Saunterings | Page 4

like to ask an indulgent and idle public to saunter about
with me under a misapprehension. It would be more agreeable to invite
it to go nowhere than somewhere; for almost every one has been
somewhere, and has written about it. The only compromise I can
suggest is, that we shall go somewhere, and not learn anything about it.
The instinct of the public against any thing like information in a
volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable; and the reader will perhaps
discover that this is illy adapted for a text-book in schools, or for the
use of competitive candidates in the civil-service examinations.
Years ago, people used to saunter over the Atlantic, and spend weeks in
filling journals with their monotonous emotions. That is all changed
now, and there is a misapprehension that the Atlantic has been
practically subdued; but no one ever gets beyond the "rolling forties"
without having this impression corrected.
I confess to have been deceived about this Atlantic, the roughest and
windiest of oceans. If you look at it on the map, it does n't appear to be
much, and, indeed, it is spoken of as a ferry. What with the eight and
nine days' passages over it, and the laying of the cable, which
annihilates distance, I had the impression that its tedious three thousand
and odd miles had been, somehow, partly done away with; but they are
all there. When one has sailed a thousand miles due east and finds that
he is then nowhere in particular, but is still 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 memory
of Christopher Columbus, when I heard some months ago that thirty-
seven guns had been fired off for him in Boston. It is to be hoped that
they were some satisfaction to him. They were discharged by
countrymen of his, who are justly proud that he should have been able,
after a search of only a few weeks, to find a land where the hand-organ
had never been heard. The Italians, as a people, have not profited much
by this discovery; not so much, indeed, as the Spaniards, who got a
reputation by it which even now gilds their decay. That Columbus was
born in Genoa entitles the Italians to celebrate the great achievement of

his life; though why they should discharge exactly thirty-seven guns I
do not know. Columbus did not discover the United States: that we
partly found ourselves, and partly bought, and gouged the Mexicans out
of. He did not even appear to know that there was a continent here. He
discovered the West Indies, which he thought were the East; and ten
guns would be enough for them. It is probable that he did open the way
to the discovery of the New World. If he had waited, however,
somebody else would have discovered it,--perhaps some Englishman;
and then we might have been spared all the old French and Spanish
wars. Columbus let the Spaniards into the New World; and their
civilization has uniformly been a curse to it. If he had brought Italians,
who neither at that time showed, nor since have shown, much
inclination to come, we should have had the opera, and made it a
paying institution by this time. Columbus was evidently a person who
liked to sail about, and did n't care much for consequences.
Perhaps it is not an open question whether Columbus did a good thing
in first coming over here, one that we ought to celebrate with salutes
and dinners. The Indians never thanked him, for one party. The
Africans had small ground to be gratified for the market he opened for
them. Here are two continents that had no use for him. He led Spain
into a dance of great expectations, which ended in her gorgeous ruin.
He introduced tobacco into Europe, and laid the foundation for more
tracts and nervous diseases than the Romans had in a thousand years.
He introduced the potato into Ireland indirectly; and that caused such a
rapid increase of population, that the great famine was the result, and
an enormous emigration to New York--hence Tweed and the
constituency of the Ring. Columbus is really responsible for New York.
He is responsible for our whole tremendous experiment of democracy,
open to all comers, the best three in five to win. We cannot yet tell how
it is coming out, what with the foreigners and the communists and the
women. On our great stage we are playing a piece of mingled tragedy
and comedy, with what