, as inexorable as the
mountain ranges and vast steppes of Asia, was mercifully concealed
from his eyes; and the elusive "secret of the strait" through which he
to the last hoped to pass, though tantalizing in its constant evasion,
kept in tension the springs of hope and moral energy which might have
succumbed under the knowledge of the truth.
It fell to the great discoverer, in his last voyage, to approach the
continent, and to examine its shores along the region where the true
secret of the strait lay hidden,--where, if ever, it shall pass from a
dream to a reality, by the hand of man. In the autumn of 1502, after
many trials and misadventures, Columbus, having skirted the south side
of Cuba, reached the north coast of Honduras. There was little reason,
except in his own unaccountable conviction, for continuing thence in
one direction rather than in the other; but by some process of thought
he had convinced himself that the sought-for strait lay to the south
rather than to the north. He therefore turned to the eastward, though
the wind was contrary, and, after a hard buffet against it, doubled
Cape Gracias � Dios, which still retains its expressive name,
significant of his relief at finding that the trend of the beach at
last permitted him to follow his desired course with a fair wind.
During the next two months he searched the entire coast-line as far as
Porto Bello, discovering and examining several openings in the land
which since have been of historical importance, among others the mouth
of the San Juan River and the Chiriqui Lagoon, one of whose principal
divisions still recalls his visit in its name, Almirante Bay, the Bay
of the Admiral. A little beyond, to the eastward of Porto Bello, he
came to a point already known to the Spaniards, having been reached
from Trinidad. The explorer thus acquired the certainty that, from the
latter island to Yucatan, there was no break in the obdurate shore
which barred his access to Asia.
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