"Columbus and Columbia:  A Brief Survey of the Early Creation of
the Columbus Symbol in American History"
 
by:  Delno C. West and August Kling
 
in:  "Studies in Popular Culture" (XII: 2, 1989, pp. 45-60)
 
     When President Ronald Reagan signed the 1988 Columbus Day
Proclamation at the White House ceremony in the East Room on
October 3, he stressed the importance of the 1992 Quincentenary
noting that Christopher Columbus "was the inventor of the Ameri-
can dream."  The identification with Columbus by Americans has
always been an exercise of the imagination.  Although a natural
symbol for Puritan themes of a new world, new beginnings, para-
dise in a new land, he became transformed and secularized into a
symbol of unity, national pride, progress and liberty.
     Christopher Columbus was a devoutly pious man whose mysti-
cism was intimately integrated with his thoughts and actions.
Throughout his journals and letters, we find him constantly in
prayer, invoking the names of Christ, Mary and the saints, and
solemnly giving praise to God.  He fervently believed that he had
been chosen to do a "great work," that he was a man of destiny
divinely inspired in thought and action.  His religious life was
so pronounced that it is commented on by all of his earliest
biographers.
     After locating Paria (South America) on his third voyage, he
wrote a lengthy letter to Dona Juana de Torres, recently govern-
ess to the infant Prince Juan.  Impressed by the fact that he
believed that he had come within a few miles of the Terrestrial
Paradise, and knowing that he had discovered a continent, he
tells the Governess that Apocalypse 21 has been fulfilled:
 
     Of the New Heaven and Earth which our Lord has made,
     and as St. John writes in the Apocalypse, after he had
     told of it by the mouth of Isaiah, he made me the
     messenger for it and showed me where to find it.
 
