Wild tales were believed of dreadful reefs and stormy headlands stretching far out at sea, and of a fiery climate at the equator which no living thing, not even whales in the depth of the ocean, could pass because of the great heat. It was believed that the waves rolled in boiling water upon the fiery sands of the coasts, and that whoever should pass beyond Cape Bajador would never return. Against every species of opposition Prince Henry persevered. His navigators scattered all these fallacies and tales to the winds by doubling Cape Bajador and penetrating the tropical regions. At length, in the year 1497, Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese mariner who had been in Prince Henry's service in his youth, passed around the Cape of Good Hope (which he so named), with an Arabian chart directing his course, and crossing the Indian Ocean landed in India at Calcutta. Africa was circumnavigated, and a new way was opened to India by the ocean pathway of Pharaoh Necho. Prince Henry had then been dead twenty-four years. He saw the promises of this achievement from afar, but he did not live to enjoy this full triumph of reason. But a greater triumph had lately been achieved than when De Gama passed the Cape of Good Hope.

Just at the evening twilight of a beautiful day in October, 1485, a man about fifty years of age (tall, well-formed, and muscular; long visaged; a face of fair complexion, a little freckled and usually ruddy, but now pale and careworn in expression; an aquiline nose, rather high cheek bones, eyes a light-gray; his hair thin and silvery, and his whole demeanor elevated and dignified), might have been seen standing at the gate of the Franciscan Convent near Palos, in Spain, asking for a little bread and water for his palefaced, motherless child, whom he was leading by the hand. It was CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, then in extreme poverty, making his way, with his boy Diego, on foot for the Spanish Court. While he lay sick near Belem, a mysterious voice had said to him in a dream: "God will cause thy name to be wonderfully resounded through the earth, and will give thee the keys of the gates of the ocean which are closed with strong chains." It was a prophecy of the imagination-a sequence of intense thought and weary study on the subject. To the mind of Columbus it had all the reality of a revelation from God.

Columbus was the son of a wool-comber in Genoa, where he was born about the year 1435. Like other boys with busy fancies in that maritime. city, he showed a fondness for the sea at an early age, and his father, though straitened in means, sent him, for a short time, to the University of Pavia to study the sciences which might fit him to be a navigator. It was an age of rapid intellectual development. Learning was leaving the monasteries to take up its abode with the laity. Geographical discoveries had created an

CHAP. III.

THE ASPIRATIONS OF COLUMBUS,

35

intense longing for geographical knowledge, and the writings of Pliny, Strabo and others, which the newly-discovered art of printing soon multiplied, were read with avidity.

Columbus became a passionate disciple of geographical teachers. He made his first voyage when he was only fourteen years of age. As his practical knowledge deepened with experience, and wonderful tales of mariners concerning mysterious lands seen in the far-off Atlantic fell upon his ears, his soul burned with an intense desire to penetrate the unknown waste of waters. There was then a popular tradition that there was a very large island in the Atlantic called Antilla, mentioned by Aristotle, which Carthagenian mariners had visited. There was also a tradition of another island, on which St. Brandon, a Scotch priest, landed in the sixth century, and found magnificent cities. Still another spoke of the Island of Seven Cities, on which seven Spanish bishops, who fled from Spain with an immense number of followers, on the invasion of the Moors, had settled and founded seven grand cities. Even the

learned geographer, Martin Behm, whom the King of Portugal employed, placed these islands on a globe which he constructed as being contiguous to the eastern coast of Asia. And with the revival of letters, came from Greece the story of Atlantis, which Plato had learned from the Egyptians and told to his countrymen-a story which gave an account of an immense island in the Atlantic, in early times, larger than Asia and Africa

together, full of inhabitants, great cities and mighty kingdoms, which, by tremendous earthquakes, had been shaken from their foundations and swallowed by the sea. These traditions, the stories of the people of the Canary Islands concerning land frequently seen westward of them (a mirage?) and scores of other marvelous tales, fired the imagination of Columbus, and he conceived the grand design of attempting the discovery of unknown lands in the West.

Finding very little encouragement in his native city, and Prince Henry of Portugal being then engaged in his explorations of the western coast of Africa, Columbus went to Lisbon. He arrived there about the year 1470, when he was in the prime of his young manhood. There he was a strict attendant at religious services in the chapel of the Convent of All Saints. In that convent several ladies of rank boarded or resided. Among these was Doña Felipa, daughter of Bartolomeo de Perestrello, an Italian cavalier then lately dead, who had been one of Prince Henry's most noted navigators. He had discovered, colonized and governed the island of Porto Santo, one of the Madeiras. Columbus and Doña Felipa became acquainted. The acquaintance ripened into love and resulted in marriage.

