There is intrigue in the Old World and adventure and violence in the New, but the crucial journey that links them seems reduced to its simplest terms: The three ships sail, the crews grow restless, there is mutiny in the air, Columbus quiets it, and then land is sighted.
I am waiting for someone to make it a potato, since Europe before the discovery of America had no potatoes - a fact I have been husbanding for years in case I am ever a guest on 'Jeopardy.' What disappoints me a little about Scott's version is that he seems to hurry past Columbus' actual voyage of discovery. In the dreary ' Christopher Columbus: The Discovery,' released last August, it was an apple. That is even true of the inevitable scene in which Columbus uses a piece of fruit to illustrate his belief that the world is round.
