Chapter 14

THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.

_WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE._

[Sidenote: Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus: Las Casas and Ferdinand Columbus.]

[Sidenote: The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville.]

Our information concerning the life of Columbus before 1492 is far from being as satisfactory as one could wish. Unquestionably he is to be deemed fortunate in having had for his biographers two such men as his friend Las Casas, one of the noblest characters and most faithful historians of that or any age, and his own son Ferdinand Columbus, a most accomplished scholar and bibliographer. The later years of Ferdinand's life were devoted, with loving care, to the preparation of a biography of his father; and his book--which unfortunately survives only in the Italian translation of Alfonso Ulloa,[392] published in Venice in 1571--is of priceless value. As Washington Irving long ago wrote, it is "an invaluable document, entitled to great faith, and is the cornerstone of the history of the American continent."[393] After Ferdinand's death, in 1539, his papers seem to have passed into the hands of Las Casas, who, from 1552 to 1561, in the seclusion of the college of San Gregorio at Valladolid, was engaged in writing his great "History of the Indies."[394] Ferdinand's superb library, one of the finest in Europe, was bequeathed to the cathedral at Seville.[395] It contained some twenty thousand volumes in print and manuscript, four fifths of which, through shameful neglect or vandalism, have perished or been scattered. Four thousand volumes, however, are still preserved, and this library (known as the "Biblioteca Colombina") is full of interest for the historian. Book-buying was to Ferdinand Columbus one of the most important occupations in life. His books were not only carefully numbered, but on the last leaf of each one he wrote a memorandum of the time and place of its purchase and the sum of money paid for it.[396] This habit of Ferdinand's has furnished us with clues to the solution of some interesting questions. Besides this, he was much given to making marginal notes and comments, which are sometimes of immense value, and, more than all, there are still to be seen in this library a few books that belonged to Christopher Columbus himself, with very important notes in his own handwriting and in that of his brother Bartholomew. Las Casas was familiar with this grand collection in the days of its completeness, he was well acquainted with all the members of the Columbus family, and he had evidently read the manuscript sources of Ferdinand's book; for a comparison with Ulloa's version shows that considerable portions of the original Spanish text--or of the documents upon which it rested--are preserved in the work of Las Casas.[397] The citation and adoption of Ferdinand's statements by the latter writer, who was able independently to verify them, is therefore in most cases equivalent to corroboration, and the two writers together form an authority of the weightiest kind, and not lightly to be questioned or set aside.

[Footnote 392: _Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; Nelle quali s' ha particolare, & vera relatione della vita, & de' fatti dell' Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre: Et dello scoprimento, ch' egli fece dell' Indie Occidentali, dette Monde-Nuovo, hora possedute dal Sereniss. Re Catolico: Nuouamente di lingua Spagnuola tradotte nell' Italiana dal S. Alfonso Vlloa. Con. privilegio._ IN VENETIA, M D LXXI. _Appresso Francesco de' Franceschi Sanese._ The principal reprints are those of Milan, 1614; Venice, 1676 and 1678; London, 1867. I always cite it as _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_.]

[Footnote 393: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1868, vol. iii. p. 375. My references, unless otherwise specified, are to this, the "Geoffrey Crayon," edition.]

[Footnote 394: Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias, ahora por primera vez dada a luz por el Marques de la Fuensanta del Valle y D. Jose Sancho Rayon_, Madrid, 1875, 5 vols. 8vo.]

[Footnote 395: "Fu questo D. Ernando di non minor valore del padre, ma di molte piu lettere et scienze dotato che quelle non fu; et il quale lascio alla Chiesa maggiore di Siviglia, dove hoggi si vede honorevolmente sepolto, una, non sola numerosissima, ma richissima libraria, et piena di molti libri in ogni facolta et scienza rarissimi: laquale da coloro che l' han veduta, vien stimata delle piu rare cose di tutta Europa." Moleto's prefatory letter to _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, April 25, 1571.]

[Footnote 396: For example, "_Manuel de la Sancta Fe catolica_, Sevilla, 1495, in-4. Costo en Toledo 34 maravedis, ano 1511, 9 de Octubre, No. 3004." "_Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea_, Sevilla, 1502, in-4. Muchas figuras. Costo en Roma 25 cuatrines, por Junio de 1515. No. 2417," etc. See Harrisse, _Fernand Colomb_, Paris, 1872, p. 13.]

[Footnote 397: "L' autorita di Las Casas e d' una suprema e vitale importanza tanto nella storia di Cristoforo Colombo, come nell' esame delle _Historie_ di Fernando suo figlio.... E dal confronto tra questi due scrittori emergera una omogeneita si perfetta, che si potrebbe coi termini del frate domenicano ritrovare o rifare per due terzi il testo originale spagnuolo delle _Historie_ di Fernando Colombo." Peragallo, _L' autenticita delle Historie di Fernando Colombo_, Genoa, 1884, p. 23.]

[Sidenote: Bernaldez and Peter Martyr.]

[Sidenote: Letters of Columbus.]

Besides these books of most fundamental importance, we have valuable accounts of some parts of the life of Columbus by his friend Andres Bernaldez, the curate of Los Palacios near Seville.[398] Peter Martyr, of Anghiera, by Lago Maggiore, was an intimate friend of Columbus, and gives a good account of his voyages, besides mentioning him in sundry epistles.[399] Columbus himself, moreover, was such a voluminous writer that his contemporaries laughed about it. "God grant," says Zuniga in a letter to the Marquis de Pescara, "God grant that Gutierrez may never come short for paper, for he writes more than Ptolemy, more than Columbus, the man who discovered the Indies."[400] These writings are in great part lost, though doubtless a good many things will yet be brought to light in Spain by persistent rummaging. We have, however, from sixty to seventy letters and reports by Columbus, of which twenty-three at least are in his own handwriting; and all these have been published.[401]

[Footnote 398: _Historia de los Reyes Catolicos D. Fernando y D^a Isabel. Cronica inedita del siglo XV, escrita por el Bachiller Andres Bernaldez, cura que fue de Los Palacios_, Granada, 1856, 2 vols. small 4to. It is a book of very high authority.]

[Footnote 399: _De orbe novo Decades_, Alcala, 1516; _Opus epistolarum_, Compluti (Alcala), 1530; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, Nos. 88, 160.]

[Footnote 400: "A Gutierrez vuestro solicitador, ruego a Dios que nunca le falte papel, porque escribe mas que Tolomeo y que Colon, el que hallo las Indias." Rivadeneyra, _Curiosidades bibliograficas_, p. 59, apud Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, tom. i. p. 1.]

[Footnote 401: Harrisse, _loc. cit._, in 1884, gives the number at sixty-four.]

[Sidenote: Defects in Ferdinand's information.]

Nevertheless, while these contemporary materials give us abundant information concerning the great discoverer, from the year 1492 until his death, it is quite otherwise with his earlier years, especially before his arrival in Spain in 1484. His own allusions to these earlier years are sometimes hard to interpret;[402] and as for his son Ferdinand, that writer confesses, with characteristic and winning frankness, that his information is imperfect, inasmuch as filial respect had deterred him from closely interrogating his father on such points, or, to tell the plain truth, being still very young when his father died, he had not then come to recognize their importance.[403] This does not seem strange when we reflect that Ferdinand must have seen very little of his father until in 1502, at the age of fourteen, he accompanied him on that last difficult and disastrous voyage, in which the sick and harassed old man could have had but little time or strength for aught but the work in hand. It is not strange that when, a quarter of a century later, the son set about his literary task, he should now and then have got a date wrong, or have narrated some incidents in a confused manner, or have admitted some gossiping stories, the falsehood of which can now plainly be detected. Such blemishes, which occur chiefly in the earlier part of Ferdinand's book, do not essentially detract from its high authority.[404] The limits which bounded the son's accurate knowledge seem also to have bounded that of such friends as Bernaldez, who did not become acquainted with Columbus until after his arrival in Spain.

[Footnote 402: Sometimes from a slip of memory or carelessness of phrasing, on Columbus's part, sometimes from our lacking the clue, sometimes from an error in numerals, common enough at all times.]

[Footnote 403: "Ora, l' Ammiraglio avendo cognizione delle dette scienze, comincio ad attendere al mare, e a fare alcuni viaggi in levante e in ponente; de' quali, e di molte altre cose di quei primi di io non ho piena notizia; perciocche egli venne a morte a tempo che io non aveva tanto ardire, o pratica, per la riverenza filiale, che io ardissi di richiederlo di cotali cose; o, per parlare piu veramente, allora mi ritrovava io, come giovane, molto lontano da cotal pensiero." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]

[Footnote 404: Twenty years ago M. Harrisse published in Spanish and French a critical essay maintaining that the _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_ was not written by Ferdinand Columbus, but probably by the famous scholar Perez de Oliva, professor in the university of Salamanca, who died in 1530 (_D. Fernando Colon, historiador de su padre_, Seville, 1871; _Fernand Colomb: sa vie, ses oeuvres_, Paris, 1872). The Spanish manuscript of the book had quite a career. As already observed, it is clear that Las Casas used it, probably between 1552 and 1561. From Ferdinand's nephew, Luis Columbus, it seems to have passed in 1568 into the hands of Baliano di Fornari, a prominent citizen of Genoa, who sent it to Venice with the intention of having it edited and published with Latin and Italian versions. All that ever appeared, however, was the Italian version made by Ulloa and published in 1571. Harrisse supposes that the Spanish manuscript, written by Oliva, was taken to Genoa by some adventurer and palmed off upon Baliano di Fornari as the work of Ferdinand Columbus. But inasmuch as Harrisse also supposes that Oliva probably wrote the book (about 1525) at Seville, under Ferdinand's eyes and with documents furnished by him, it becomes a question, in such case, how far was Oliva anything more than an amanuensis to Ferdinand? and there seems really to be precious little wool after so much loud crying. If the manuscript was actually written "sous les yeux de Fernand et avec documents fournis par lui," most of the arguments alleged to prove that it could not have emanated from the son of Columbus fall to the ground. It becomes simply a question whether Ulloa may have here and there tampered with the text, or made additions of his own. To some extent he seems to have done so, but wherever the Italian version is corroborated by the Spanish extracts in Las Casas, we are on solid ground, for Las Casas died five years before the Italian version was published. M. Harrisse does not seem as yet to have convinced many scholars. His arguments have been justly, if somewhat severely, characterized by my old friend, the lamented Henry Stevens (_Historical Collections_, London, 1881, vol. i. No. 1379), and have been elaborately refuted by M. d'Avezac, _Le livre de Ferdinand Colomb: revue critique des allegations proposees contre son authenticite_, Paris, 1873; and by Prospero Peragallo, _L' autenticita delle Historie di Fernando Colombo_, Genoa, 1884. See also Fabie, _Vida de Fray Bartolome de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1869, tom. i. pp. 360-372.]

