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Show rf THE NAME of COLUMBUS g By ELMO SCOTT WATSON ' !yFT K WAS boru nearly GOO years ago. He I Pfj was not a nutlve of this country and .J Li never once did he see or set foot on. 1 L tlie soil of the continental United i .States. Vet, every year, 31 of the 48 UL tl states In the Union celebrate a holiday 6 that Is named for him and that also commemorates the event In his career q which has made lilra Immortal. Ills name was Christopher Columbus and October 12 is the date which we annually celebrate as Columbus day or Discovery Discov-ery day. The 31 states which honor him on that day are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Massa-chusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Penn-sylvania, Ithode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington. One of our territories honors him on a different differ-ent day from October 12. In I'uerto Itlco November Novem-ber 1!) Is Discovery day, for It was on November Novem-ber 10, M!).'i, that the Ilalian navigator sailing under the Hag of Spain was the first white man to look upon that island. Universally hailed as the "discoverer of the New world," yet Fate ruled that the name of another man should be given to the two continents conti-nents made known to the Old world by the voyages voy-ages of Columbus. In 1-1110 a Florentine named Amerigo Vespucci accompanied Ojeda, a Span-lard, Span-lard, to Espanola (Haiti) and the mainland In a search for pearls. He wrote a letter In which he called the country he had seen "Mundus Novus" New Land). Eight years later at St. Die In the Vosges mountains Mathlas Kingman, a Latinist, and Martin Wuldseemuller, a geographer, geog-rapher, two members of the faculty of a little collegiate Institute which was the center of the geographical learning of the time, were prepar- . ing a new edition of Ptolemy's "Geographia." However, before Its publication they printed on the new printing press which the institute owned a little essay called "Cosmographlae Introducto" to which they added the letter that Amerigo Vespucci had written. In this essay Waldsee-muller Waldsee-muller offered the suggestion that since Amerigo Vespucci had seen and described this "Mundus Novus," It might properly bear his name and be called America. Later map-makers followed Waldseemuller's suggestion. And that is why we have North and South America instead of "North and South Columbia." Although a German scholar's suggestion cheated cheat-ed Columbus out of having two continents named for him, on both there are innumerable landmarks land-marks which bear his name or a derivation of it. In South America there Is a republic of Colombia, and the chief Caribbean port of the republic of Panama Is Colon, which preserves the Spanish spelling of Columbus' name Cristobal Cris-tobal Colon. In far-off Ceylon, an Island off the coast of India, which he sought but was destined des-tined never to reach, there is a city of Colombo which honors his name. The map of North America is dotted with reminders of him. Canada has a province of British Columbia and in it rises one of the mightiest rivers on this continent the Columbia. The little tract of land which contains the national na-tional sent of government of the United States Is called the District of Columbia, and one of the poetical names for this nation is Columbia. So when we sing two of our favorite patriotic songs "Hail, Columbia, happy land . . ." and "O, Columbia, the gem of the ocean . . ." we are pronouncing two syllables of the name of the Italian sea captain. Two state capitals Columbus, Ohio, and Columbia, Co-lumbia, S. C. also honor him. Eleven states-Georgia, states-Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin have cities named Columbus Colum-bus and one state, North Carolina, has a Columbus Colum-bus county. Iowa has a Columbus Junction and Ohio has a Columbus Grove. Eight states Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Pennsylvania, South Carolina Caro-lina and Tennessee have cities named Columbia and eight states Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin have Columbia counties. Ohio has a Columbiana county, also a city by that name, as has Alabama. Indiana has a Columbia City, Montana has a Columbia Falls and Minnesota Minne-sota has a Columbia Heights. The largest university in the United States is Columbia university in New York City with 3,004 faculty members and 30.5SS students. There is also a Columbia college in Iowa and Innumerable grade schools throughout the country bear the name of Columbus or Columbia. One of the most important fraternal organizations in the United States is the Knights of Columbus and the first world's fair in many respects, the greatest ever held which honored the achievements of a man bearing his name was the World's Columbian Colum-bian exposition In Chicago in 1S93. . . ' Memorials to Columbus in the form of statues and monuments are legion. One of the latest, if not the latest, Is the magnificent statue which was unveiled on August 3 of last year (the anniversary anni-versary of Columbus' sailing from Palos, Spain, on his first voyage of discovery) on Chicago's lake front. (It stands overlooking Columbus drive, one of the main thoroughfares in Chicago's boulevard system.) This statue, which was designed by Charles Brloshl of St. Paul and cast in Milan, Italy, is 11 feet 7 Inches high and stands on a 22-foot pedestal of P.aveno granite from Milan. It was presented to the city of Chicago by Italian-Americans of that city and August 3, 1933, the date it was unveiled, was Italian day at the 1033 Century of Progress exposition when thousands of people of that nationality gathered to honor not only the great navigator of 400 years ago