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The Last Voyages of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea
The Last Voyages of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea Author:Ruth Parr, Charles McKew Parr, Charles Paul MacKie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE BEGINNING OF EMIGRATION. OEVENTEEN vessels rode at anchor in the harbor of vj Cadiz, awaiting the orders of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Three of th... more »ese were ships, properly speaking,— car- acks of 2oo or 3oo tons burthen,— the "Gallega," a Bis- cayan craft, as her name indicates, the " Maria Galante," on which the Admiral sailed, and a third whose name is not given. The remaining fourteen were better adapted to purposes of exploration, being caravels of light draft and small tonnage, varying from thirty or forty to seventy or eighty tons. Among the latter was one which bore the proud distinction of having already made the hazardous passage,— one whose clumsy bows had parted the quiet waters of many a land-locked harbor in the mysterious Indies, and whose rude timbers had borne the shock of many a gale in seas whose very existence had been denied for a thousand years. We find no particular mention of the sturdy little world- finder in the scanty chronicles of the day : if any of the thousands who watched the flotilla as it lay off the Cadiz mole pointed her out as worthy of remark, it was doubtless some weather-beaten seaman who had made the previous voyage with the Senor Colon and spoke with pride of the "Nina" as a mute witness to the truth of the wonders he related. But, all unheralded as she was, the staunch caravel was destined to acquire fresh fame upon this new cruise and to write her name again on History's page before she joined the ships of Jason and Ulysses, of Hanno and Necho, in the. shadowy realms where drift in saecula saeculorum the phantom craft which have taught mankind that the horizon is but the To-morrow of the physical world. On Tuesday, the 24th of September, all was ready aboard the fleet, and the Admiral issued his orders to weigh anchor on ...« less