A Fortunate Mistake

“Yet, singularly enough, his errors were in one respect a help to him. The mistake that he made in regard to the distance was a most fortunate one. Had Columbus correctly reckoned the size of the globe, and the true length of such a voyage, he probably would not have sailed, since he would have seen at once that the proposed Portuguese route was both far shorter and cheaper. Again, could he have imagined or in any way foreseen that the American continent lay right across his path, that, in itself, might not then have induced him to start on a voyage of discovery, for his object was not to find a new country, but a new way to an old one.”GSAM 23.4