[Sidenote: Researches of Henry Harrisse.]

In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places with which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this imperfect information concerning his earlier years.[405] A number of data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been attempted.[406] The general impression, however, which the discussions of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more violent hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a history of the Discovery of America.

[Footnote 405: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884, 2 vols., a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable to every student of the subject, though here and there somewhat over-ingenious and hypercritical, and in general unduly biased by the author's private crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.]

[Footnote 406: One of the most radical of these reconstructions may be found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas chronologique de la vie de Christophe Colomb," in _Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e serie, tom. iv. pp. 5-59.]

[Footnote 407: Washington Irving's _Life of Columbus_, says Harrisse, "is a history written with judgment and impartiality, which leaves far behind it all descriptions of the discovery of the New World published before or since." _Christophe Colomb_, tom. i. p. 136. Irving was the first to make use of the superb work of Navarrete, _Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Espanoles desde fines del siglo XV._, Madrid, 1825-37, 5 vols. 4to. Next followed Alexander von Humboldt, with his _Examen critique de l'histoire de la geographie de Nouveau Continent_, Paris, 1836-39, 5 vols. 8vo. This monument of gigantic erudition (which, unfortunately, was never completed) will always remain indispensable to the historian.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Date of the birth of Columbus: archives of Savona.]

[Sidenote: Statement of Bernaldez.]

[Sidenote: Columbus's letter of September, 1501.]

[Sidenote: The balance of probability is in favour of 1436.]

The date of the birth of Columbus is easy to determine approximately, but hard to determine with precision. In the voluminous discussion upon this subject the extreme limits assigned have been 1430 and 1456, but neither of these extremes is admissible, and our choice really lies somewhere between 1436 and 1446. Among the town archives of Savona is a deed of sale executed August 7, 1473, by the father of Christopher Columbus, and ratified by Christopher and his next brother Giovanni.[408] Both brothers must then have attained their majority, which in the republic of Genoa was fixed at the age of twenty-five. Christopher, therefore, can hardly have been less than seven and twenty, so that the latest probable date for his birth is 1446, and this is the date accepted by Munoz, Major, Harrisse, and Avezac. There is no documentary proof, however, to prevent our taking an earlier date; and the curate of Los Palacios--strong authority on such a point--says expressly that at the time of his death, in 1506, Columbus was "in a good old age, seventy years a little more or less."[409] Upon this statement Navarrete and Humboldt have accepted 1436 as the probable date of birth.[410] The most plausible objection to this is a statement made by Columbus himself in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, written in 1501. In this letter, as first given in the biography by his son, Columbus says that he was of "very tender age" when he began to sail the seas, an occupation which he has kept up until the present moment; and in the next sentence but one he adds that "now for forty years I have been in this business and have gone to every place where there is any navigation up to the present time."[411] The expression "very tender age" agrees with Ferdinand's statement that his father was fourteen years old when he first took to the sea.[412] Since 1446 + 14-40 = 1500, it is argued that Columbus was probably born about 1446; some sticklers for extreme precision say 1447. But now there were eight years spent by Columbus in Spain, from 1484 to 1492, without any voyages at all; they were years, as he forcibly says, "dragged out in disputations."[413] Did he mean to include those eight years in his forty spent upon the sea? Navarrete thinks he did not. When he wrote under excitement, as in this letter, his language was apt to be loose, and it is fair to construe it according to the general probabilities of the case. This addition of eight years brings his statement substantially into harmony with that of Bernaldez, which it really will not do to set aside lightly. Moreover, in the original text of the letter, since published by Navarrete, Columbus appears to say, "now for _more than_ forty years," so that the agreement with Bernaldez becomes practically complete.[414] The good curate spoke from direct personal acquaintance, and his phrases "seventy years" and "a good old age" are borne out by the royal decree of February 23, 1505, permitting Columbus to ride on a mule, instead of a horse, by reason of his old age (_ancianidad_) and infirmities.[415] Such a phrase applies much better to a man of sixty-nine than to a man of fifty-nine. On the whole, I think that Washington Irving showed good sense in accepting the statement of the curate of Los Palacios as decisive, dating as it does the birth of Columbus at 1436, "a little more or less."

[Footnote 408: Harrisse, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 196.]

[Footnote 409: "In _senectute bona_, de edad de setenta anos poco mas o menos." Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, tom. i. p. 334.]

[Footnote 410: M. d'Avezac (_Canevas chronologique_, etc.) objects to this date that we have positive documentary evidence of the birth of Christopher's youngest brother Giacomo (afterwards spanished into Diego) in 1468, which makes an interval of 32 years; so that if the mother were (say) 18 in 1436 she must have borne a child at the age of 50. That would be unusual, but not unprecedented. But M. Harrisse (tom. ii. p. 214), from a more thorough sifting of this documentary evidence, seems to have proved that while Giacomo cannot have been born later than 1468 he may have been born as early as 1460; so that whatever is left of M. d'Avezac's objection falls to the ground.]

[Footnote 411: "Serenissimi principi, di eta molto tenera io entrai in mare navigando, et vi ho continovato fin' hoggi: ... et hoggimai passano quaranta anni che io uso per tutte quelle parti che fin hoggi si navigano." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]

[Footnote 412: _Op. cit._ cap. iv. _ad fin_.]

[Footnote 413: "Traido en disputas," Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 254.]

[Footnote 414: "Muy altos Reyes, de muy pequena edad entre en la mar navegando, e lo he continuado fasta hoy.... Ya pasan de cuarenta anos que yo voy en este uso: todo lo que hoy se navega, todo lo he andado." Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 262. Observe the lame phrase "pasan de cuarenta;" what business has that "de" in such a place without "mas" before it? "Pasan mas de cuarenta," i. e. "more than forty;" writing in haste and excitement, Columbus left out a little word; or shall we blame the proof-reader? Avezac himself translates it "il y a plus de quarante ans," and so does Eugene Mueller, in his French version of Ferdinand's book, _Histoire de la vie de Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1879, p. 15.]

[Footnote 415: That was the golden age of sumptuary laws. Because Alfonso XI. of Castile (1312-1350), when he tried to impress horses for the army, found it hard to get as many as he wanted, he took it into his head that his subjects were raising too many mules and not enough horses. So he tried to remedy the evil by a wholesale decree prohibiting all Castilians from riding upon mules! In practice this precious decree, like other villainous prohibitory laws that try to prevent honest people from doing what they have a perfect right to do, proved so vexatious and ineffective withal that it had to be perpetually fussed with and tinkered. One year you could ride a mule and the next year you couldn't. In 1492, as we shall see, Columbus immortalized one of these patient beasts by riding it a few miles from Granada. But in 1494 Ferdinand and Isabella decreed that nobody except women, children, and clergymen could ride on mules,--"dont la marche est beaucoup plus douce que celle des chevaux" (Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. iii. p. 338). This edict remained in force in 1505, so that the Discoverer of the New World, the inaugurator of the greatest historic event since the birth of Christ, could not choose an easygoing animal for the comfort of his weary old weather-shaken bones without the bother of getting a special edict to fit his case. _Eheu, quam parva sapientia regitur mundus!_]

[Sidenote: The family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of residence.]

With regard to the place where the great discoverer was born there ought to be no dispute, since we have his own most explicit and unmistakable word for it, as I shall presently show. Nevertheless there has been no end of dispute. He has been claimed by as many places as Homer,[416] but the only real question is whether he was born in the city of Genoa or in some neighbouring village within the boundaries of the Genoese republic. It is easy to understand how doubt has arisen on this point, if we trace the changes of residence of his family. The grandfather of Columbus seems to have been Giovanni Colombo, of Terrarossa, an inland hamlet some twenty miles east by north from Genoa. Giovanni's son, Domenico Colombo, was probably born at Terrarossa, and moved thence with his father, somewhere between 1430 and 1445, to Quinto al Mare, four miles east of Genoa on the coast. All the family seem to have been weavers. Before 1445, but how many years before is not known, Domenico married Susanna Fontanarossa, who belonged to a family of weavers, probably of Quezzi, four miles northeast of Genoa. Between 1448 and 1451 Domenico, with his wife and three children, moved into the city of Genoa, where he became the owner of a house and was duly qualified as a citizen. In 1471 Domenico moved to Savona, thirty miles west on the Corniche road, where he set up a weaving establishment and also kept a tavern. He had then five children, Cristoforo, Giovanni, Bartolommeo, Giacomo, and a daughter. Domenico lived in Savona till 1484. At that time his wife and his son Giovanni were dead, Giacomo was an apprentice, learning the weaver's trade, Christopher and Bartholomew had long been domiciled in Portugal, the daughter had married a cheese merchant in Genoa, and to that city Domenico returned in the autumn of 1484, and lived there until his death, at a great age, in 1499 or 1500. He was always in pecuniary difficulties, and died poor and in debt, though his sons seem to have sent him from Portugal and Spain such money as they could spare.[417]

[Footnote 416: "Nous avons demontre l'inanite des theories qui le font naitre a Pradello, a Cuccaro, a Cogoleto, a Savona, a Nervi, a Albissola, a Bogliasco, a Cosseria, a Finale, a Oneglia, voire meme en Angleterre ou dans l'isle de Corse." Harrisse, tom. i. p. 217. In Cogoleto, about sixteen miles west of Genoa on the Corniche road, the visitor is shown a house where Columbus is said first to have seen the light. Upon its front is a quaint inscription in which the discoverer is compared to the dove (_Colomba_) which, when sent by Noah from the ark, discovered dry land amid the waters:--

Con generoso ardir dall' Arca all' onde Ubbidiente il vol Colomba prende, Corre, s' aggira, terren scopre, e fronde D' olivo in segno, al gran Noe ne rende. L' imita in cio Colombo, ne' s' asconde, E da sua patria il mar solcando fende; Terreno al fin scoprendo diede fondo, Offerendo all' Ispano un Nuovo Mondo.

This house is or has been mentioned in Baedeker's _Northern Italy_ as the probable birthplace, along with Peschel's absurd date 1456. It is pretty certain that Columbus was _not_ born in that house or in Cogoleto. See Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 148-155.]

[Footnote 417: Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 166-216.]

[Sidenote: Christopher tells us that he was born in the city of Genoa.]

