Columbus's little fleet is as smooth and trackless as it was before they
clove it. Yet if you approach Guanahani from the east during the hours
of darkness you also will see a light that waxes and wanes on the
horizon. What the light was that Columbus saw is not certain; it was
probably the light from a torch held by some native woman from the door
of her hut; but the light that you will see is from the lighthouse on
Dixon Hill, where a tower of coral holds a lamp one hundred and sixty
feet above the sea at the north-east point of the island. It was erected
in no sentimental spirit, but for very practical purposes, and at a date
when Watling's Island had not been identified with the Guanahani of
Columbus's landfall; and yet of all the monuments that have been raised
to him I can think of nothing more appropriate than this lonely tower
that stands by day amid the bright sunshine in the track of the trade
wind, and by night throws its powerful double flash every half-minute
across the dark lonely sea. For it was by a light, although not of man's
kindling, that Columbus was guided upon his lonely voyage and through his
many difficulties; amid all his trials and disappointments, dimly as it
must have burned sometimes, it never quite went out. Darkness was the
name of the sea across which he took his way; darkness, from his
religious point of view, was the state of the lands to which he
journeyed; and, whatever its subsequent worth may have been, it was a
burning fragment from the living torch of the Christian religion that he
carried across the world with him, and by which he sought to kindle the
fire of faith in the lands of his discovery. So that there is a profound
symbolism in those raying beams that now, night after night, month by
month, and year after year, shine out across the sea from Watling's
Island in the direction of the Old World.


In the preparations for this voyage, and in the conduct and