     Curiously, the vision of the discoverer, that he had been
shown the location of the New Heaven and the New Earth, would
become also the vision of the new hemisphere as it sought to
achieve its own identity and meaning.
     The formation of the symbolic meaning of Christopher Colum-
bus to America in the late eighteenth century and the perpetua-
tion of that meaning into the nineteenth century has been ignored
by American historians.  This was a time in which Columbus became
Columbia and a myth was formed about the Admiral, a time in which
a Genoese explorer in the service of Spain, a mariner who never
touched the shores of North America, became the symbol of Ameri-
can pride and progress.
     The Columbus symbol has played a role in the political and
poetic myths about America's beginnings, history and future.  Our
latest nuclear submarine was commissioned in the summer of 1988
and named "Columbia."  And, we continue the legacy with space
ships and space shuttles named "Columbia" and "Discovery."
Examples for this essay will be limited to literature, art and
public celebrations, but as a figure who has captured the Ameri-
can imagination on a level equal to that of George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln, the symbolic meaning of Columbus appears every-
where.  A monograph would be necessary in order to analyze the
iconography of Columbus in numismatics, philately, children's
literature and school books, American popular history and text-
books, ethnic movements, and as patron of science and technology.
For example, Columbus was described in heroic terms and a man of
great character in McGuffery and other early readers.  Early in
this century, the Columbian Liberty and Peace Bell accompanied by
the "Liberty Primer" was distributed widely to American elementa-
ry schools.  Copied from the great "Columbian Liberty Bell" in
front of Union Station in Washington D.C., the primer and bell
were designated to promote Americanism among American youth.
     The iconography of the Columbian symbol became complicated
early on in our history when Columbus became "Columbia" a female
figure more akin to "liberty" and "American unity" in the public
mind.  A lengthy analysis of the history of female representation
in the portrayal of the body politic of a nation is unnecessary
here.  Several recent studies by Marina Warner and others have
followed the metamorphoses of the Greek goddess of liberty into
Columbia.  These studies have shown the close connection of such
transformation to the French Revolution and European iconography
seeking a chaste mother to represent the ideals of a Republic.
As Warner pointed out in her book, "Monuments and Maidens", the
Statue of Liberty, for example, which is a version of the allego-
ry of Columbia, "anticipates continuously a future that is always
in the process of becoming."
     A change toward secularization and feminization began
following the War of Independence when "Columbia" was used as a
unifying force for the thirteenth separate states, and later to
reunify the union after the Civil War.  Yet, the older spiritual
meaning attached to Columbus was reborn and reused at the turn of
the twentieth century by American Catholics in their struggle for
equality.
     There are many Biblical archetypes in U.S. history--the
exodus, chosen people, promised land, New Jerusalem, sacrificial
death and rebirth.  We have developed our own prophets and
martyrs, sacred events and sacred places, our own rituals and
symbols.  Christopher Columbus is one of the more interesting of
these and least understood for his life and name came to have
both spiritual and secular meaning.
     A definition might be in order at this point:  Columbus, is
a Latin masculine noun meaning a male dove.  Columba is the
feminine form of the noun.  Yet, by the time of the revolution, a
new form of the word had appeared:  "Columbia" which was listed
in the "Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia" as "a new Latin form
derived from Columbus.  Columbia is the poetical name of the
United States of America."
     Christopher Columbus already had been adopted as a symbol of
liberation and progress by North Americans during the era of the
Colonial period.  The spiritual meaning of the New World to the
people of colonial New England incorporated important elements of
self-awareness and world-consciousness.  Very early they devel-
oped values, identity, purpose, expectations and especially hope
from Christian eschatology.  One of the earliest examples of this
is a fascinating book published in 1697, by a chief justice in
Boston, Samuel Sewall.  He wrote a book which he titled,
"Phaenomena quaedum Apocalyptica ad aspectum Novi Orbis
configurata", or "some few lines Towards a Description of the New
Heaven as it Makes (seems) to Those Who Stand Upon the New
Earth."  The "New Earth" he speaks of is, of course, the New
World, and especially the still small and struggling colonies of
New England.  The "New Heaven" is a rather unusual way of refer-
ring to the spiritual meaning of the New World, which Sewall
insisted should be called "Columbina" rather than "America."
Samuel Sewall wrote his book in defense of the colonies which
were receiving "bad press" by Protestant theologians at Oxford
and Cambridge.  These most learned Bible scholars had concluded
that the New World was the Biblical "infernal region," or in
plain English, "hell."
     Sewall insisted that descriptions of the New World should be
given by people who had lived there and who knew what they were
talking about.  Furthermore, there were other prophecies in the
book of Revelations better suited to identification with the New
World.  There were those glorious prophecies of the New Jerusa-
lem.  And Sewall went on to show how North America could properly
be marked the New Jerusalem or "New Heaven" or Promised Land on
the spiritual map.  The most impressive lines in Sewall's book
are in huge bold type:
 
     LIFT UP YOUR HEADS, O YE GATES (OF COLUMBINA) AND BE YE
     LIFT UP, YE EVERLASTING DOORS, AND THE KING OF GLORY
     SHALL COME IN.
 
     The name "Columbina" had a special prophetic meaning to
Sewall.  He explained that it referred to the hero for whom the
New World should rightly be named, "rather call it Columbina,
from the magnanimous hero Christopher Columbus, a Genuese, who
was manifestly appointed of God to be the Finder out of these
lands."  Sewall goes on to describe the English colonies as the
"marriageable younger sister," the New Jerusalem, waiting for the
arrival of the heavenly bridegroom.
     Although Sewall wished to name the country "Columbina,"
others chose the version of "Columbia."  The Boston poet, Phyllis
Wheatley (1753-1784), who as a small child had been kidnapped
from her African homeland by slave traders, was the first to use
in print (in her poem, "To His Excellency General Washington")
the name "Columbia" as a poetic designation for the aspirations
of the new republic in 1775.
     Jonathan Edwards, minister and President of the College of
New Jersey (later Princeton) began to link the powerful theme of
the discovery of the New World and the prophecies of the earthly
millennium at the end of human history.  Edwards concluded from
his studies of prophecies and of history that the discovery of
the New World was a preparatory state for the dawning of the
earthly millennium in the Western World.  He wrote in 1773
("Thoughts on the Revival in New England") that the New World
would lead the old world in progress toward that expectation:
 
     This new world is probably now discovered, that the new
     and most glorious state of God's church on earth might
     commense there; that God might in it begin a new world
     in spiritual respect, when he creates the new heavens
     and new earth.
 