The reader will observe that Christopher and his two next brothers were born before the family went to live in the city of Genoa. It has hence been plausibly inferred that they were born either in Quinto or in Terrarossa; more likely the latter, since both Christopher and Bartholomew, as well as their father, were called, and sometimes signed themselves, Columbus of Terrarossa.[418] In this opinion the most indefatigable modern investigator, Harrisse, agrees with Las Casas.[419] Nevertheless, in a solemn legal instrument executed February 22, 1498, establishing a _mayorazgo_, or right of succession to his estates and emoluments in the Indies, Columbus expressly declares that he was born in the city of Genoa: "I enjoin it upon my son, the said Don Diego, or whoever may inherit the said _mayorazgo_, always to keep and maintain in the City of Genoa one person of our lineage, because from thence I came and in it I was born."[420] I do not see how such a definite and positive statement, occurring in such a document, can be doubted or explained away. It seems clear that the son was born while the parents were dwelling either at Terrarossa or at Quinto, but what is to hinder our supposing that the event might have happened when the mother was in the city on some errand or visit? The fact that Christopher and his brother were often styled "of Terrarossa" does not prove that they were born in that hamlet. A family moving thence to Quinto and to Genoa would stand in much need of some such distinctive epithet, because the name Colombo was extremely common in that part of Italy; insomuch that the modern historian, who prowls among the archives of those towns, must have a care lest he get hold of the wrong person, and thus open a fresh and prolific source of confusion. This has happened more than once.

[Footnote 418: Harrisse, tom. i. p. 188; _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi.]

[Footnote 419: "Fue este varon escogido de nacion genoves, de algun lugar de la provincia de Genova; cual fuese, donde nacio o que nombre tuvo el tal lugar, no consta la verdad dello mas de que se solia llamar antes que llegase al estado que llego, Cristobal Colombo de Terra-rubia y lo mismo su hermano Bartolome Colon." Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 42; cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 217-222.]

[Footnote 420: "Mando al dicho D. Diego, mi hijo, o a la persona que heredare el dicho mayorazgo, que tenga y sostenga siempre en la _Ciudad de Genova_ una persona de nuestro linage ... pues que della sali _y en ella naci_" [italics mine]. Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 232.]

[Sidenote: Christopher's early years.]

[Sidenote: Christopher and Bartholomew at Lisbon.]

On the whole, then, it seems most probable that the Discoverer of America was born in the city of Genoa in 1436, or not much later. Of his childhood we know next to nothing. Las Casas tells us that he studied at the University of Pavia and acquired a good knowledge of Latin.[421] This has been doubted, as incompatible with the statement of Columbus that he began a seafaring life at the age of fourteen. It is clear, however, that the earlier years of Columbus, before his departure for Portugal, were not all spent in seafaring. Somewhere, if not at Pavia, he not only learned Latin, but found time to study geography, with a little astronomy and mathematics, and to become an expert draughtsman. He seems to have gone to and fro upon the Mediterranean in merchant voyages, now and then taking a hand in sharp scrimmages with Mussulman pirates.[422] In the intervals of this adventurous life he was probably to be found in Genoa, earning his bread by making maps and charts, for which there was a great and growing demand. About 1470, having become noted for his skill in such work, he followed his younger brother Bartholomew to Lisbon,[423] whither Prince Henry's undertakings had attracted able navigators and learned geographers until that city had come to be the chief centre of nautical science in Europe. Las Casas assures us that Bartholomew was quite equal to Christopher as a sailor, and surpassed him in the art of making maps and globes, as well as in the beauty of his handwriting.[424] In Portugal, as before in Italy, the work of the brothers Columbus was an alternation of map-making on land and adventure on the sea. We have Christopher's own word for it that he sailed with more than one of those Portuguese expeditions down the African coast;[425] and I think it not altogether unlikely that he may have been with Santarem and Escobar in their famous voyage of 1471.

[Footnote 421: Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 46.]

[Footnote 422: The reader must beware, however, of some of the stories of adventure attaching to this part of his life, even where they are confirmed by Las Casas. They evidently rest upon hearsay, and the incidents are so confused that it is almost impossible to extract the kernel of truth.]

[Footnote 423: The date 1470 rests upon a letter of Columbus to King Ferdinand of Aragon in May, 1505. He says that God must have directed him into the service of Spain by a kind of miracle, since he had already been in Portugal, whose king was more interested than any other sovereign in making discoveries, and yet God closed his eyes, his ears, and all his senses to such a degree that _in fourteen years_ Columbus could not prevail upon him to lend aid to his scheme. "Dije milagrosamente porque fui a aportar a Portugal, adonde el Rey de alli entendia en el descubrir mas que otro: el le atajo la vista, oido y todos los sentidos, que en catorce anos no le pude hacer entender lo que yo dije." Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. iii. p. 187; Navarrete, tom. iii. p. 528. Now it is known that Columbus finally left Portugal late in 1484, or very early in 1485, so that fourteen years would carry us back to before 1471 for the first arrival of Columbus in that country. M. Harrisse (_op. cit._ tom. i. p. 263) is unnecessarily troubled by the fact that the same person was not king of Portugal during the whole of that period. Alfonso V. (brother of Henry the Navigator) died in 1481, and was succeeded by his son John II.; but during a considerable part of the time between 1475 and 1481 the royal authority was exercised by the latter. Both kings were more interested in making discoveries than any other European sovereigns. Which king did Columbus mean? Obviously his words were used loosely; he was too much preoccupied to be careful about trifles; he probably had John in his mind, and did not bother himself about Alfonso; King Ferdinand, to whom he was writing, did not need to have such points minutely specified, and could understand an elliptical statement; and the fact stated by Columbus was simply that during a residence of fourteen years in Portugal he had not been able to enlist even that enterprising government in behalf of his novel scheme.

In the town archives of Savona we find Christopher Columbus witnessing a document March 20, 1472, endorsing a kind of promissory note for his father August 26, 1472, and joining with his mother and his next brother Giovanni, August 7, 1473, in relinquishing all claims to the house in Genoa sold by his father Domenico by deed of that date. It will be remembered that Domenico had moved from Genoa to Savona in 1471. From these documents (which are all printed in his _Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 419, 420, 424-426) M. Harrisse concludes that Christopher cannot have gone to Portugal until after August 7, 1473. Probably not, so far as to be domiciled there; but inasmuch as he had long been a sailor, why should he not have been in Portugal, or upon the African coast in a Portuguese ship, in 1470 and 1471, and nevertheless have been with his parents in Savona in 1472 and part of 1473? His own statement "fourteen years" is not to be set aside on such slight grounds as this. Furthermore, from the fact that Bartholomew's name is not signed to the deed of August 7, 1473, M. Harrisse infers that he was then a minor; i. e. under five and twenty. But it seems to me more likely that Bartholomew was already domiciled at Lisbon, since we are expressly told by two good contemporary authorities--both of them Genoese writers withal--that he moved to Lisbon and began making maps there at an earlier date than Christopher. See Antonio Gallo, _De navigatione Columbi per inaccessum antea Oceanum Commentariolus_, apud Muratori, tom. xxiii. col. 301-304; Giustiniani, _Psalterium_, Milan, 1516 (annotation to Psalm xix.); Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, No. 88. To these statements M. Harrisse objects that he finds (in Belloro, _Notizie_, p. 8) mention of a document dated Savona, June 16, 1480, in which Domenico Colombo gives a power of attorney to his son Bartholomew to act for him in some matter. The document itself, however, is not forthcoming, and the notice cited by M. Harrisse really affords no ground for the assumption that Bartholomew was in 1480 domiciled at Savona or at Genoa.]

[Footnote 424: Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 224; tom. ii. p. 80. He possessed many maps and documents by both the brothers.]

[Footnote 425: "Spesse volte navigando da Lisbona a Guinea," etc. _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv. The original authority is Columbus's marginal note in his copy of the _Imago Mundi_ of Alliacus, now preserved in the Colombina at Seville: "Nota quod sepius navigando ex Ulixbona ad austrum in Guineam, notavi cum diligentia viam, etc." Compare the allusions to Guinea in his letters, Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. pp. 55, 71, 101.]

[Sidenote: Philippa Moniz de Perestrelo.]

[Sidenote: Personal appearance of Columbus.]

He had not been long in Portugal before he found a wife. We have already met the able Italian navigator, Bartholomew Perestrelo, who was sent by Prince Henry to the island of Porto Santo with Zarco and Vaz, about 1425. In recognition of eminent services Prince Henry afterwards, in 1446, appointed him governor of Porto Santo. Perestrelo died in 1457, leaving a widow (his second wife, Isabella Moniz) and a charming daughter Philippa,[426] whom Columbus is said to have first met at a religious service in the chapel of the convent of All Saints at Lisbon. From the accounts of his personal appearance, given by Las Casas and others who knew him, we can well understand how Columbus should have won the heart of this lady, so far above him at that time in social position. He was a man of noble and commanding presence, tall and powerfully built, with fair ruddy complexion and keen blue-gray eyes that easily kindled; while his waving white hair must have been quite picturesque. His manner was at once courteous and cordial and his conversation charming, so that strangers were quickly won, and in friends who knew him well he inspired strong affection and respect.[427] There was an indefinable air of authority about him, as befitted a man of great heart and lofty thoughts.[428] Out of those kindling eyes looked a grand and poetic soul, touched with that divine spark of religious enthusiasm which makes true genius.

[Footnote 426: There are some vexed questions concerning this lady and the connections between the Moniz and Perestrelo families, for which see Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 267-292.]

[Footnote 427: Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 43. He describes Bartholomew as not unlike his brother, but not so tall, less affable in manner, and more stern in disposition, _id._ tom. ii. p. 80.]

[Footnote 428: "Christoval Colon ... persona de gran corazon y altos pensamientos." Mariana, _Historia de Espana_, tom. viii. p. 341.]

[Sidenote: His marriage, and life upon the island of Porto Santo.]

The acquaintance between Columbus and Philippa Moniz de Perestrelo was not long in ripening into affection, for they were married in 1473. As there was a small estate at Porto Santo, Columbus went home thither with his bride to live for a while in quiet and seclusion. Such repose we may believe to have been favourable to meditation, and on that little island, three hundred miles out on the mysterious ocean, we are told that the great scheme of sailing westward to the Indies first took shape in the mind of Columbus.[429] His father-in-law Perestrelo had left a quantity of sailing charts and nautical notes, and these Columbus diligently studied, while ships on their way to and from Guinea every now and then stopped at the island, and one can easily imagine the eager discussions that must have been held over the great commercial problem of the age,--how far south that African coast extended and whether there was any likelihood of ever finding an end to it.

