Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/624

 Fernandez, also accompanied the expedition, together with various private adventurers, several servants, and ninety mariners, making in all one hundred and twenty persons.

No pomp and display marked their departure. On the contrary, when Columbus set sail, he and his crew were so impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, that they confessed before their priests, as if they had been doomed men, partook of the communion, and committed themselves to the especial guidance and protection of heaven, while a deep gloom spread over the whole community of Palos.

Columbus is supposed to have taken with him for his guidance a conjectural chart prepared by Toscanelli of what he presumed to be the position of the continent of which he was in search. On this map the coasts of Europe and Africa, from the south of Ireland to the end of Guinea; and opposite to them, on the other side of the Atlantic, the supposed extremity of Asia, or, as it was termed, India, are believed to have been delineated. Marco Polo had, as we have stated, placed the island of Japan (Zipango) fifteen hundred miles distant from the Asiatic coast; and Columbus had somehow advanced this island a thousand leagues further to the East, supposing it to lie in nearly the same position as Florida. With this view he shaped his course from the Canary Islands, where he had called for fresh supplies and remained for three weeks, refitting the Pinta, which had lost her rudder and was otherwise disabled.

From the Canaries, Columbus set sail early on the