Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/59



, indeed a dramatic, interest attaches to the occasion and the incidents which first brought together for recognition, for sight and intercourse, representatives of the human family that had been parted by oceans for unknown centuries. Neither of these branches of a common stock had knowledge of the other. There was to be a first meeting, as of strangers. In view of all the dismal and harrowing results which were to follow, burdening with tragedies of woe and cruelty the relations between the white man and the red man, especially those of the Spaniards and the natives of the American islands, one might be tempted to wish that the ocean had been impassable. The more grateful, therefore, is it to recall the fact, that the very first contact and recognition between those of the Old World and the New, when the time had come that they were no longer to be deferred, present to us a sweet and lovely picture. Would that its charm and repose of simple peacefulness might have been the long perspective of the then following ages!

The great-hearted Admiral had kept his high resolve and hope through all the weary delays of his course over unknown seas, with panic-stricken and mutinous sailors. They might reckon over what part of the expanse of waters they had passed in their poor vessels, but knew not how much remained. But signs of land had appeared in