[Footnote 429: Upon that island his eldest son Diego was born. This whole story of the life upon Porto Santo and its relation to the genesis of Columbus's scheme is told very explicitly by Las Casas, who says that it was told to him by Diego Columbus at Barcelona in 1519, when they were waiting upon Charles V., just elected Emperor and about to start for Aachen to be crowned. And yet there are modern critics who are disposed to deny the whole story. (See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 298.) The grounds for doubt are, however, extremely trivial when confronted with Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 54.]

[Sidenote: Alfonso V. asks advice of the great astronomer Toscanelli.]

How long Columbus lived upon Porto Santo is not known, but he seems to have gone from time to time back to Lisbon, and at length to have made his home--or in the case of such a rover we might better say his headquarters--in that city. We come now to a document of supreme importance for our narrative. Paolo del Pozzo dei Toscanelli, born at Florence in 1397, was one of the most famous astronomers and cosmographers of his time, a man to whom it was natural that questions involving the size and shape of the earth should be referred. To him Alfonso V. of Portugal made application, through a gentleman of the royal household, Fernando Martinez, who happened to be an old friend of Toscanelli. What Alfonso wanted to know was whether there could be a shorter oceanic route to the Indies than that which his captains were seeking by following the African coast; if so, he begged that Toscanelli would explain the nature and direction of such a route. The Florentine astronomer replied with the letter presently to be quoted in full, dated June 25, 1474; and along with the letter he sent to the king a sailing chart, exhibiting his conception of the Atlantic ocean, with Europe on the east and Cathay on the west. The date of this letter is eloquent. It was early in 1472 that Santarem and Escobar brought back to Lisbon the news that beyond the Gold Coast the African shore turned southwards and stretched away in that direction beyond the equator. As I have already observed, this was the moment when the question as to the possibility of a shorter route was likely to arise;[430] and this is precisely the question we find the king of Portugal putting to Toscanelli some time before the middle of 1474. Now about this same time, or not long afterwards, we find Columbus himself appealing to Toscanelli. An aged Florentine merchant, Lorenzo Giraldi, then settled in Lisbon, was going back to his native city for a visit, and to him Columbus entrusted a letter for the eminent astronomer. He received the following answer:

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.]

"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.[431] I perceive your great and noble desire to go to the place where the spices grow; wherefore in reply to a letter of yours, I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago [or some time ago] to a friend of mine, a gentleman of the household of the most gracious king of Portugal before the wars of Castile,[432] in reply to another, which by command of His Highness he wrote me concerning that matter: and I send you another sailing chart, similar to the one I sent him, by which your demands will be satisfied. The copy of that letter of mine is as follows:--

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's copy of his former letter to Martinez--enclosed in his first letter to Columbus.]

"'Paul, the physicist, to Fernando Martinez, canon, at Lisbon, greeting.[433] I was glad to hear of your intimacy and favour with your most noble and illustrious king. I have formerly spoken with you about a shorter route to the places of Spices by ocean navigation than that which you are pursuing by Guinea. The most gracious king now desires from me some statement, or rather an exhibition to the eye, so that even slightly educated persons can grasp and comprehend that route. Although I am well aware that this can be proved from the spherical shape of the earth, nevertheless, in order to make the point clearer and to facilitate the enterprise, I have decided to exhibit that route by means of a sailing chart. I therefore send to his majesty a chart made by my own hands,[434] upon which are laid down your coasts, and the islands from which you must begin to shape your course steadily westward, and the places at which you are bound to arrive, and how far from the pole or from the equator you ought to keep away, and through how much space or through how many miles you are to arrive at places most fertile in all sorts of spices and gems; and do not wonder at my calling _west_ the parts where the spices are, whereas they are commonly called _east_, because to persons sailing persistently westward those parts will be found by courses on the under side of the earth. For if [you go] by land and by routes on this upper side, they will always be found in the east. The straight lines drawn lengthwise upon the map indicate distance from east to west, while the transverse lines show distances from south to north. I have drawn upon the map various places upon which you may come, for the better information of the navigators in case of their arriving, whether through accident of wind or what not, at some different place from what they had expected; but partly in order that they may show the inhabitants that they have some knowledge of their country, which is sure to be a pleasant thing. It is said that none but merchants dwell in the islands.[435] For so great there is the number of navigators with their merchandise that in all the rest of the world there are not so many as in one very splendid port called Zaiton.[436] For they say that a hundred great ships of pepper unload in that port every year, besides other ships bringing other spices. That country is very populous and very rich, with a multitude of provinces and kingdoms and cities without number, under one sovereign who is called the Great Khan, which name signifies King of Kings, whose residence is for the most part in the province of Cathay. His predecessors two hundred years ago desired an alliance with Christendom; they sent to the pope and asked for a number of persons learned in the faith, that they might be enlightened; but those who were sent, having encountered obstacles on the way, returned.[437] Even in the time of Eugenius[438] there came one to Eugenius and made a declaration concerning their great goodwill toward Christians, and I had a long talk with him about many things, about the great size of their royal palaces and the remarkable length and breadth of their rivers, and the multitude of cities on the banks of the rivers, such that on one river there are about two hundred cities, with marble bridges very long and wide and everywhere adorned with columns. This country is worth seeking by the Latins, not only because great treasures may be obtained from it,--gold, silver, and all sorts of jewels and spices,--but on account of its learned men, philosophers, and skilled astrologers, and [in order that we may see] with what arts and devices so powerful and splendid a province is governed, and also [how] they conduct their wars. This for some sort of answer to his request, so far as haste and my occupations have allowed, ready in future to make further response to his royal majesty as much as he may wish. Given at Florence 25th June, 1474.'

[Footnote 430: See above, p. 330.]

[Footnote 431: I translate this prologue from the Italian text of the _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii. The original Latin has nowhere been found. A Spanish version of the whole may be found in Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. pp. 92-96. Las Casas, by a mere slip of the pen, calls "Paul, the physicist," _Marco Paulo_, and fifty years later Mariana calls him _Marco Polo, physician_: "por aviso que le dio un cierto Marco Polo medico Florentin," etc. _Historia de Espana_, tom. viii. p. 343. Thus step by step doth error grow.]

[Footnote 432: He means that his friend Martinez has been a member of King Alfonso's household ever since the time before the civil wars that began with the attempted deposition of Henry IV. in 1465 and can hardly be said to have come to an end before the death of that prince in December, 1474. See Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. i. p. 225.]

[Footnote 433: I translate this enclosed letter from the original Latin text, as found, a few years ago, in the handwriting of Columbus upon the fly-leaves of his copy of the _Historia rerum ubique gestarum_ of AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.), published at Venice in 1477, in folio, and now preserved in the Colombina at Seville. This Latin text is given by Harrisse, in his _Fernand Colomb_, pp. 178-180, and also (with more strict regard to the abbreviations of the original) in his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima--Additions_, Paris, 1872, pp. xvi.-xviii. Very likely Columbus had occasion to let the original MS. go out of his hands, and so preserved a copy of it upon the fly-leaves of one of his books. These same fly-leaves contain extracts from Josephus and Saint Augustine. The reader will rightly infer from my translation that the astronomer's Latin was somewhat rugged and lacking in literary grace. Apparently he was anxious to jot down quickly what he had to say, and get back to his work.]

[Footnote 434: A sketch of this most memorable of maps is given opposite. Columbus carried it with him upon his first voyage, and shaped his course in accordance with it. Las Casas afterwards had it in his possession (_Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. pp. 96, 279). It has since been lost, that is to say, it may still be in existence, but nobody knows where. But it has been so well described that the work of restoring its general outlines is not difficult and has several times been done. The sketch here given is taken from Winsor (_Narr. and Crit. Hist._, ii. 103), who takes it from _Das Ausland_, 1867, p. 5. Another restoration may be found in St. Martin's _Atlas_, pl. ix. This map was the source of the western part of Martin Behaim's globe, as given below, p. 422.]

[Footnote 435: All the description that follows is taken by Toscanelli from the book of Marco Polo.]

[Footnote 436: On modern maps usually called Chang-chow, about 100 miles S. W. from Fou-chow.]

[Footnote 437: I have given an account of this mission, above, p. 281.]

[Footnote 438: Eugenius IV., pope from 1431 to 1447.]

[Sidenote: Conclusion of Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.]

"From[439] the city of Lisbon due west there are 26 spaces marked on the map, each of which contains 250 miles, as far as the very great and splendid city of Quinsay.[440] For it is a hundred miles in circumference and has ten bridges, and its name means City of Heaven, and many wonderful things are told about it and about the multitude of its arts and revenues. This space is almost a third part of the whole sphere. That city is in the province of Mangi, or near the province of Cathay in which land is the royal residence. But from the island of Antilia, which you know, to the very splendid island of Cipango[441] there are ten spaces. For that island abounds in gold, pearls, and precious stones, and they cover the temples and palaces with solid gold. So through the unknown parts of the route the stretches of sea to be traversed are not great. Many things might perhaps have been stated more clearly, but one who duly considers what I have said will be able to work out the rest for himself. Farewell, most esteemed one."

[Footnote 439: This paragraph is evidently the conclusion of the letter to Columbus, and not a part of the letter to Martinez, which has just ended with the date. In _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_ the two letters are mixed together.]

[Footnote 440: On modern maps Hang-chow. After 1127 that city was for some time the capital of China, and Marco Polo's name _Quinsay_ represents the Chinese word _King-sse_ or "capital," now generally applied to Peking. Marco Polo calls it the finest and noblest city in the world. It appears that he does not overstate the circumference of its walls at 100 Chinese miles or _li_, equivalent to about 30 English miles. It has greatly diminished since Polo's time, while other cities have grown. Toscanelli was perhaps afraid to repeat Polo's figure as to the number of stone bridges; Polo says there were 12,000 of them, high enough for ships to pass under! We thus see how his Venetian fellow-citizens came to nickname him "Messer Marco Milione." As Colonel Yule says, "I believe we must not bring Marco to book for the literal accuracy of his statements as to the bridges; but all travellers have noticed the number and elegance of the bridges of cut stone in this part of China." _Marco Polo_, vol. ii, p. 144.]

[Footnote 441: For Cipango, or Japan, see Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. ii. pp. 195-207. The venerable astronomer's style of composition is amusing. He sets out to demonstrate to Columbus that the part of the voyage to be accomplished through new and unfamiliar stretches of the Atlantic is not great; but he is so full of the glories of Cathay and Cipango that he keeps reverting to that subject, to the manifest detriment of his exposition. His argument, however, is perfectly clear.]

