Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/626

 was able to give a plausible if not the correct reason for the variation, it sufficed to satisfy the pilots and masters, who had great confidence in his skill and genius, but the ordinary seamen were not so easily pacified, and it was only when they reached the favourable trade winds that their fears were somewhat allayed.

Day by day they became more resigned, and as the fine weather and fair winds continued until they reached the course of the Gulf stream, their spirits rose almost exultingly, under the impression that the numerous weeds floating about betokened a near approach to the rich lands of Cathay. Pilot and seamen alike vied with each other as to who should catch the first sight of land; and though Columbus felt that they must still be a great distance from the Florida of which he was in search, he kept his own counsel. Frequently deceived by the dark clouds which just before the rising or setting sun in these latitudes often exhibit the appearance of distant land, the spirits of the seamen began again to droop. They had advanced farther West than ever man had done before; still they continued leaving home far away, and pressing onwards into an apparently boundless abyss of ocean, through which they felt they should never be able to retrace their course, till at last the fair wind became in itself a source of the greatest alarm, from a notion that it always blew from east to west, and that if they attempted to return, they would never be able to reach the coast of Spain. At last the seaweed, from being a source of joy and hope, became an object of alarm. They considered these weeds as proof that the sea was growing shal