Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/44

 Columbus betrayed his faith; he resolved, as his journal recorded, "to turn his prow to the west-southwest, with the determination of pursuing that course for two days." He never resumed the westward course. He had weakened in his devotion to his own idea—and had lost a continent for Spain and the Roman Catholic Church.

For in spite of the conclusion reached by John Boyd Thacher, in his monumental work on Columbus, that even if the Admiral had held the westward course his fleet would not have passed the northernmost tip of the Bahamas, there is sufficient ground for the generally accepted conclusion that his landfall in that case would have been on the coast of Florida or South Carolina, or even North Carolina. After the alteration of his course, Columbus continued to sail for four days in a general southwesterly direction, before, on the 12th of October, he fell upon Watling's