The Sea Will Grant Each Man

This passage is drawn from the Las Casas abstract of Christopher Columbus's journal of the first voyage (1492), which is the only surviving record of the log, the original having been lost. After land was sighted on October 12, 1492, Columbus's crew had spent five weeks at sea since leaving the Canaries, with morale deteriorating and several near-mutinies documented. The juxtaposition of sea, hope, and home in the passage captures the psychological reality of long-distance oceanic navigation in an era before reliable charts of the Atlantic.