ulous Admiral soon hauled anchor and departed. Gold became his journey's fleece and grail. A few days before departure he was still tracking rumors about "an exceedingly great quantity of gold" in Hispaniola, "where he could get it for nothing." That search continued on all four of his voyages, but the Indies never yielded him much treasure (William Howarth). Columbus’ journey didn’t start out to be a bad idea, he even gave examples of how he tried to reason and befriend the indigenous people of the Americas. "I," he says, "in order that they would be friendly to us--because I recognized that they were people who would be better freed [from error] and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force--to some of them I gave red caps, and glass beads which they put on their chests, and many other things of small value in which they took so much pleasure and became so much our friends that it was a marvel” (Columbus Quote from Christian History). Columbus did do the world a great service when he made his exploration and some people would argue that to their own graves. “The greatest event since the creation of the world, excluding the Incarnation and death of Him who created it;” Francisco Lopez de Gomara (1552). “After 500 years the Columbian legacy has created a civilization that we ought not, in all humble piety and cultural relativism, declare to be no better or worse than that of the Incas. It turned out better. And mankind is the better for it. Infinitely better. Reason enough to honor Columbus and bless 1492;” Charles Krauthammer (M. E. Marty). Columbus is given credit for being a great captain and navigator, but was he as great a navigator as he is believed to be? Columbus is honored to be the founder and father of the Americas even though he went to his own grave believing that he had found a new trade route to Asia. After thirty-three days out from the Azores he could not imagine he was ...
