Part 3

Another pretension to an early discovery of America has been founded upon an account given in a work published in Venice by Francesco Marcolini in 1558, entitled “_Dello scoprimento dell’ Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrovelanda, Estotilanda, ed Icaria, fatto sotto il Polo Artico da due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò il K. e M. Antonio_.” The substance of the account is, that in 1380, Nicolò Zeno, a Venetian noble, fitted out a vessel at his own cost, and made a voyage to the north, with the intention of visiting England and Flanders, but was driven by a storm to Friseland, now proved to be the Færoe Archipelago. Being rescued from the attacks of the natives by Zichmni, a neighbouring prince, Zeno entered into the service of the latter, and assisted him in conquering Friseland and other northern islands. He shortly after dispatched a letter to his brother Antonio, requesting him to find means to join him; whereupon the latter purchased a vessel, and succeeded in reaching Friseland, where he remained fourteen years. During his residence there he wrote to his brother Carlo in Venice, and gave an account of a report brought by a certain fisherman, about a land to the westward. This account stated that about twenty-six years before, the fisherman, when out at sea with four fishing boats, was overtaken by a tempest, which drove them about for many days, and at length cast them on an island called Estotiland, about a thousand miles from Friseland. The inhabitants conveyed them to a fair and populous city, where the king sent for many interpreters to converse with them, but none that they could understand, until a man was found, who had likewise been cast away upon the coast, and who spoke Latin. They remained several days upon the island, which was rich and fruitful, abounding with all kinds of metals, and especially gold. Though much given to navigation, they were ignorant of the use of the compass, and finding the Friselanders acquainted with it, the king of the place sent them with twelve barques to visit a country to the south, called Drogeo. They had nearly perished in a storm, but were cast away upon the coast of Drogeo. The fisherman described this Drogeo as a country of vast extent, and that the inhabitants were naked and eaters of human flesh. He remained many years in the country, and became rich with trafficking between Estotiland and the main land, and subsequently fitted out a vessel of his own, and made his way back to Friseland. His narrative induced Zichmni to undertake a voyage thither, in which he was accompanied by Antonio Zeno. It was unsuccessful: landing on an island called Icaria, they were roughly treated by the inhabitants, and a storm afterwards drove them on the coast of Greenland.

This account was placed in the hands of Marcolini by Nicolò Zeno, a descendant of the family of the explorers, but it had to be made from fragments, he himself having, when a boy, from ignorance torn up a considerable quantity of the original documents, which were letters written by Antonio Zeno to Carlo his brother. In spite of a considerable amount of fable and exaggeration, defects which enter into the majority of early accounts of travel, it is scarcely to be believed that Nicolò Zeno the younger invented this voyage. He was a man of the highest reputation, as may be seen by the encomium passed on him by Francesco Patrizio; see _Della Historia dieci Dialoghi di M. Francesco Patrizio_, Venetia, 1560, 4to., p. 30 verso. It is well known that the Venetians had made yearly voyages to the north of Europe for at least two centuries before the period in question, and the most important part of Zeno’s publication, viz., the map, the original of which is stated to have hung up in his palace since the date of the discovery, bears evidence of a knowledge, however imperfect, of Scandinavian geography. The graduation of this map was inserted by Nicolò Zeno the younger himself, and although inaccurate enough to cause much perplexity to geographers, there is no doubt that Greenland was laid down on it with more correctness than on any map preceding the date of its publication. No map before that time shews the Island of Frisland with names thereon tallying with the names of the Færoe islands. No map before 1558 shews the discoveries of the Northmen in America, nor were any of the Sagas known to the Venetians before that time; nor do any books previous to that period set forth the geography of those parts from which Nicolò Zeno could have stolen information. Moreover the correspondence of the Zeno map with surveys much later, as in Davis’s Straits, is highly corroborative of its genuineness. Mr. Kohl, in his most valuable _Documentary History of Discovery of the East Coast of North America_, printed by the Maine Historical Society, 1869, 8vo., suggests that Icaria is Helluland or Newfoundland; Estotiland, Markland or Nova Scotia; and Drogeo, Vinland or New England: and he further justly remarks that, assuming that the map is genuine, “it is the first and oldest known to us on which some sections of the continent of America have been laid down.”