     When he accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey
in 1757, Edwards explained that he was completing his major work,
a new method of theology written in the form of universal histo-
ry.  Edwards had worked through the prophecies of the Bible and
related them to the ages and events of human history, forming
what he called the "History of the Work of Redemption".  The
climax of this history was to be a new age of spiritual and
material fulfillment prophesied as the millennium.
     Christopher Columbus also emerged as a popular hero during
the American Revolutionary War.  The tattered troops of General
Washington's army were frequently called the "Columbian host."
As they marched they sometimes sang a popular patriotic song,
"Columbia, Columbia, to Glory Arise," written by a chaplain of
the Connecticut Continental Brigade who was already jotting down
verses for the first epic of the New Republic.  Timothy Dwight,
the chaplain, while a young instructor at Yale College, had
joined a group of dissident students known as the "sons of
freedom."  Appropriately, the group of literary and revolutionary
students styled themselves the "Columbians."  Later, when Presi-
dent of Yale College, he wrote his poem, "Conquest of Canaan".
In his poem, he first told the story of Moses and the Exodus,
then presented the vision of the New Age and the New World as
seen from atop Mt. Pisgah.  Dwight identified Christopher Colum-
bus as "a new Moses" who "through trackless seas, an unknown
flight explores, and hails a new canaan's promised shores."  In
his footnotes, Dwight interpreted his verses as they unfolded a
prophetic preview of history continuing from ancient times to the
end of the world.  Far into his poem, he reached what he called
the "Vision of America," with the promise of great social,
economic and scientific progress for the new nation.  This
prospect of future progress for the new nation is open-ended and
limitless.  These same boundless expectations for the future of
America were elaborated in other poems by Timothy Dwight.
     Shortly after the birth of the New Nation, the first commem-
orative celebrations of Columbus' discovery were held in New York
City, Baltimore and Boston.  In New York City, the activities
were organized by the "Tammany Society or Columbian Order" (the
name is derived from an early American Indian Christian martyr
and Christopher Columbus).  In 1792, the Tammany Society or
Columbian Order was a highly respected club whose membership
included everyone of importance in New York City.  The commemora-
tive was billed as the celebration of "the greatest event in the
history of mankind since the death of our Saviour."
     A statue of Columbus was raised at Tammany Hall (or the
"Wigwam" as they called it then), and an eloquent oration was
delivered by Mr. John B. Johnson followed by dinner and evening
entertainment.  After dinner the toasts were many.  Among the
more interesting were the following:
 
     Toast no. 7:  May the genius of liberty, as she has
     conducted the sons of Columbia with glory to the com-
     mencement of the fourth century, guard their fame to
     the end of time.
 
     Toast no. 8:  The memory of the renowned Columbus--may
     our latest posterity inherit the goodly land which his
     intrepidity explored, and his sagacity discovered.
 
