Just four hundred years ago was a man brave with the conviction that beyond the finite limitations of human knowledge of the earth, there was a broader outlook for the children of men. His profound studies and experiments pointed to a pathway across the seas to other lands. This conviction was utterly opposed to the current of prevalent opinion at that time concerning the earth. Therefore with brave, persistent energy, for weary months and years, he sought the means for carrying out his seemingly baseless scheme of exploration.
Finally through the intervention of a pious monk, he was introduced at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella; and after another weary waiting Isabella (the feminine thought) was willing to give her jewels that he might have means to undertake his perilous voyage to find other lands for her empire, and, perhaps, new converts to her beloved Church.
Fitted out with three frail vessels, the only one having a deck being the Santa Maria (Holy Mary), and with a crew full of doubt and fear, Columbus sailed from the coasts of Spain. The trials and sorrows, the doubts hopes and fears of this crew, as day after day, they failed to realize their promised hopes in discovering the new world held out to them by their dauntless leader, history tells in painful, graphic words.