On an anonymous map in Weimar of the date of 1424, and on a map by Andrea Bianco,[4] in the library of St. Mark, bearing the date of 1436, is laid down a large extent of land, five or six hundred leagues west of Gibraltar, above which is written the word “Antillia.” With reference to this subject, Martin Behaim, on his globe of 1492, says, “In the year 734, after the conquest of Spain by the Mahometans, this island Antillia was discovered and settled by an archbishop from Oporto, who fled to it in ships with six other bishops and other Christian men and women. They built there seven towns, from which circumstance it has also been called Septem Citade, the island of the seven cities. In the year 1414 a Spanish vessel came very near to it.” Of the island of S. Brandan also, which is laid down on charts of the fourteenth century, Behaim says, “In the year 565, Saint Brandan, an Irish bishop, arrived with his vessel on this island, saw there most wonderful things, and returned afterwards to his country.” Another of these fancied islands in the Atlantic was the island of Brazil. So strong was the belief in the existence of these islands, that we find it stated by Pedro de Ayala, a Spanish envoy in England writing to the sovereigns in 1498, that the Bristol men had sent out every year from 1491 (before Columbus’s first great discovery) to 1497, two, three, or four caravels every year in search of the islands of Brazil and the seven cities, at the instigation of John Cabot.

The following passage occurs in Sir John Barrow’s _Chronological History of Voyages in the Arctic Regions_, which, if it stated a defensible truth, would present another claim, anterior to that of Columbus, to the discovery of America. The passage is headed “Cortereals, 1500”;—

“The Portuguese, not content with having discovered a route to India, by sailing round the tempestuous extremity to Africa, soon after engaged in an equally dangerous enterprise: that of finding a route to India and the Spice Islands, by sailing westward round the northern extremity of America. This bold undertaking was reserved for the CORTEREALS, the enlightened disciples of the school of Sagres. The first navigator of the name of Cortereal, who engaged in this enterprise, was John Vaz Costa Cortereal, a gentleman of the household of the infant Dom Fernando, who, accompanied by Alvaro Martens Homem, explored the northern seas, by order of king Affonso the Fifth, and discovered the _Terra de Baccalhaos_ (the land of cod fish), afterwards called Newfoundland. This voyage is mentioned by Cordeiro,[5] but he does not state the exact date, which however is ascertained to have been in 1463 or 1464; for, in their return from the discovery of Newfoundland, or Terra Nova, they touched at the island of Terceira, the captaincy of which island having become vacant by the death of Jacomo Bruges, they solicited the appointment, and in reward for their services the request was granted, their patent commission being dated in Evora, 2nd April, 1464.”

It will be seen by the wording of this passage, that Sir John Barrow has fallen into the inaccuracy of asserting that, in 1463 or 1464, Cortereal was engaged in the enterprise of finding a route to India and the Spice Islands by sailing westward round the northern extremities of America. We must presume that the Portuguese were aware of the existence of the American continent, before they could conceive the idea of sailing westward round its northern extremity. The patent commission of the appointment of Cortereal and Homem to the government of Terceira does not specify that the service for which it was granted, was the discovery of Newfoundland; and, moreover, at the end of Faria y Sousa’s _Asia Portuguesa_, there is a list of all the armadas which sailed from Lisbon on voyages of discovery between 1412 and 1640, and this expedition is passed by in silence; so that the validity of the whole statement hangs on the authority of Cordeiro: but the account is altogether so extremely improbable, from the very silence of Portuguese writers of the time on so important a subject, as to leave Cortereal but small chance of a successful rivalry with Sebastian Cabot.[6]

The last on the list of those who have been said to precede Columbus in the discovery of America is a Polish pilot, named John Szkolny, whose name has been erroneously Latinized by Hornius, Zurla, Malte Brun, Wytfliet, and Pontanus, “Scolvus,” or “Sciolvus.” He was in the service of Christian II of Denmark in the year 1476. He is said to have landed on the coast of Labrador, after having passed along Norway, Greenland, and the Friseland of the Zeni. Upon this subject Von Humboldt thus expresses himself: “I cannot hazard any opinion upon the statement made to this effect by Wytfliet, Pontanus, and Horn. A country seen _after_ Greenland may, from the direction indicated, have been Labrador. I am, however, surprised to find that Gomara, who published his _Historia de las Indias_ at Saragossa, in 1553, was cognizant even at that time of this Polish pilot. It is possible that when the codfishery began to bring the seamen of southern Europe into more frequent connexion with those of the north, a suspicion may have arisen that the land seen by Szkolny must have been the same as that visited by John Sebastian Cabot in 1497, and by Gaspar Cortereal in 1500. Gomara says what is in other respects not quite correct, _that the English took much pleasure in frequenting the coast of Labrador, for they found the latitude and climate the same as that of their native land, and the men of Norway have been there with the pilot, John Scolvo, as well as the English with Sebastian Cabot_. Let us not forget that Gomara makes no mention of the Polish pilot with reference to the question of the predecessors of Columbus, though he is malignant enough to assert that it is in fact impossible to say to whom the discovery of the New Indies is due.”[7]