but also a modern navigator who had led his "caravels "cara-vels of the air" across the Atlantic Admiral I'.albo of the Italian navy. . . . Vosides the new statue which thousands of World's fair visitors passed on their way to the exposition, there was another reminder of Columbus Co-lumbus at last year's exposition. That was the model of the Columbus Memorial lighthouse, which formed the exhibit of the republic of Santo Domingo. This lighthouse, which is to cost approximately $1, .100,000, Is being erected on a point of land facing the harbor of the city of Santo Domingo, not far from the ruins of what if ' ' l( ' W " - ; 1 1 nm tfv& i " I TneNew Statue of Columbu in Chicaqo Earliest Engraved Likeness of Columbus Columbus ir Ci Statue m. tvk Palos, Spain f js s I . - IT 5 V '1 ifAS ' 1 1 I fee yj The L-andinq of Columbus Re-enacted at the Worlds fair was once the palace of Columbus' brother, Bartholomew. Bar-tholomew. It is just such a memorial as Columbus himself him-self would have most desired a beacon of light shining through the darkness to guide the sailors of both the sea and the air, and since the project Is In charge of a committee of the Pan-American Union, which is composed of representatives of all the 21 states of North, South and Central America, it will be an enduring symbol of friendship friend-ship among the nations whose existence Columbus' Colum-bus' voyages made possible. He has been dead 428 years but his name still frequently makes the headlines in our newspapers. newspa-pers. Recent years have seen many "discoveries" about the discoverer, which adds to our knowledge knowl-edge of him. It was only a few years ago that Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, the noted collector, acquired ac-quired abroad and brought to this country a manuscript volume some 400 years old and written writ-ten by one Andres Bernaldez, which revealed Christopher. Columbus in the hitherto-unknown role of a bookseller. The reference in the volume was only a casual one but interesting nevertheless. neverthe-less. It said: "There was a man in the laud of Milan who was a merchant in books and who travelc in Andalusia who was called Christopher Christo-pher Columbus, a man of high genius, who was not a man of letters, but was very shrewd in the art of the cosmography of the world, who followed what he had read from Ptolemy and other works regarding the world in which we navigate and walk." And this man, who "had read from Ptolemy," was to see, in the declining years of his life, a revised edition of' Ptolemy's "Geographia" that of Kingman and Waldsee-muller Waldsee-muller with another man's name given to the two continents which he had discovered! Indicative of the tact that this man, dead and buried these four centuries, can still provide "live copy" for our newspapers is the following news story which appeared in the New York Times last May-: "A life-size white marble statue of Christopher Columbus, carved in Rome in 1SGT, for many years unnoticed in the storage yard in Central park, will be placed shortly in Columbus park, at Baxter, Mulberry, Bayard and Park streets. This announcement was made yesterday by Park Commissioner Robert Moses, who said the statue was an exceptionally line piece of work. It was carved 07 years ago by Miss Emma Stebbins, then in Italy. "Existence of the statue was disclosed to the park department officials through receipt of a letter two months ago from John Barnell of Syracuse, Syra-cuse, in which the writer said a beautiful statue of Columbus was stored in one of the park department de-partment buildings. Mr. Barnell wrote that, as a collector of Columbus monuments, he w-ould like to have a photograph of the statue carved by Miss Stebbins. "A research worker of the park department was immediately instructed to locate the statue. Search brought to light in the files of the department de-partment correspondence in 1SG9 from the donor of the state to the board of commissioners of Central park and the reply. The donor was Marshall Mar-shall O. Roberts, whose letter follows: 1 kf A i t j i : -' if i V i r 4 L , i I' tf, I- 1 j . i Tif , "1 I f vi t 1 y 1 H fern Mr ? I ! u N I 1 JJ fi i The "Lost" Statue New York, February 20, 1869. Fifth Avenue, Corner Eighteenth St. Hon. Andrew H. Green, Comptroller of the Central Park. My dear sir: I have the pleasure through you to present to the Central park commissioners the colossal colos-sal statue of "Columbus," the work of our gifted countrywoman, Emma Stebbins. Columbus Co-lumbus is represented as standing upon the deck of a ship alone and at midnight, just before the land of the Western continent burst upon his view. His mutinous crew have all deserted him and are feasting below, while he the intrepid discoverer, with a firm grasp upon the rudder-post, looks eagerly, eager-ly, anxiously forward, piercing the darkness with his eye of faith, and with earnest prayers to heaven for success, waits for the dawning of day that day which, coming at last, brings with it victory and repose. This statue is truly grand in its conception and L'autiful in its execution worthy, indeed, in-deed, to occupy a prominent pljice in our Central park. It will add one more attraction attrac-tion to that charming spot, which the commissioners com-missioners and yourself have done so much to adorn for the pleasure and delight of the people. The statue and pedestal are both at the Academy of Design, subject to your order as soon as a suitable glass house has been provided to protect the marble from the weather. With the hope that the commissioners commission-ers will be able to provide this during the present season and receive the proffered gift, I remain, Your obedient servant, MARSHALL O. ROBERTS. by Western Newspaper Union. |