Some time after the receipt of this letter Columbus wrote again to Toscanelli, apparently sending him either some charts of his own, or some notes, or something bearing upon the subject in hand. No such letter is preserved, but Toscanelli replied as follows:--

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's second letter to Columbus.]

"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.[442] I have received your letters, with the things which you sent me, for which I thank you very much. I regard as noble and grand your project of sailing from east to west according to the indications furnished by the map which I sent you, and which would appear still more plainly upon a sphere. I am much pleased to see that I have been well understood, and that the voyage has become not only possible but certain,[443] fraught with honour as it must be, and inestimable gain, and most lofty fame among all Christian people. You cannot take in all that it means except by actual experience, or without such copious and accurate information as I have had from eminent and learned men who have come from those places to the Roman court, and from merchants who have traded a long time in those parts, persons whose word is to be believed (_persone di grande autorita_). When that voyage shall be accomplished, it will be a voyage to powerful kingdoms, and to cities and provinces most wealthy and noble, abounding in all sorts of things most desired by us; I mean, with all kinds of spices and jewels in great abundance. It will also be advantageous for those kings and princes who are eager to have dealings and make alliances with the Christians of our countries, and to learn from the erudite men of these parts,[444] as well in religion as in all other branches of knowledge. For these reasons, and many others that might be mentioned, I do not wonder that you, who are of great courage, and the whole Portuguese nation, which has always had men distinguished in all such enterprises, are now inflamed with desire[445] to execute the said voyage."

[Footnote 442: The original of this letter is not forthcoming. I translate from _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii.]

[Footnote 443: Yet poor old Toscanelli did not live to see it accomplished; he died in 1482, before Columbus left Portugal.]

[Footnote 444: That is, of Europe, and especially of Italy. Toscanelli again refers to Kublai Khan's message to the pope which--more or less mixed up with the vague notions about Prester John--had evidently left a deep impression upon the European mind. In translating the above sentence I have somewhat retrenched its excessive verbiage without affecting the meaning.]

[Footnote 445: In including the "whole Portuguese nation" as feeling this desire, the good astronomer's enthusiasm again runs away with him.]

[Sidenote: Who first suggested the feasibleness of a westward route? Was it Columbus?]

These letters are intensely interesting, especially the one to Martinez, which reveals the fact that as early as 1474 the notion that a westward route to the Indies would be shorter than the southward route had somehow been suggested to Alfonso V.; and had, moreover, sufficiently arrested his attention to lead him to make inquiries of the most eminent astronomer within reach. Who could have suggested this notion to the king of Portugal? Was it Columbus, the trained mariner and map-maker, who might lately have been pondering the theories of Ptolemy and Mela as affected by the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, and whose connection with the Moniz and Perestrelo families would now doubtless facilitate his access to the court? On some accounts this may seem probable, especially if we bear in mind Columbus's own statement implying that his appeals to the crown dated almost from the beginning of his fourteen years in Portugal.

[Sidenote: Perhaps it was Toscanelli.]

All the circumstances, however, seem to be equally consistent with the hypothesis that the first suggestion of the westward route may have come from Toscanelli himself, through the medium of the canon Martinez, who had for so many years been a member of King Alfonso's household. The words at the beginning of the letter lend some probability to this view: "I have formerly spoken with you about a shorter route to the places of Spices by ocean navigation than that which you are pursuing by Guinea." It was accordingly earlier than 1474--how much earlier does not appear--that such discussions between Toscanelli and Martinez must probably have come to the ears of King Alfonso; and now, very likely owing to the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, that monarch began to think it worth while to seek for further information, "an exhibition to the eye," so that mariners not learned in astronomy like Toscanelli might "grasp and comprehend" the shorter route suggested. It is altogether probable that the Florentine astronomer, who was seventy-seven years old when he wrote this letter, had already for a long time entertained the idea of a westward route; and a man in whom the subject aroused so much enthusiasm could hardly have been reticent about it. It is not likely that Martinez was the only person to whom he descanted[446] upon the glory and riches to be found by sailing "straight to Cathay," and there were many channels through which Columbus might have got some inkling of his views, even before going to Portugal.

[Footnote 446: Luigi Pulci, in his famous romantic poem published in 1481, has a couple of striking stanzas in which Astarotte says to Rinaldo that the time is at hand when Hercules shall blush to see how far beyond his Pillars the ships shall soon go forth to find another hemisphere, for although the earth is as round as a wheel, yet the water at any given point is a plane, and inasmuch as all things tend to a common centre so that by a divine mystery the earth is suspended in equilibrium among the stars, just so there is an antipodal world with cities and castles unknown to men of olden time, and the sun in hastening westwards descends to shine upon those peoples who are awaiting him below the horizon:--

Sappi che questa opinione e vana Perche piu oltre navicar si puote, Pero che l' acqua in ogni parte e piana, Benche la terra abbi forma di ruote; Era piu grossa allor la gente umana, Tal che potrebbe arrossirne le gote Ercule ancor, d' aver posti que' segni, Perche piu oltre passeranno i legni. E puossi andar giu nell' altro emisperio, Pero che al centro ogni cosa reprime: Sicche la terra per divin misterio Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime, E laggiu son citta, castella, e imperio; Ma nol cognobbon quelle gente prime. Vedi che il sol di camminar s' affretta, Dove io dico che laggiu s' aspetta. Pulci, _Morgante Maggiore_, xxv. 229, 230.

This prophecy of western discovery combines with the astronomical knowledge here shown, to remind us that the Florentine Pulci was a fellow-townsman and most likely an acquaintance of Toscanelli.]

[Sidenote: The idea was suggested by the globular form of the earth;]

[Sidenote: and was as old as Aristotle.]

[Sidenote: Opinions of ancient writers.]

However this may have been, the letter clearly proves that at that most interesting period, in or about 1474, Columbus was already meditating upon the westward route.[447] Whether he owed the idea to Toscanelli, or not, is a question of no great importance so far as concerns his own originality; for the idea was already in the air. The originality of Columbus did not consist in his conceiving the possibility of reaching the shores of Cathay by sailing west, but in his conceiving it in such distinct and practical shape as to be ready to make the adventure in his own person. As a matter of theory the possibility of such a voyage could not fail to be suggested by the globular form of the earth; and ever since the days of Aristotle that had been generally admitted by men learned in physical science. Aristotle proved, from the different altitudes of the pole-star in different places, that the earth must necessarily be a globe. Moreover, says Aristotle, "some stars are seen in Egypt or at Cyprus, but are not seen in the countries to the north of these; and the stars that in the north are visible while they make a complete circuit, there undergo a setting. So that from this it is manifest, not only that the form of the earth is round, but also that it is part of not a very large sphere; for otherwise the difference would not be so obvious to persons making so small a change of place. Wherefore we may judge that _those persons who connect the region in the neighbourhood of the Pillars of Hercules with that towards India, and who assert that in this way the sea is_ ONE, do not assert things very improbable."[448] It thus appears that more than eighteen centuries before Columbus took counsel of Toscanelli, "those persons" to whom Aristotle alludes were discussing, as a matter of theory, this same subject. Eratosthenes held that it would be easy enough to sail from Spain to India on the same parallel were it not for the vast extent of the Atlantic ocean.[449] On the other hand, Seneca maintained that the distance was probably not so very great, and that with favouring winds a ship might make the voyage in a few days.[450] In one of his tragedies Seneca has a striking passage[451] which has been repeatedly quoted as referring to the discovery of America, and is certainly one of the most notable instances of prophecy on record. There will come a time, he says, in the later years, when Ocean shall loosen the bonds by which we have been confined, when an immense land shall lie revealed, and Tethys shall disclose new worlds, and Thule will no longer be the most remote of countries. In Strabo there is a passage, less commonly noticed, which hits the truth--as we know it to-day--even more closely. Having argued that the total length of the Inhabited World is only about a third part of the circumference of the earth in the temperate zone, he suggests it as possible, or even probable, that within this space there may be another Inhabited World, or even more than one; but such places would be inhabited by different races of men, with whom the geographer, whose task it is to describe the _known_ world, has no concern.[452] Nothing could better illustrate the philosophical character of Strabo's mind. In such speculations, so far as his means of verification went, he was situated somewhat as we are to-day with regard to the probable inhabitants of Venus or Mars.