In the American Philosophical Transactions for 1786, is a letter addressed to Dr. Franklin by Mr. Otto of New York, in which he not only asserts that the illustrious cosmographer Martin Behaim discovered the Azores, but quotes a passage, from what he calls an authentic record, preserved in the archives of Nuremberg, the tenor of which is as follows:—“Martin Behem, traversing the Atlantic Ocean for several years, examined the American Islands, and discovered the strait which bears the name of Magellan, before either Christopher Columbus or Magellan navigated those seas; and even mathematically delineated on a geographical chart for the king of Lusitania, the situation of the coast around every part of that famous and renowned strait.” He also quotes passages from the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, and from Cellarius, in confirmation of this statement. Don Cristóbal Cladera, in his _Investigaciones Historicas_, says that, in order to refute these statements, he procured from Nuremberg a description of Behaim’s globe, together with historical notes on the life and family of that geographer, and upon examining these and the unpublished works of the Academia de las Ciencias de Lisboa, he became convinced that the observations of Mr. Otto were totally unfounded; and De Murr, who has well investigated the question, assures us that the passage quoted by Mr. Otto from the _Nuremberg Chronicle_ was not to be found in the German translation of that work by George Alt in 1493. Moreover, the real globe of Behaim, made in 1492, does not contain any of the islands or shores of the New World; a fact which sets at rest the two questions of Behaim’s earlier discovery, or of Columbus gaining his information from Behaim.[8]

From the series of evidences contained in the preceding accounts, the fact that America had been visited by European adventurers before the time of Columbus is rendered too certain to admit of contradiction even from the most sanguine advocate of the glory of the great discoverer. But, on the other side, it cannot be denied that the discovery of Columbus, however much later in date, deserves the meed of highest honour, as being the result of sagacity, judgment and indomitable perseverance, and as having been carried on with an energetic endeavour to bring into active operation the incalculable advantages which it opened up to the world at large. To vindicate the correctness of this statement, it will be well to give a brief sketch of his eventful life, and to pourtray as briefly as we may the high qualities to which, far more than to accidental circumstances, the glory of this great discovery is due. The retrospect of his history will at the same time shew, that while every previous discovery was attributable to accident, the greater portion of the accidental or uncontrollable circumstances in the life of Columbus were such as, instead of assisting him, tended to thwart him at every step of his painful career.

It is generally agreed that his father was a wool weaver or carder. There is reason, however, to presume that though his parentage was humble, he was descended from a family of consideration. On this subject his son, Don Ferdinand, denies[9] with great indignation an assertion which occurs in a curious life of the admiral, inserted in the “_Psaltertium Octuplex Augustin Justiniani_,” Genoa, 1516, folio, under the comments on the nineteenth psalm, that he was “vilibus ortus parentibus,” and complains that he is falsely called a mechanic.

The date of his birth is a “vexata quæstio,” which it would be well that we should here examine. For settling a disputed question of the kind no process seems so sure as the comparing of statements made by the same individual, if he be a good authority, at different times and under different circumstances. The following are two statements made by Columbus himself at entirely different periods and in an entirely different shape, and yet both having the same result. They are recorded by his son, Fernando, in the Biography of his father, and are as follows: “In his book of his first voyage [1492] he says, ‘I was upon the sea twenty-three years without being off it any time worth the speaking of, and I saw all the East and all the West, and may say towards the North or England, and have been at Guinea. Yet I never saw harbours for goodness like those of the West Indies,’ and a little further he says, ‘That he took to the sea at fourteen years of age and ever after followed it.’” Now we know for certain that he escaped from Lisbon and came to Andalusia at the close of 1484; that during his stay in Portugal he had made many voyages to Guinea, but that from 1484 until his first great voyage in 1492 he was engaged, not at sea, but in endeavouring to secure the interest of the Spanish sovereigns in his important project. If then we add his twenty-three years of almost constant sea-going to fourteen, his age when he first went to sea, we have thirty-seven years to deduct from 1484, and we find 1447 to be the date of his birth. Again in 1501, many years later, he writes to the Spanish sovereigns as follows: “I went to sea very young and have continued it to this day; ... it is now forty years that I have been sailing to all those parts at present frequented.” What “very young” meant he had already told us; viz., 14, which added to 40 makes 54; and this total deducted from 1501, the date at which he writes, leaves the same date for his birth as that resulting from his former statement, viz., 1447. But for the sake of attaining as near to accuracy as possible, we must not overlook another statement made in 1503 by Columbus himself in his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, describing his fourth voyage. He there says “I was twenty-eight years old when I came into Your Highnesses service, and now I have not a hair upon me that is not grey.” It was in 1484 that he went to Spain, and then, as we have seen, terminated those three-and-twenty years of almost uninterrupted sea-faring life of which he speaks. Now, if he were then only eight-and-twenty, he must have first gone to sea at the age of five instead of fourteen, as he himself informs us. Moreover, by that reckoning he would have been only fifty when he died, in 1506, an age entirely incompatible with the statement of Bernaldez, the Cura de los Palacios, who knew Columbus so well, that he died _in senectute bonâ_, at the age of seventy, more or less. It is intelligible that such a remark should be made of a man of sixty, who had passed through hardships so exhausting to the mind and body as those which had marked the life of Columbus, but scarcely even of him at the age of fifty. It is clear, then, that a mistake has been made in this number 28, but if for it we write 38, it will make the date of Columbus’s birth to be 1446. We have, however, to bear in mind that the two statements previously made by him were of a very general character, in which no month or part of a year was specified. It would therefore seem that, on his own showing, we shall be safe in placing the date of his birth 1446-47, which agrees with the inference of the learned and judicious Muñoz, who places it “por los años 1446,” although he does not show the process by which he arrives at his conclusion.

