4 NOVEMBER 1893, Page 10

Westward with Columbus. By Gordon Stables. (Blackio and Son.) —

The picture which Dr. Gordon Stables gives us of the early life and boyhood of Columbus in Genoa is very real and interesting, and the hero is a most effective figure from the beginning to the end. The story of the great navigator is a touching one, and it loses nothing in the hands of Dr. Stables, who describes fully the chequered career of the man and his struggles to get the patronage of the Court of Spain before ho was finally appointed Viceroy of the Unknown Country and Admiral of the Ocean. His throe voyages, the mutinies, the savage ill-treatment of the natives by the ruffians who poured in to get the promised gold, and the ungrateful treatment of the hero, all make a striking chapter in history, and point a melancholy moral. The final scene is a sad one, but the great navigators were always hardly treated by Fate, and in proportion to their distinction. Our author treats his subject-in a dignified, historical fashion which well becomes it, and we must place Westward with Columbus among those books that all boys ought to read.