Columbus and his bride resided with her mother in Porto Santo. Madame Perestrello placed in the hands of her son-in-law the maps, charts, journals and memoranda of her late husband. They opened new fields for the contemplation of the navigator, and inspired him with an irrepressible desire for attempting discoveries in the West. These desires were stimulated by facts that were given him by Pedro Correo, an eminent navigator, who had married a sister of the wife of Columbus. He told him of timber handsomely carved, and of immense canes such as it was said grew in India, that had been found floating on the sea, from the westward; also of the bodies of two men which had been cast ashore on one of the islands of the Azores by a westerly gale, whose faces were large and their skins a copper color. These things confirmed Columbus in a budding belief that he might reach India by sailing westward, and he formed plans accordingly. These he communicated to the eminent Toscanelli, of Florence, who wrote to him. an encouraging letter, and sent him a map projected partly by Ptolemy and partly from descriptions of Marco Polo, a Venetian, who made an overland journey to China late in the thirteenth century, and was in the public employment of the Great Khan or Emperor of Tartary. With this map before him Columbus studied the narrative of Polo, and was impressed with the belief that by sailing westward he would find the rich country of Cathay described by that traveller (now known to be China) and the great island of Zipangi, supposed to be Japan. These were the subjects of his dreams,

CHAP. III.

COLUMBUS IN PORTUGAL.

37

whilst cruising among the islands in American waters, many years afterward.

Columbus made voyages in the service of the Portuguese; and in 1477 he sailed to Iceland and beyond. There he doubtless heard the traditions concerning the voyages of the sons of Eric the Red, or listened to rehearsals of the sagas in which they were recorded. On his return he was filled with zeal for undertaking western discoveries. But comparative poverty was his portion. He was not able to fit out a ship, so he appealed to the King of Portugal for assistance. That monarch was too much engrossed in a war with Spain to listen to him. He waited patiently until his successor, the young John the Second, ascended the throne. John was endowed with the spirit of his great uncle, Prince Henry, and listened to Columbus gladly. The scheme of the navigator was referred to a junta composed of two eminent cosmographers or describers of the universe, and a learned bishop. They decided that his project was extravagant and visionary.

The king was not satisfied. He called a council of learned men, who also decided against the project. Still the king was not satisfied; when the bishop (who was his confessor) proposed to him a mean stratagem. It was that he should get from Columbus his plans, charts, proposed directions for sailing and all other necessary information, under the pretext that he cherished his propositions. Then he was to send a caravel (a small three-masted vessel) to the Cape de Verd islands on the pretext of carrying provisions there, with instructions to go as far westward as possible, to ascertain if there were any foundation for the navigator's theory. This was to secure advantages to the state without committing it to what might turn out to be a mere chimera. The king permitted himself to follow the advice of the bishop. The cowardly crew of the caravel did not go far, before they were frightened back by the great waves. Columbus discovered the infamous trick to defraud him of the honors of such a discovery, and with lofty pride he scorned all offers of the monarch to renew the negotiations. His wife was now dead. She had borne him a son, whom they had named Diego. The domestic ties which bound him to Portugal were broken, and turning his back upon the faithless king and priest, he took his boy and secretly departed from Lisbon late in the year 1484. Whither he went then nobody certainly knows. He first reappears in history in the south of Spain, standing, in the twilight of a beautiful October day, at the door of the Franciscan monastery near Palos, asking for a little bread and water for his famishing boy.

CHAPTER IV.

COLUMBUS AT THE CONVENT OF DE RABIDA-ASKS AID OF THE SOVEREIGNS OF SPAIN-THE SPANISH MONARCHY AT THAT TIME-COLUMBUS KEPT IN SUSPENSE THE COUNCIL AT SALAMANCA-DELAYS AND DISAPPOINTMENTS-QUEEN ISABELLA RESOLVES TO FIT OUT VESSELS FOR COLUMBUSHE IS APPOINTED ADMIRAL AND SAILS FOR PALOS-THE VOYAGE WESTWARD -DISCOVERS AN ISLAND SUPPOSED TO BE A PART OF THE EAST INDIES-LANDS, TAKES POSSESSION, AND CALLS THE NATIVE INHABITANTS INDIANS.

T is supposed by some that Columbus, after leaving Portugal, applied for aid to the Republic of Genoa. If he did, he was unsuccessful; and so we find him at the gate of the convent near Palos, in Andalusia, which was dedicated to Santa Maria de Rabida. Whilst the porter was getting refreshments for his boy, the prior of the convent, Friar Juan Perez de Marchena, happening to pass by, was attracted by the dignified aspect of the stranger. He soon learned that he was on his way to the neighboring town, Huelva, to seek for his brother-in-law, probably Pedro Correo, already mentioned. He also learned, from a brief conversation, that the stranger was an extraordinary man, and he invited Columbus to remain as his guest. With increasing wonder and admiration he heard the lips of the navigator unfold his theories, his plans and his hopes. That such a man should stand a beggar at his convent gate was a marvel to Father Marchena.

The friar was learned in geographical science. Able, therefore, to comprehend the grandeur of the views of Columbus, he was deeply impressed with the wisdom of the navigator, which seemed to him like inspiration. Distrusting his own judgment, he sent for Garcia Fernandez, a scientific friend in Palos, to come and converse with his guest; and within the quiet cloisters of La Rabida, the project of Columbus received the most profound respect, such as powerful courts and learned philosophers in council had not deigned to bestow. There he was brought in contact with old and eminent navigators of Palos, whose stories of the sea confirmed his faith in his theory. Marchena, impressed with the same faith, and the importance to Spain of a successful result of an enterprise like that proposed by Columbus, not only offered to give him a favorable introduction to the court, but he also offered to take his son Diego into the convent, and there educate him.