     In Baltimore and Boston similar ceremonies were held.  In
Baltimore, a memorial column was erected with proper ceremony.
While in Boston a dinner celebration was held by the recently
formed Massachusetts Historical Society featuring an oration by
the Rev. Jeremy Belknap.  After the oration, the memory of
Columbus was "toasted in convivial enjoyment, and the warmest
wishes were expressed that the blessings now distinguishing the
United States might be extended to every part of the world he has
discovered."
     In this same year, the plan for the District of Columbia was
printed and displayed for the public sale of building lots.
Records of the day are silent as to the reason why the federal
territory was named to honor Christopher Columbus, or whether
other names were considered.  Most likely the name was chosen to
appease those who were lobbying to change the name of America to
Columbia.  All we know is that the name was decided upon by the
three commissioners selected by President Washington.  The lack
of information is not surprising, as we know General Washington
and the aides he chose were people of action, short on verbal
ceremonies and public explanations.  But there is in the Capitol
further visible evidence of the choice of the Genoese mariner as
a national symbol.
     At the top of the wide stone steps of the nation's capitol
were placed the marble statues (now moved to the Smithsonian) of
an awed native maiden viewing a Christopher Columbus in armor
holding a globe on which is carved the word "America."  As one
stands before the huge bronze Columbus doors, designed and cast
by Randolph Rogers, opening into the rotunda, many symbolic
figures remind the viewer of the relationship between Columbus
and America.  The most obvious are the nine spectacular panels
depicting scenes from the Admiral's life.  At the top of the
doors is a bust of Columbus surrounded by laurel wreaths above
draped American flags resting on an eagle.  Rogers drew the
design for the doors while studying in Florence, Italy, copying
the doors from the famous Ghiberti "Gates of Paradise" to the
Cathedral baptistery.
     Entering the rotunda, there is the magnificent first fresco
by John Venderlyn picturing a highly stylized landing of Columbus
on San Salvador island in 1492.  This is only the first of many
paintings, busts, statues and frescos of Columbus in the capitol
building done throughout the nineteenth century by famous Ameri-
can artists.  Nor is the Capitol building the only site for works
of art with a Columbian theme.  There is art all over Washington
D.C. dedicated to the Admiral; for example, the magnificent
memorial in front of Union Station or the marble bust of Columbus
in the main vestibule of the White House.
     The naming of the federal territory in honor of Christopher
Columbus and filling the city with works of art depicting his
life was not just a romantic reference to a picturesque moment in
the history of the New World.  In it was a powerful symbolism
expressing the deepest ideals and values of our national heritage
and hopes for the future.  Such a rhapsody of symbolism expressed
newly accepted notions of national identity, ideals and goals.
The choice was no coincidence.
     Paintings, statues and monuments multiplied in the nine-
teenth century with significant representations in New York,
Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Buffalo, San Francisco, Richmond and
elsewhere.  Besides columns and monuments, artists narrated
Columbus' most dramatic adventures.  He was the symbol of indi-
vidualism and our primary example of progress.  Art historians
have only begun to study the iconography of this heroic statuary
and paintings.
     The Columbian theme continued after 1792 as the symbol of
the new nation and the ideals for which it stood.  Philip
Freneau, the brilliant popularizer of America and its future and
the so-called "poet of the American Revolution," in 1779 wrote
his "Pictures of Columbus" which idealized a golden age in the
land of opportunity found first by Christopher Columbus.
     Joel Barlow, a student of Timothy Dwight and also a member
of the "sons of Freedom," or "Columbians" at Yale, secularized
