With one ship, therefore, and two caravels, the great admiral made for the Cape Verde islands, “a false name,” as he observes, for nothing was to be seen there of a green colour.  He reached these islands on the 27th of June, and quitted them on the 4th of July, having been in the midst of such a dense fog all the time, that, he says, “it might have been cut with a knife,” Thence he proceeded to the south-west, intending afterwards to take a westerly direction.  When he had gone, as he says, one hundred and twenty leagues, he began to find those floating fields of sea-weed which he had encountered in his first voyage.  Here he took an observation at nightfall, and found that the north star was in five degrees.  The wind suddenly abated, and the heat was intolerable; so much so, that nobody dared to go below deck to look after the wine and the provisions.  This extraordinary heat lasted eight days.  The first day was clear, and if the others had been like it, the admiral says, not a man would have been left alive, but they would all have been burnt up.

  Columbus sails westward.

At last a favourable breeze sprang up, enabling the admiral to take a westerly course, the one he most desired, as he had before noticed in his voyages to the Indies that about a hundred miles west of the Azores there was always a sudden change of temperature.[15]

[Footnote 15:  I suppose he came into or out of one of those warm ocean rivers which have so great an effect in modifying the temperature of the earth—­perhaps into the one which comes from the south of Africa through the Gulf of Mexico, to our own shores, and on which we so much depend.]

  Trinidad seen.

On Sunday, the 22nd of July, in the evening, the sailors saw innumerable birds going from the south-west to the north-east, which flight of birds was a sign that land was not far off.  For several successive days birds were seen, and an albatross perched upon the admiral’s vessel.  Still the fleet went on without seeing land, and, as it was in want of fresh water, the admiral was thinking of changing his course, and, indeed, on Thursday, the 31st of July, had commenced steering northwards for some hours, when, to use his own words, “as God had always been accustomed to show mercy to him,” a certain mariner of Huelva, a follower of the admiral’s, named Alonzo Perez, happened to go up aloft upon the maintop-sail of the admiral’s ship, and suddenly saw land towards the south-west, about fifteen leagues off.  This land which he described was in the form of three lofty hills or mountains.  It would be but natural to conjecture that, as Columbus had resolved to name the first land he should discover “Trinidad,” it was by an effort of the will, or of the imagination, that these three eminences were seen first; but it is exceedingly probable that such eminences were to be seen from the point whence Alonzo Perez first saw land.[16]