Pirate Seas

I was once on a train leaving Baltimore when a man asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to Baltimore. He looked at me as if I must have made a mistake and exclaimed, “You are on the wrong train; this train is leaving Baltimore.”

“I know that,” I replied, “but I’m going to Baltimore the long way round, round the World to Baltimore. I’m going west to get east.”

On the other side of the World from us are some islands called “The Indies.” People had always gone to the Indies, far, far away, by traveling toward the east. Columbus thought he could go in just the opposite direction—toward the west—and reach the Indies that way. People said it was foolish to go west to get east, but Columbus believed the World was round, and if it were round he knew he could get to these islands by going west just as well as by going east. So he sailed, and he sailed, and he sailed, always toward the setting sun, and at last he did come to some islands. He thought these islands were the Indies, so he named them the “West Indies.” As a matter of fact, we know, but he didn’t know, that he hadn’t gone half far enough to reach the Indies. He didn’t know that even if he had gone on farther, Central America would have been in the way, anyway.

Living on these islands were men with red skins, painted faces, and feathers in their hair, and Columbus called them Indians. Other people called these Indians “Caribs,” which means “brave,” because they were brave, and the blue sea which surrounded these islands they called the Caribbean Sea—the sea of the Caribs.

Columbus was looking for a new way and he found it, but after Columbus other men came along looking for gold and silver and they found that. Some they found in Mexico and some they found in South America, and some they took away from the Indians who had already found it. They robbed them, that’s all. This gold and silver—treasure—found and stolen, they loaded on ships and started back to Spain.