The least change of circumstance might have made an immense difference in the result.

The going to sleep of the helmsman, the unshipping of the rudder, (which did occur in the case of "The Pinzon,") the slightest mistake in taking an observation, might have made, and probably did make, considerable change in the event.

During that memorable first voyage of Columbus, the gentlest breeze carried with it the destinies of future empires.

Had he made his first discovery of land at a point much southward of that which he did discover, South America might have been colonized by the Spaniards with all the vigour that belonged to their first efforts at colonization; and, being a continent, might not afterwards have been so easily wrested from their sway by the maritime nations.
On the other hand, had some breeze, big with the fate of nations, carried Columbus northwards, it would hardly have been left for the English, more than a century afterwards, to found those Colonies which have proved to be the seeds of the greatest nation that the world is likely to behold.
It was, humanly speaking, singularly unfortunate for Spanish dominion in America, that the earliest discoveries of the Spaniards were those of the West India Islands.

A multiplicity of governors introduced confusion, feebleness, and want of system, into colonial government.