[Footnote 447: It was formerly assumed, without hesitation, that the letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was written and sent in 1474. The reader will observe, however, that while the enclosed letter to Martinez is dated June 25, 1474, the letter to Columbus, in which it was enclosed, has no date. But according to the text as given in _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii., this would make no difference, for the letter to Columbus was sent only a few days later than the original letter to Martinez: "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago (_alquanti giorni fa_) to a friend of mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. This friend, Martinez, had evidently been a gentleman of the household of Alfonso V. since before the civil wars of Castile, which in 1474 had been going on intermittently for nine years under the feeble Henry IV., who did not die until December 12, 1474. Toscanelli apparently means to say "a friend of mine who has for ten years or more been a gentleman of the royal household," etc.; only instead of mentioning the number of years, he alludes less precisely (as most people, and perhaps especially old people, are apt to do) to the most notable, mentionable, and glaring fact in the history of the Peninsula for that decade,--namely, the civil wars of Castile. As if an American writer in 1864 had said, "a friend of mine, who has been secretary to A. B. since before the war," instead of saying "for four years or more." This is the only reasonable interpretation of the phrase as it stands above, and it was long ago suggested by Humboldt (_Examen critique_, tom. i. p. 225). Italian and Spanish writers of that day, however, were lavish with their commas and sprinkled them in pretty much at haphazard. In this case Ferdinand's translator, Ulloa, sprinkled in one comma too many, and it fell just in front of the clause "before the wars of Castile;" so that Toscanelli's sentence was made to read as follows: "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago to a friend of mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal, before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. Now this unhappy comma, coming after the word "Portugal," has caused ream after ream of good paper to be inked up in discussion, for it has led some critics to understand the sentence as follows: "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago, before the wars of Castile, to a friend of mine," etc. This reading brought things to a pretty pass. Evidently a letter dated June 25, 1474, could not have been written before the civil wars of Castile, which began in 1465. It was therefore assumed that the phrase must refer to the "War of Succession" between Castile and Portugal (in some ways an outgrowth from the civil wars of Castile) which began in May, 1475, and ended in September, 1479. M. d'Avezac thinks that the letter to Columbus must have been written after the latter date, or more than five years later than the enclosed letter. M. Harrisse is somewhat less exacting, and is willing to admit that it may have been written at any time after this war had fairly begun,--say in the summer of 1475, not more than a year or so later than the enclosed letter. Still he is disposed on some accounts to put the date as late as 1482. The phrase _alquanti giorni fa_ will not allow either of these interpretations. It means "a few days ago," and cannot possibly mean a year ago, still less five years ago. The Spanish retranslator from Ulloa renders it exactly _algunos dias ha_ (Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 7), and Humboldt (_loc. cit._) has it _il y a quelques jours_. If we could be sure that the expression is a correct rendering of the lost Latin original, we might feel sure that the letter to Columbus must have been written as early as the beginning of August, 1474. But now the great work of Las Casas, after lying in manuscript for 314 years, has at length been published in 1875. Las Casas gives a Spanish version of the Toscanelli letters (_Historia de las Indias_, tom. i. pp. 92-97), which is unquestionably older than Ulloa's Italian version, though perhaps not necessarily more accurate. The phrase in Las Casas is not _algunos dias ha_, but _ha dias_, i. e. not "a few days ago," but "some time ago." Just which expression Toscanelli used cannot be determined unless somebody is fortunate enough to discover the lost Latin original. The phrase in Las Casas admits much more latitude of meaning than the other. I should suppose that _ha dias_ might refer to an event a year or two old, which would admit of the interpretation considered admissible by M. Harrisse. I should hardly suppose that it could refer to an event five or six years old; if Toscanelli had been referring in 1479 or 1480 to a letter written in 1474, his phrase would probably have appeared in Spanish as _algunos anos ha_, i. e. "a few years ago," not as _ha dias_. M. d'Avezac's hypothesis seems to me not only inconsistent with the phrase _ha dias_, but otherwise improbable. The frightful anarchy in Castile, which began in 1465 with the attempt to depose Henry IV. and alter the succession, was in great measure a series of ravaging campaigns and raids, now more general, now more local, and can hardly be said to have come to an end before Henry's death in 1474. The war which began with the invasion of Castile by Alfonso V. of Portugal, in May, 1475, was simply a later phase of the same series of conflicts, growing out of disputed claims to the crown and rivalries among great barons, in many respects similar to the contemporary anarchy in England called the Wars of the Roses. It is not likely that Toscanelli, writing at any time between 1475 and 1480, and speaking of the "wars of Castile" in the plural, could have had 1474 in his mind as a date previous to those wars; to his mind it would have rightly appeared as a date in the midst of them. In any case, therefore, his reference must be to a time before 1465, and Humboldt's interpretation is in all probability correct. The letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was probably written within a year or two after June 25, 1474.

On account of the vast importance of the Toscanelli letters, and because the early texts are found in books which the reader is not likely to have at hand, I have given them entire in the Appendix at the end of this work.]

[Footnote 448: [Greek: Hoste ta hyper tes kephales astra megalen echein ten metabolen, kai me tauta phainesthai pros arkton te kai mesembrian metabainousin; enioi gar en Aigypto men asteres horontai, kai peri Kypron; en tois pros arkton de chorious ouch horontai kai ta dia pantos en tois pros arkton phainomena ton astron, en ekeinois tois topois poieitai dysin. Host' ou monon ek touton delon peripheres on to schema tes ges, alla kai sphairas ou megales. Ou gar an houto tachy epidelon epoiei methistemenois houto brachy. Dio tous hypolambanontas synaptein ton peri tas Herakleious stelas topon to peri ten Indiken, kai touton ton tropon einai ten Thalattan mian, me lian hypolambanein apista dokein.] Aristotle, _De Coelo_, ii. 14. He goes on to say that "those persons" allege the existence of elephants alike in Mauretania and in India in proof of their theory.]

[Footnote 449: [Greek: Host' ei me to megethos tou Atlantikou pelagous ekolye, kan plein hemas ek tes Iberias eis ten Indiken dia tou autou parallelou.] Strabo, i. 4, Sec. 6.]

[Footnote 450: "Quantum enim est, quod ab ultimis litoribus Hispaniae usque ad Indos jacet? Paucissimorum dierum spatium, si navem suus ventus implevit." Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._, i. praef. Sec. 11.]

[Footnote 451:

Venient annis saecula seris, Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat orbes, Nec sit terris ultima Thule. Seneca, _Medea_, 376.

In the copy of Seneca's tragedies, published at Venice in 1510, bought at Valladolid by Ferdinand Columbus in March, 1518, for 4 reals (plus 2 reals for binding), and now to be seen at the Biblioteca Colombina, there is a marginal note attached to these verses: "haec prophetia expleta [=e] per patr[=e] meuz[=z] cristofor[=u] col[=o] almir[=a]t[=e] anno 1492."]

[Footnote 452: [Greek: Kaloumen gar oikoumenen hen oikoumen kai gnorizomen; endeketai de kai en te aute eukrato zone kai dyo oikoumenas einai e kai pleious.] Strabo, i. 4, Sec. 6; [Greek: kai gar ei houtos echei, ouch hypo touton ge oikeitai ton par' hemin; all' ekeinen allen oikoumenen theteon. hoper esti pithanon. Hemin de ta en aute tauta lekteon.] Id. ii. 5, Sec. 13. This has always seemed to me one of the most remarkable anticipations of modern truth in all ancient literature. Mr. Bunbury thinks it may have suggested the famous verses of Seneca just quoted. _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. ii. p. 224.]

[Sidenote: Opinions of Christian writers.]

[Sidenote: Roger Bacon.]

[Sidenote: The "Imago Mundi" of Petrus Alliacus.]

Early in the Christian era we are told by an eminent Greek astronomer that the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was accepted by all competent persons except the Epicureans.[453] Among the Fathers of the Church there was some difference of opinion; while in general they denied the existence of human beings beyond the limits of their Oecumene, or Inhabited World, this denial did not necessarily involve disbelief in the globular figure of the earth.[454] The views of the great mass of people, and of the more ignorant of the clergy, down to the time of Columbus, were probably well represented in the book of Cosmas Indicopleustes already cited.[455] Nevertheless among the more enlightened clergy the views of the ancient astronomers were never quite forgotten, and in the great revival of intellectual life in the thirteenth century the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was again brought prominently into the foreground. We find Dante basing upon it the cosmical theory elaborated in his immortal poem.[456] In 1267 Roger Bacon--stimulated, no doubt, by the reports of the ocean east of Cathay--collected passages from ancient writers to prove that the distance from Spain to the eastern shores of Asia could not be very great. Bacon's argument and citations were copied in an extremely curious book, the "Imago Mundi," published in 1410 by the Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, better known by the Latinized form of his name as Petrus Alliacus. This treatise, which throughout the fifteenth century enjoyed a great reputation, was a favourite book with Columbus, and his copy of it, covered with marginal annotations in his own handwriting, is still preserved among the priceless treasures of the Biblioteca Colombina.[457] He found in it strong confirmation of his views, and it is not impossible that the reading of it may have first put such ideas into his head. Such a point, however, can hardly be determined. As I have already observed, these ideas were in the air. What Columbus did was not to originate them, but to incarnate them in facts and breathe into them the breath of life. It was one thing to suggest, as a theoretical possibility, that Cathay might be reached by sailing westward; and it was quite another thing to prove that the enterprise was feasible with the ships and instruments then at command.

[Footnote 453: [Greek: Hoi de hemeteroi] [i. e. the Stoics] [Greek: kai apo mathematon pantes, kai hoi pleious ton apo tou Sokratikou didaskaleiou sphairikon einai to schema tes ges diebebaiosanto.] Cleomedes, i. 8; cf. Lucretius, _De Rerum Nat._, i. 1052-1082; Stobaeus, _Eclog._ i. 19; Plutarch, _De facie in Orbe Luna_, cap. vii.]

[Footnote 454: See Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, xvi. 9; Lactantius, _Inst. Div._, iii. 23; Jerome, _Comm. in Ezechiel_, i. 6; Whewell's _History of the Inductive Sciences_, vol i. p. 196.]

[Footnote 455: See above, p. 266.]

[Footnote 456: For an account of the cosmography of the Divine Comedy, illustrated with interesting diagrams, see Artaud de Montor, _Histoire de Dante Alighieri_, Paris, 1841.]

[Footnote 457: It was first printed without indication of place or date, but probably the place was Paris and the date somewhere from 1483 to 1490. Manuscript copies were very common, and Columbus probably knew the book long before that time. There is a good account of it in Humboldt's _Examen critique_, tom. i. pp. 61-76, 96-108. Humboldt thinks that such knowledge as Columbus had of the opinions of ancient writers was chiefly if not wholly obtained from Alliacus. It is doubtful if Columbus had any direct acquaintance with the works of Roger Bacon, but he knew the _Liber Cosmographicus_ of Albertus Magnus and the _Speculum Naturale_ of Vincent de Beauvais (both about 1250), and drew encouragement from them. He also knew the book of Mandeville, first printed in French at Lyons in 1480, and a Latin translation of Marco Polo, published in 1485, a copy of which, with marginal MS. notes, is now in the Colombina.]

[Sidenote: Ancient estimates of the size of the globe and the length of the Oecumene.]

The principal consideration, of course, was the distance to be traversed; and here Columbus was helped by an error which he shared with many geographers of his day. He somewhat underestimated the size of the earth, and at the same time greatly overestimated the length of Asia. The first astronomer to calculate, by scientific methods, the circumference of our planet at the equator was Eratosthenes (B. C. 276-196), and he came--all things considered--fairly near the truth; he made it 25,200 geographical miles (of ten stadia), or about one seventh too great. The true figure is 21,600 geographical miles, equivalent to 24,899 English statute miles.[458] Curiously enough, Posidonius, in revising this calculation a century later, reduced the figure to 18,000 miles, or about one seventh too small. The circumference in the latitude of Gibraltar he estimated at 14,000 miles; the length of the Oecumene, or Inhabited World, he called 7,000; the distance across the Atlantic from the Spanish strand to the eastern shores of Asia was the other 7,000. The error of Posidonius was partially rectified by Ptolemy, who made the equatorial circumference 20,400 geographical miles, and the length of a degree 56.6 miles.[459] This estimate, in which the error was less than one sixteenth, prevailed until modern times. Ptolemy also supposed the Inhabited World to extend over about half the circumference of the temperate zone, but the other half he imagined as consisting largely of bad lands, quagmires, and land-locked seas, instead of a vast and open ocean.[460]

[Footnote 458: See Herschel's _Outlines of Astronomy_, p. 140. For an account of the method employed by Eratosthenes, see Delambre, _Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne_, tom. i. pp. 86-91; Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 198.]

[Footnote 459: See Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. ii. pp. 95-97, 546-579; Mueller and Donaldson, _History of Greek Literature_, vol. iii. p. 268.]

