I and my company were old and slow when at that narrow passage we arrived where Hercules his landmarks set as signals, that man no farther onward should adventur. On the right hand behind me I left Seville, and on the other already had left Ceuta. 'O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand perils,' I said, 'have come to the West, to this short eve which is the remaining of your senses, still be you unwilling to deny the knowledge, following the sun, of the unpeopled world. Consider the seed from which you sprang; you were not made to live like brutes, but for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.' So eager did I render my companions, with this brief exhortation for the voyage, that then I hardly could have held them back. And having turned our stern to the morning, we of our oars made wings for this mad flight, evermore gaining on the larboard side.
Already saw the night all the stars of the other pole, and ours so very low that they did not rise above the ocean floor. Five days and nights lasted since we had entered into the deep pass, when a mountain appeared to us, dim from distance, and it seemed to me so high as I had never any one seen.
Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping; for out of the new land a whirlwind rose, and smote upon the fore part of the ship. Three times it made her whirl with all the waters, at the fourth time it made the stern uplift, and the prow downward go, as pleased Another, until the sea above us closed again."
arranged from Longfellow's Translation
