FROM ZC ORDOV ATT OO CATH ANG

(First Paper.)
THE BRIDGE THAT SPANNED THE WORLD.

NE day,in years long gone by, an anxious-faced
stranger walked the streets of Cordova. The
old Moorish capital was now a Spanish city. The king
and queen of Spain held there both court and camp;
upon the palace of the caliphs floated the flag of Spain ;
above the buttressed tower of the mosque of a thou-
A MULETEER, sand columns, which the pious Caliph Abderrahman
long before had built, gleamed now the golden cross.

From palace to cathedral, from camp to court, the anxious-faced stranger
wandered, and men said he was a foolish Genoese sailor with some absurd idea
about finding Cathay, the land of gold and spices.

But one day, suddenly, the camp and court of King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella broke away from Cordova and set themselves before the walls of
‘Granada, the last unconquered city of the Moors.

Thither the stranger followed it; there again did he renew his solicitations
and his pleas. And how at last he succeeded we all know. For that anxious-
faced waiter upon royalty at the Spanish court and camp was Christopher
Columbus, the Genoese.

Three years ago, as Commissioner for the Columbian Exhibition, I went to
Spain to study the beginnings of American history. The central figure of that
history is Christopher Columbus. I shall ask you to now revisit with me all the
most important places identified with the great Genoese after he became in-
teresting as the man with a purpose. From Cordova to Cathay, we shall follow
him. We shall take him at the outset of his career of discovery and follow him
‘to the end. I am, you will see, assuming that Columbus is the hero of America’s
initial appearance upon the stage of history. In doing this I do not deny the
great Norsemen anything; I only assert that the Italian made his discovery
known, while the first visitors did not; and through Columbus the way was
‘opened whereby America was peopled with those who brought with them the
blessings of civilization.

In the last decade of the fifteenth century Spain’s star was in the ascendant.
Following the successive invasions of the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Van-
dals and the Goths, came the Moors, at the opening of the eighth century.
‘Gothic power terminated with the fall of Roderick, the last Gothic king, who
was overwhelmed beneath the Moorish flood that poured across from Africa.