Note 746 — CANTO THE FIFTEENTH.
Reading edition
{552}["Three small vessels were apparently all that Columbus had requested. Two of them were light barques, called caravels, not superior to river and coasting craft of more modern days.... That such long and perilous expeditions into unknown seas, should be undertaken in vessels without decks, and that they should live through the violent tempests by which they were frequently assailed, remain among the singular circumstances of those daring voyages."—History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, by Washington Irving, 1831, i. 78.]