and expanded Dwight's themes in his epic poems, "The Vision of
Columbus" (1787) and "The Columbiad" (1807).  In his "Vision of
Columbus" he introduced Christopher Columbus as a "great seer,"
the "first sage," the New World "chief," the "hero" of the New
Age, whose prophetic vision brought to birth a New Age of "happi-
ness to the human race."  In his poem, "The Columbiad", Christo-
pher Columbus is taken to the highest mountain in Spain by the
Greek god Hesper where Hesper causes the future of the New World
discovered by Columbus to unfold.  Progress in human life, the
arts, and science are all seen accomplished by hordes of immi-
grants who would travel to the new land.  In Book IX, of the
poem, Columbus is shown the Federal system of government in
America and told that this system will spread over the entire
world.
     The name of Columbus became associated with the expanding
destiny of the new nation.  Five patriotic songs of "the United
States of Columbia" were used in the Independence era and pub-
lished in 1798 in the "American Musical Miscellany".  When the
northwest coast of the continent was explored in 1792 by Captain
Robert Gray, he named the gushing river he encountered "Colum-
bia," after his ship, "Columbia Rediviva," and his country
thereby linking the river to the destiny of America.  The river
had been overlooked by the British explorer Vancouver which
caused continued embarrassment to the British who were forced to
adopt the poetic name of America when discussing territorial
rights in the Northwest.
     The Columbian symbolism is eschatological and deeply spiri-
tual.  It speaks of liberty from old world tyranny, hope for the
future, and a vision of new beginnings in a new world in a new
age.  The vision is more than spiritual; it involves the specif-
ics of human rights, economic growth, development in technology,
progress in social and physical sciences.  Perhaps best of all
there is no separation of the material from the spiritual:  The
Columbus symbolism includes both.
     The two great heros and symbols of early American history,
Columbus and Washington, became chiseled into the American mind
in the early nineteenth century with the multi-volume biographies
written by Washington Irving.  Earlier writers we have covered
had access to English histories of the discoveries, particularly
those by George Peckham and Richard Hakluyt, and some had even
quoted from Ferdinand's biography of his father and Peter
Martyr's "De orbe Novo", but Irving was the first American writer
to have access to the newly collected Columbus documents gathered
by the great Spanish scholar Martin Fernandez de Navarrete.
Although written from the sources and the best biographies to
that time, the Columbus and Washington volumes present a sort of
Romulus and Remus for the founding of America.  Columbus was the
finder of the New World, inspired by God, leading the way for men
to establish a classic "golden age."  Washington was the libera-
tor of that world who freed it to follow its destiny.  Walt
Whitman and other writers continued the theme to turn Columbus
into a romantic hero.  The great twentieth-century historian of
Columbus, Samuel Elliot Morison revised the hero and turned him
into the practical, tough-minded navigator whose achievements
were more a result of intestinal fortitude and knowledge of the
Ocean Sea than divine guidance.
     However, the dream was almost shattered by the war between
the states.  Once again Columbus stepped forward from the past to
symbolize the hopes of the new nation.  In the Vice President's
office of the Capitol building, the huge ceiling mural was
painted after the war showing "Columbia," draped in the stars and
stripes, receiving the south back into the union.  Poets, too,
seized the opportunity to connect Columbus once again with the
nation's history.  Hinahan Cornwallis, in his popular account,
"The War for the Union, or the Duel Between the North and South:
U.S.A. 1861-1865, A Poetical Panorama, Historical and Descrip-
tive" prefaced his history with a 275 page epic poem titled "The
Song of America and Columbus, or the Story of the New World."
The lines of the poem attempt to merge Columbus with Columbia:
 