With respect to the birthplace of our illustrious navigator, were we to enter into the complex discussions of those who, with different arguments of more or less plausibility, place it in Genoa, Nervi, Savona, Pradello, Cogoleto, Quinto, Bogliasco, Albisola, Chiavara, Oneglia, or the castle of Cuccaro in Monferrato,—we should but launch upon a sea of difficulties, with little hope of a successful voyage. It is difficult to withhold credence from the strong assertion made twice by Columbus in his will, dated 22nd February 1498, that he was born in the city of Genoa; namely,—“I, being a native of Genoa”; and “I desire my said son Diego, or the person who may succeed to the said inheritance, always to keep and maintain one person of our lineage in the city of Genoa ... because from thence I came, and there I was born.”[10] But in like manner we know that Leonardo, who was born at Vinci, persisted in calling himself a Florentine.

Having early evinced a strong inclination for the study of geography, geometry, and astronomy, Columbus found at the college of Pavia an excellent opportunity of gaining a more than superficial acquaintance with the principles of those sciences, and at the same time acquired considerable proficiency in the Latin language. The maritime position and commercial engagements of his native city doubtless suggested and fostered much of that propensity for a nautical life, that he exhibited at so early an age; and although it appears from several historians that for a short time he worked at his father’s trade, yet this must have been simply during his earliest boyhood, for by his own account he commenced the life of a mariner at fourteen years of age. The piratical character of the sea-faring life of those days necessarily exposed its followers to unceasing hardships and dangers, and the severity of this early discipline must have most materially tended to render available and permanent those distinguished qualities which have subsequently gained for him the admiration of the world: indeed, no career could have been better calculated to develope his peculiar genius, or add fuel to those enthusiastic aspirations which characterised him to the close of his life.

From the period of his going to sea, which was about the year 1460 until the year 1472, we meet with no distinct mention of his name; although in a letter written by him to their Majesties, in 1495, he says: “_It happened to me that king Réné (whom God has taken to himself) sent me to Tunis to capture the galley Fernandina, and on arriving at the island of San Pedro, in Sardinia, I learned that there were two ships and a caracca with the galley, which so alarmed the crew that they resolved to proceed no further, but to return to Marseilles for another vessel and more people; upon which, being unable to force their inclination, I yielded to their wish, and having first changed the points of the compass, spread all sail, for it was evening, and at daybreak we were within the cape of Carthagena, while all believed for a certainty that they were going to Marseilles._” The date of this occurrence is unknown, but the expedient of Columbus to alter the point of the needle, reminds us of his subsequent stratagem, of altering his reckoning, to appease his discontented crew during his first great voyage of discovery.

In the year 1472, however, we have evidence of his having been in Savona, from the fact of his signature having been found appended to the will of one Nicolò Monleone, under date of the 20th March of that year. The document is preserved in Savona, among the notarial archives.

In 1474 we find his name mentioned in a letter addressed by Ferdinand king of Sicily to Louis king of France, the title of which runs thus: “_Literæ à Ferdinando Rege Siciliæ ad Ludovicum XI, Galliæ Regem, per Fæcialem missæ, quibus quæritur, quod Christophorus Columbus triremes suas deprædatus sit, postulatque sibi ablata restitui. Datum in Terra Fogiæ die 8 Decembr. 1474._” Then follows a letter in five lengthy clauses, in which it is stated that the said vessels were attacked and taken:—“_A Columbo, qui quibusdam navibus præest, Majestatis vestræ subdito._”

The title of Louis’s reply runs thus: “_Responsio Ludovici XI quibus promittit restitutionem, excusat tamen Columbum, quod jus sit in Oceano capere naves ab hostilibus terris venientes et saltem bona hostium inde auferre._” These letters are given by Leibnitz, in his _Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus, Prodromus_, art. 16 and 17; but on the correction of Nicolas Toinard, he acknowledges, in the preface to his _Mantissa Codicis_, that he had erroneously inserted the Christian name “Christophorus.”