[Footnote 460: Strabo, in arguing against this theory of bad lands, etc., as obstacles to ocean navigation--a theory which seems to be at least as old as Hipparchus--has a passage which finely expresses the loneliness of the sea:--[Greek: Hoite gar periplein epicheiresantes, eita anastrepsantes, ouch hypo epeirou tinos antipiptouses kai kolyouses, ton epekeina ploun anakrousthenai phasin, alla hypo aporias kai eremias, ouden hetton tes thalattes echouses ton poron] (lib. i. cap. i. Sec. 8). When one thinks of this [Greek: aporia] and [Greek: eremia], one fancies oneself far out on the Atlantic, alone in an open boat on a cloudy night, bewildered and hopeless.]

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's calculation of the size of the earth,]

[Sidenote: and of the position of Cipango.]

Ptolemy's opinion as to the length of the Inhabited World was considerably modified in the minds of those writers who toward the end of the Middle Ages had been strongly impressed by the book of Marco Polo. Among these persons was Toscanelli. This excellent astronomer calculated the earth's equatorial circumference at almost exactly the true figure; his error was less than 124 English miles in excess. The circumference in the latitude of Lisbon he made 26 x 250 x 3 = 19,500 miles.[461] Two thirds of this figure, or 13,000 miles, he allowed for the length of the Oecumene, from Lisbon eastward to Quinsay (i. e. Hang-chow), leaving 6,500 for the westward voyage from Lisbon to Quinsay. Thus Toscanelli elongated Asia by nearly the whole width of the Pacific ocean. His Quinsay would come about 130 deg. W., a few hundred miles west of the mouth of the Columbia river. Zaiton (i. e. Chang-chow), the easternmost city in Toscanelli's China, would come not far from the tip end of Lower California. Thus the eastern coast of Cipango, about a thousand miles east from Zaiton, would fall in the Gulf of Mexico somewhere near the ninety-third meridian, and that island, being over a thousand miles in length north and south, would fill up the space between the parallel of New Orleans and that of the city of Guatemala. The westward voyage from the Canaries to Cipango, according to Toscanelli, would be rather more than 3,250 miles, but at a third of the distance out he placed the imaginary island of "Antilia," with which he seems to have supposed Portuguese sailors to be familiar.[462] "So through the unknown parts of the route," said the venerable astronomer, "the stretches of sea to be traversed are not great,"--not much more than 2,000 English miles, not so long as the voyage from Lisbon to the Guinea coast.

[Sidenote: Columbus's opinion of the size of the globe, the length of the Oecumene, and the width of the Atlantic ocean.]

[Sidenote: The fourth book of Esdras.]

While Columbus attached great importance to these calculations and carried Toscanelli's map with him upon his first voyage, he improved somewhat upon the estimates of distance, and thus made his case still more hopeful. Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial girth,[463] which would make the circumference in the latitude of the Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of sundry passages from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed from Roger Bacon), concluded that six sevenths of this circumference must be occupied by the Oecumene, including Cipango, so that in order to reach that wonderful island he would only have to sail over one seventh, or not much more than 2,500 miles from the Canaries.[464] An authority upon which he placed great reliance in this connection was the fourth book of Esdras, which although not a canonical part of the Bible was approved by holy men, and which expressly asserted that six parts of the earth (i. e. of the length of the Oecumene, or north temperate zone) are inhabited and only the seventh part covered with water. From the general habit of Columbus's mind it may be inferred that it was chiefly upon this scriptural authority that he based his confident expectation of finding land soon after accomplishing seven hundred leagues from the Canaries. Was it not as good as written in the Bible that land was to be found there?

[Footnote 461: See above, p. 360. Toscanelli's mile was nearly equivalent to the English statute mile. See the very important note in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 51.]

[Footnote 462: The reader will also notice upon Toscanelli's map the islands of Brazil and St. Brandan. For an account of all these fabulous islands see Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 46-51. The name of "Antilia" survives in the name "Antilles," applied since about 1502 to the West India islands. All the islands west of Toscanelli's ninetieth meridian belong in the Pacific. He drew them from his understanding of the descriptions of Marco Polo, Friar Odoric, and other travellers. These were the islands supposed, rightly, though vaguely, to abound in spices.]

[Footnote 463: Columbus was confirmed in this opinion by the book of the Arabian astronomer Alfragan, written about A. D. 950, a Latin translation of which appeared in 1447. There is a concise summary of it in Delambre, _Histoire de l'astronomie du Moyen Age_, pp. 63-73. Columbus proceeded throughout on the assumption that the length of a degree at the equator is 56.6 geographical miles, instead of the correct figure 60. This would oblige him to reduce all Toscanelli's figures by about six per cent., to begin with. Upon this point we have the highest authority, that of Columbus himself, in an autograph marginal note in his copy of the _Imago Mundi_, where he expresses himself most explicitly: "Nota quod sepius navigando ex Ulixbona ad Austrum in Guineam, notavi cum diligentia viam, ut solitum naucleris et malineriis, et preteria accepi altitudinem solis cum quadrante et aliis instrumentis plures vices, et inveni concordare cum Alfragano, videlicet respondere quemlibet gradum milliariis 56-2/3. Quare ad hanc mensuram fidem adhibendam. Tunc igitur possumus dicere quod circuitus Terrae sub arae equinoctiali est 20,400 milliariorum. Similiter que id invenit magister Josephus phisicus et astrologus et alii plures missi specialiter ad hoc per serenissimum regem Portugaliae," etc.; _anglice_, "Observe that in sailing often from Lisbon southward to Guinea, I carefully marked the course, according to the custom of skippers and mariners, and moreover I took the sun's altitude several times with a quadrant and other instruments, and in agreement with Alfragan I found that each degree [i. e. of longitude, measured on a great circle] answers to 56-2/3 miles. So that one may rely upon this measure. We may therefore say that the equatorial circumference of the earth is 20,400 miles. A similar result was obtained by Master Joseph, the physicist [or, perhaps, physician] and astronomer, and several others sent for this special purpose by the most gracious king of Portugal."--Master Joseph was physician to John II. of Portugal, and was associated with Martin Behaim in the invention of an improved astrolabe which greatly facilitated ocean navigation.--The exact agreement with Ptolemy's figures shows that by a mile Columbus meant a geographical mile, equivalent to ten Greek stadia.]

[Footnote 464: One seventh of 18,000 is 2,571 geographical miles, equivalent to 2,963 English miles. The actual length of Columbus's first voyage, from last sight of land in the Canaries to first sight of land in the Bahamas, was according to his own dead reckoning about 3,230 geographical miles. See his journal in Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. pp. 6-20.

I give here in parallel columns the passage from Bacon and the one from Alliacus upon which Columbus placed so much reliance. In the Middle Ages there was a generous tolerance of much that we have since learned to stigmatize as plagiarism.

From Roger Bacon, _Opus From Petrus Alliacus, _De Majus_ (A. D. 1267), London, imagine Mundi_ (A. D. 1410), 1733, ed. Jebb, p. 183:--"Sed Paris, cir. 1490, cap. viii. fol. Aristoteles vult in fine secundi 13 b:--"Summus Aristoteles Coeli et Mundi quod plus [terrae] dicit quod mare parvum est inter habitetur quam quarta pars. Et finem Hispaniae a parte occidentis Averroes hoc confirmat. Dicit et inter principium Indiae Aristoteles quod mare parvum a parte orientis, et vult quod est inter finem Hispaniae a parte plus habitetur quam quarta occidentis et inter principium pars, et Averroes hoc confirmat. Indiae a parte orientis. Et Seneca, Insuper Seneca libro libro quinto Naturalium, quinto Naturalium, dicit quod dicit quod mare hoc est navigabile mare est navigabile in paucis in paucissimis diebus si diebus si ventus sit conveniens. ventus sit conveniens. Et Plinius Et Plinius docet in Naturalibus, docet in Naturalibus quod libro secundo, quod navigatum navigatum est a sinu Arabico est a sinu Arabico usque ad usque ad Gades: unde refert Gades Herculis non multum quendam fugisse a rego suo magno tempore, prae timore et intravit sinum Maris Rubri ... qui circiter spatium navigationis annualis distat a Mari Indico: ... ex quo patet principium Indiae in oriente multum a nobis distare et ab Hispania, postquam tantum distat a principio Arabiae versus Indiam. A fine Hispaniae unde concludunt sub terra tam parvum mare est aliqui, quod mare non est quod non potest cooperire tres tantum quod possit cooperire quartas terrae. Et hoc per tres quartas terrae. Accedit ad auctoritatem alterius considerationis hoc auctoritas Esdrae libro suo probatur. Nam Esdras quarto, dicentis quod sex partes dicit quarto libro, quod sex partes terrae sunt habitatae et terrae sunt habitatae et septima septima est cooperta aquis. Et est cooperta aquis, ne aliquis impediat hanc auctoritatem, dicens quod liber ille est apocryphus et ignotae auctoritatis, dicendum est quod cujus libri auctoritatem sancti sancti habuerunt illum librum habuerunt in reverentia." in usu et confirmant veritates sacras per illum librum."

Columbus must either have carried the book of Alliacus with him on his voyages, or else have read his favourite passages until he knew them by heart, as may be seen from the following passage of a letter, written from Hispaniola in 1498 to Ferdinand and Isabella (Navarrete, tom i. p. 261):--"El Aristotel dice que este mundo es pequeno y es el agua muy poca, y que facilmente se puede pasar de Espana a las Indias, y esto confirma el Avenryz [Averroes], y le alega el cardenal Pedro de Aliaco, autorizando este decir y aquel de Seneca, el qual conforma con estos.... A esto trac una autoridad de Esdras del tercero libro suyo, adonde dice que de siete partes del mundo las seis son descubiertas y la una es cubierta de agua, la cual autoridad es aprobada por Santos, los cuales dan autoridad al 3^o e 4^o libro de Esdras, ansi come es S. Agustin e S. Ambrosio en su _exameron_," etc.--"Singular period," exclaims Humboldt, "when a mixture of testimonies from Aristotle and Averroes, Esdras and Seneca, on the small extent of the ocean compared with the magnitude of continental land, afforded to monarchs guarantees for the safety and expediency of costly enterprises!" _Cosmos_, tr. Sabine, vol. ii. p. 250. The passages cited in this note may be found in Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. i. pp. 65-69. Another interesting passage from _Imago Mundi_, cap. xv., is quoted on p. 78 of the same work.]

[Sidenote: Fortunate mixture of truth and error.]

[Sidenote: The whole point and purport of Columbus's scheme.]