What wealth and splendor far and wide we view!
What wondrous progress since Columbus came,
And woke this New World to eternal fame!
 
Or,
Queen of the Great Republic of the West,
With shining stars and stripes upon thy breast--
The emblems of our land of liberty:--
Thou namesake of Columbus--hail to thee!
. . .
Columbia! to Columbus give thy hand!
 
     One other important representations of Columbus should be
mentioned which surfaced in the late nineteenth century:  the
ethnic Columbus.  Strangely enough, this image was conceived by
Irish Catholic fraternalists and popularized by Italo-American
communities in the twentieth century with the creation of nation-
al "Columbus Day" holiday.
     The Knights of Columbus was formed in New Haven, Conn. in
1882 as a fraternity for Catholic men, as a patriotic society to
promote ideas of Americanism, as an insurance society, as a
response to adverse New England Protestant attitudes toward Irish
Catholic immigrants, and as a youth program for young Catholic
men.  Fr. McGivney, local parish priest and instigator of the
first council of the knights, had from the beginning the idea of
naming the order after Christopher Columbus.  Early meeting
records show that he originally wished to call the organization
the "Sons of Columbus."  The name was chosen because Columbus'
first act was to plant the cross of Christ on the New World
shores, "a symbol of his sacred commission."  Highly successful,
the Knights rapidly became the world's largest Catholic confra-
ternity.
     The history of the Knights of Columbus has been written in a
superb book by Christopher Kauffman, "Faith and Fraternalism, The
History of the Knights of Columbus"; and in the past few years
the Knights have created a well organized archive and museum at
their world headquarters in New Haven.  By the 1890s,
Columbianism began to be confused with the Catholic Americanism
movement led by Archbishop John Ireland.  Catholic Americanism
was a deeply spiritual and patriotic belief in the transformation
of America into a New World Christian Republic of a new people in
a new age resulting from an encounter between Catholicism and
American culture.
     Within the organization, itself, the fourth degree of
knighthood was established to promote American citizenship.
Thomas Cummings explained the role of citizenship within the
Knights of Columbus in an article which appeared in "Donahoe's
Magazine" in 1895.  Inspired by Christopher Columbus, "a prophet
and a seer, an instrument of Divine Providence, a mystic of the
highest order each knight becomes a better Catholic and a better
citizen."  Within a few years, Columbianism became the promise of
a new age, a new Catholic manhood representing the best the New
World had to offer.  The ceremonial for the fourth degree cen-
tered on Catholic citizenship:
 
     To Catholics, America can give thanks for her discov-
     ery, her exploration, her very name . . . Christopher
     Columbus, prophetic name.  Christopher, Christbearer--
     Columbus, a dove, the sacred emblem of the Holy Spirit.
     A dove was to be a Christ-bearer to a new world and new
     peoples . . . How wholly Catholic is the discovery,
     Catholic in its inception, Catholic in its impulses;
     Catholic in its actors; . . . Catholic in its baptism;
     Catholic in its progress.
 
     The Columbus memorial in front of Union Station in Washing-
ton D.C. was the ultimate expression of Columbianism and Ameri-
canism.  Although commissioned and paid for by the U.S. Congress,
the memorial was a Knights of Columbus project from the begin-
ning.  They lobbied for it, the Supreme Knight was the only non-
congressional member of the commission, and 500 knights paraded
at the unveiling of the memorial on June 8, 1912.  The Rector of
The Catholic University of America led the invocation and Victor
Dowling, a former National Director of the Knights of Columbus
and a justice of the Supreme Court gave the oration.  The speech
was Columbian and American:
 
     Here was no Alexander, sighing for new worlds to con-
     quer, but here was the apostolic spirit for one who
     signed for quicker ways to make known to distant lands
     the sweetness of Faith and the light of Hope.  Here was
     one who . . . believed in his star; but the star of
     Columbus was the star of Bethlehem.
 
     These Catholic patriotic forces which swirled around the
symbol of Christopher Columbus were not limited to memorials,
parades and rituals within the fraternity.  They also led to
important academic contributions to American history with the
establishment of a Chair in American History at The Catholic
University of America in 1899 and the Historical Commission of
the Knights in 1921.  The Historical Commission, concerned with
the intensely Protestant slant to American history and the growth
of lunatic fringe groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, encouraged new
studies of American history which would incorporate contributions
by all settlers of the United States.
     Powerful social and political forces are released in the
compounded symbols of discovery and the earthly millennium.  This
is not to claim that the symbols generate the forces, but that
the adoption of such symbols reveals and encourages the forces of
change, development and even revolution.  The operation of these
forces in the life of the New Nation was embodied in the Chicago
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.  It was time for self-
congratulatory backslapping.  A time to stand back and admire
over a century of accomplishments.  No symbol could have better
represented the spirit of American advancements or stood for the
unlimited future possibility of the new nation than that of
Christopher Columbus.  The nation that had chosen to inscribe on
its great seal the phrases "New Order of the Ages" and "God has
favored our undertaking" celebrated its pride and progress with
the most gala and enthusiastic event in the history of the
Western Hemisphere.
     Although the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition did not
open until May 1, 1893, the Columbus Day festivities in October,
1892 were a prelude in anticipation of the great event.  a grand
civic parade of more than 80,000 participants led by the Presi-
dent of the United States and including the entire Cabinet, the
Supreme Court, and most of congress launched the year-long cele-
bration.  It was billed in the "Memorial Volume. Dedicatory and
Opening Ceremonies of the World's Columbian Exposition" (1893) as
the "festival of the nations . . . The Columbian epic . . .
traces the strange adventures of the Genoese seer . . . to the
very moment that beholds us here, citizens, freemen, equal share-
holders, in the miracle of American civilization and development
. . . the jubilee of mankind."  That evening at the inaugural
ceremonies, Archbishop Ireland delivered the oration and summa-
rized the meaning of Columbus to patriotic Americans:
 
