Discover
Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.
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My aged brain immediately conjured up poor old Christopher Columbus, who had a terrible time getting the kings and queens of the day to finance his trip. He wanted to sail off on what would seem like a tiny little boat to us today, and no one was particularly interested in providing him the means to do so.
Once he finally got the financing, he had to find sailors who were willing to sail over the edge of the horizon and perhaps never find a way to get back up. The idea of a flat world was still pretty well entrenched, and going off on a voyage of discovery was a fool’s errand.
Chris found his crew, though, and they did go on their amazing journey. Of course, geography was a little skewed back then, and he thought he’d discovered the far East. I don’t remember if he ever got that figured out. El Salvador, as we know it now, is generally considered the place of his first landing in the New World. It’s not surprising that he named the land “The Savior.” A devout Catholic, I’m sure he felt he had indeed been saved from any more tedious days on a vast ocean that wasn’t exactly the friendliest place he’d ever been.
Columbus has been blamed for a lot of bad stuff. Some of it he did; a lot of it he didn’t. He was actually a man ahead of his time, as most of those early explorers and adventurers were, but he was also still wrapped up in chains of tradition and superstition. His discoveries are still pretty amazing when you consider he had none of the technology we take for granted these days.
I don’t think he would have enjoyed being alive today, unless he could be an astronaut. No new worlds left to discover on this old earth. He was both adored and despised even in his own time, and if memory serves, he died a lonely and poor man when he was about 50.
Maybe he should have stayed on El Salvador.
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