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 Island. In that time he had sailed, according to his own reckoning, one hundred and forty-one leagues. This distance, if persisted in due to the westward, would have brought him in contact with drift and real bird-flight indications of the continent.

Let us see toward what point his course had been laid. Setting sail from Gomera, in the Canary Islands, Columbus purposed to go straight to the west until he reached land. Gomera lies in about the latitude of Cape Canaveral, or the Indian River, Florida. A line drawn from Gomera to Cape Canaveral passes to the northward of the Bahamas altogether. No land lay in the Admiral's path to Florida.

But any supposition that Columbus would not have gone to the northward of the Indian River ignores the northward drift that the Gulf Stream would have caused his ships. He had yet, of course, to