     Behold the crowning gift to humanity from Columbus,
     whose caravels ploughed ocean's uncertain billows in
     search of a great land, and from the all-ruling Provi-
     dence whose wisdom and mercy inspired and guided the
     immortal Genoese mariner--the United States of America.
 
     Later in May, the President returned to throw the switch on
the newfangled source of energy, electricity, which set in motion
all the mechanical devices of the exposition.  Following the
President, Dr. Milburn, the blind chaplain of the Senate of the
United States, rose to pray.  He gave thanks for the "feast of
tabernacles in this place" commemorating "that most momentous of
all voyages by which Columbus lifted the veil that hid the New
World from the old and opened the gateway of the future of
mankind."
     Next, Miss Jessie Couthoui, dressed in a Castillian costume
stepped to the lectern and with clear voice and faultless diction
she read a poem written by W. A. Croffut entitled "The Prophecy,"
describing the tense days of October, 1492 as the men on the
three small ships were near the point of mutiny.  "Columbus
sought a sign" the poet says, and "Like elfin shadows on an open
sea, prophetic pictures of the land he sought . . . an empire,
radiant as the day, harnessed to law, but under Freedom's sway,
Proudly arise, resplendent in array, To show the world the way."
The poem then describes aspects of the new nation's progress,
which are here described as having been fulfilled, and the long
poem concludes with:
 
Lo! thro' this segment of the watery world
Uprose a hemisphere of glorious life,
A realm of golden grain and fragrant fruits,
And men and women wise and masterful,
Who dwelt at peace in rural cottages
And splendid cities bursting into bloom--
Great Lotus blossoms on a flowery sea;
And happiness was there, and bright-winged hope--
High aspiration, soaring to the stars . . .
 
     The historical volume written for the exposition was titled,
"Columbus and Columbia:  A Pictorial History of the Man and the Nation"
(1893).  The book speaks of Columbus' crew as the "Colum-
bian argonauts," and describes the Admiral in these words:
 
     The story of Columbus is . . . a narration of bold
     conception, persistent courage, heroic attainment . . .
     The adventures of the Homeric Ulysses were not more
     illustrious with valor . . . no character in the
     world's history was ever more highly honored for chiv-
     alrous achievement . . .  He was a product of the brave
     days of old.
 
     Let us end, then, with how Columbus himself viewed the
meaning of his discovery and its effect upon the world and the
future.  In announcing his discovery to the world by a letter
dated February 15, 1493, the Admiral wrote:
 
     The eternal God, our Lord, gives to those who walk in
     his ways the victory in things that seem impossible.
     And this was one such notable case.  Because people had
     spoken or written about these lands before, but it was
     all guesswork, without getting a look at it.  It all
     amounted only to hearsay that people judged to be
     fables, or thought little of it.  And then our Redeemer
     gave this triumph . . .  For this all of Christendom
     should rejoice, and make great celebrations, and make
     solemn thanksgivings to the Holy Trinity, with much
     solemn prayer.  May Christ rejoice on the earth as he
     does in heaven as he sees that so many peoples hitherto
     lost are now to be saved.  Let us also rejoice for the
     extension of our faith, and also for the increase of
     material goods . . . in the future.
 
 
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