Thus did Columbus arrive at his decisive conclusion, estimating the distance across the Sea of Darkness to Japan at something less than the figure which actually expresses the distance to the West Indies. Many a hopeful enterprise has been ruined by errors in figuring, but this wrong calculation was certainly a great help to Columbus. When we consider how difficult he found it to obtain men and ships for a voyage supposed to be not more than 2,500 miles in this new and untried direction, we must admit that his chances would have been poor indeed if he had proposed to sail westward on the Sea of Darkness for nearly 12,000 miles, the real distance from the Canaries to Japan. It was a case where the littleness of the knowledge was not a dangerous but a helpful thing. If instead of the somewhat faulty astronomy of Ptolemy and the very hazy notions prevalent about "the Indies," the correct astronomy of Toscanelli had prevailed and had been joined to an accurate knowledge of eastern Asia, Columbus would surely never have conceived his great scheme, and the discovery of America would probably have waited to be made by accident.[465] The whole point of his scheme lay in its promise of a shorter route to the Indies than that which the Portuguese were seeking by way of Guinea. Unless it was probable that it could furnish such a shorter route, there was no reason for such an extraordinary enterprise.

[Footnote 465: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Columbus's speculations on climate.]

[Sidenote: His voyage to Guinea.]

[Sidenote: His voyage into the Arctic ocean, 1477.]

The years between 1474 and 1480 were not favourable for new maritime ventures on the part of the Portuguese government. The war with Castile absorbed the energies of Alfonso V. as well as his money, and he was badly beaten into the bargain. About this time Columbus was writing a treatise on "the five habitable zones," intended to refute the old notions about regions so fiery or so frozen as to be inaccessible to man. As this book is lost we know little or nothing of its views and speculations, but it appears that in writing it Columbus utilized sundry observations made by himself in long voyages into the torrid and arctic zones. He spent some time at the fortress of San Jorge de la Mina, on the Gold Coast, and made a study of that equinoctial climate.[466] This could not have been earlier than 1482, the year in which the fortress was built. Five years before this he seems to have gone far in the opposite direction. In a fragment of a letter or diary, preserved by his son and by Las Casas, he says:--"In the month of February, 1477, I sailed a hundred leagues beyond the island of Thule, [to?] an island of which the south part is in latitude 73 deg., not 63 deg., as some say; and it [i. e. Thule] does not lie within Ptolemy's western boundary, but much farther west. And to this island, which is as big as England, the English go with their wares, especially from Bristol. When I was there the sea was not frozen. In some places the tide rose and fell twenty-six fathoms. It is true that the Thule mentioned by Ptolemy lies where he says it does, and this by the moderns is called Frislanda."[467]

[Footnote 466: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.; Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 49.]

[Footnote 467: "Io navigai l' anno M CCCC LXXVII nel mese di Febraio oltra Tile isola cento leghe, la cui parte Australe e lontana dall' Equinottiale settantatre gradi, e non sessantatre, come alcuni vogliono; ne giace dentro della linea, che include l' Occidente di Tolomeo, ma e molto piu Occidentale. Et a questa isola, che e tanto grande, come l'Inghilterra, vanno gl' Inglesi con le loro mercatantie, specialmente quelli di Bristol. Et al tempo che io vi andai, non era congelato il mare, quantunque vi fossero si grosse maree, che in alcuni luoghi ascendeva ventisei braccia, e discendeva altretanti in altezza. E bene il vero, che Tile, quella, di cui Tolomeo fa mentione, giace dove egli dice; & questa da' moderni e chiamata Frislanda." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv. In the original edition of 1571, there are no quotation-marks; and in some modern editions, where these are supplied, the quotation is wrongly made to end just before the last sentence, so as to make it appear like a gloss of Ferdinand's. This is, however, impossible. Ferdinand died in 1539, and the Zeno narrative of Frislanda was not published till 1558, so that the only source from which that name could have come into his book was his father's document. The genuineness of the passage is proved by its recurrence, almost word for word, in Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 48.]

[Sidenote: He may have reached Jan Mayen island,]

[Sidenote: and stopped at Iceland.]

Taken as it stands this passage is so bewildering that we can hardly suppose it to have come in just this shape from the pen of Columbus. It looks as if it had been abridged from some diary of his by some person unfamiliar with the Arctic seas; and I have ventured to insert in brackets a little preposition which may perhaps help to straighten out the meaning. By Thule Columbus doubtless means Iceland, which lies between latitudes 64 deg. and 67 deg., and it looks as if he meant to say that he ran beyond it as far as the little island, just a hundred leagues from Iceland and in latitude 71 deg., since discovered by Jan Mayen in 1611. The rest of the paragraph is more intelligible. It is true that Iceland lies thirty degrees farther west than Ptolemy placed Thule; and that for a century before the discovery of the Newfoundland fisheries the English did much fishing in the waters about Iceland, and carried wares thither, especially from Bristol.[468] There can be no doubt that by Frislanda Columbus means the Faeroe islands,[469] which do lie in the latitude though not in the longitude mentioned by Ptolemy. As for the voyage into the Jan Mayen waters in February, it would be dangerous but by no means impossible.[470] In another letter Columbus mentions visiting England, apparently in connection with this voyage,[471] and it is highly probable that he went in an English ship from Bristol.

[Footnote 468: See Thorold Rogers, _The Economic Interpretation of History_, London, 1888, pp. 103, 319.]

[Footnote 469: See above, p. 236.]

[Footnote 470: See the graphic description of a voyage in these waters in March, 1882, in Nansen's _The First Crossing of Greenland_, London, 1890, vol. i. pp. 149-152.]

[Footnote 471: "E vidi tutto il Levante, e tutto il Ponente, che si dice per andare verso il Settentrione, cioe l'Inghilterra, e ho camminato per la Guinea." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]

[Sidenote: The hypothesis that Columbus "must have" heard and understood the story of the Vinland voyages.]

The object of Columbus in making these long voyages to the equator and into the polar circle was, as he tells us, to gather observations upon climate. From the circumstance of his having made a stop at some point in Iceland, it was conjectured by Finn Magnusson that Columbus might have learned something about Vinland which served to guide him to his own enterprise or to encourage him in it. Starting from this suggestion, it has been argued[472] that Columbus must have read the geographical appendix to Adam of Bremen's "Ecclesiastical History;" that he must have understood, as we now do, the reference therein made to Vinland; that he made his voyage to Iceland in order to obtain further information; that he there not only heard about Vinland and other localities mentioned in the sagas, but also mentally placed them about where they were placed in 1837 by Professor Rafn; that, among other things, he thus obtained a correct knowledge of the width of the Atlantic ocean in latitude 28 deg. N.; and that during fifteen subsequent years of weary endeavour to obtain ships and men for his westward voyage, he sedulously refrained from using the most convincing argument at his command,--namely that land of continental dimensions had actually been found (though by a very different route) in the direction which he indicated.

[Footnote 472: See Anderson's _America not discovered by Columbus_, Chicago, 1874; 3d ed. enlarged, Chicago, 1883.]

[Sidenote: That hypothesis has no evidence in its favour.]

I have already given an explanation of the process by which Columbus arrived at the firm belief that by sailing not more than about 2,500 geographical miles due west from the Canaries he should reach the coast of Japan. Every step of that explanation is sustained by documentary evidence, and as his belief is thus completely accounted for, the hypothesis that he may have based it upon information obtained in Iceland is, to say the least, superfluous. We do not need it in order to explain his actions, and accordingly his actions do not afford a presumption in favour of it. There is otherwise no reason, of course, for refusing to admit that he might have obtained information in Iceland, were there any evidence that he did. But not a scrap of such evidence has ever been produced. Every step in the Scandinavian hypothesis is a pure assumption.

[Sidenote: It is not probable that Columbus knew of Adam of Bremen's allusion to Vinland,]

[Sidenote: or that he would have understood it if he had read it.]

First it is assumed that Columbus _must_ have read the appendix to Adam of Bremen's history. But really, while it is not impossible that he should have read that document, it is, on the whole, improbable. The appendix was first printed in Lindenbrog's edition, published at Leyden, in 1595. The eminent Norwegian historian, Gustav Storm, finds that in the sixteenth century just six MSS. of Adam's works can now be traced. Of these, two were preserved in Denmark, two in Hamburg, one had _perhaps_ already wandered southward to Leyden, and one as far as Vienna. Dr. Storm, therefore, feels sure that Columbus never saw Adam's mention of Vinland, and pithily adds that "had Columbus known it, it would not have been able to show him the way to the West Indies, but perhaps to the North Pole."[473] From the account of this mention and its context, which I have already given,[474] it is in the highest degree improbable that if Columbus had read the passage he could have understood it as bearing upon his own problem. There is, therefore, no ground for the assumption that Columbus went to Iceland in order to make inquiries about Vinland.

[Footnote 473: "Det er derfor sikkert, at Columbus ikke, som nogle har formodet, kan have kjendt Adam af Bremens Beretning on Vinland; vi kan gjerne tilfoie, at havde Columbus kjendt den, vilde den ikke have kunnet vise ham Vei til Vesten (Indien), men kanske til Nordpolen." _Aarboger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed_, 1887, ii. 2, p. 301.]

[Footnote 474: See above, p. 210.]

[Sidenote: It is doubtful if Columbus would have stumbled upon the story in Iceland.]

It may be argued that even if he did not go for such a purpose, nevertheless when once there he could hardly have failed incidentally to get the information. This, however, is not at all clear. Observe that our sole authority for the journey to Iceland is the passage above quoted at second-hand from Columbus himself; and there is nothing in it to show whether he staid a few hours or several weeks ashore, or met with any one likely to be possessed of the knowledge in question. The absence of any reference to Vinland in the Zeno narrative is an indication that the memory of it had faded away before 1400, and it was not distinctly and generally revived until the time of Torfaeus in 1705.[475]

[Footnote 475: In 1689 the Swedish writer, Ole Rudbeck, could not understand Adam of Bremen's allusion to Vinland. The passage is instructive. Rudbeck declares that in speaking of a wine-growing country near to the Arctic ocean, Adam must have been misled by some poetical or figurative phrase; he was deceived either by his trust in the Danes, or by his own credulity, for he manifestly refers to _Finland_, for which the form _Vinland_ does not once occur in Sturleson, etc.:--"Ne tamen poetis solis hoc loquendi genus in suis regionum laudationibus familiare fuisse quis existimet, sacras adeat literas quae Palaestinae faecunditatem appellatione _fluentorum lactis & mellis_ designant. Tale aliquid, sine omne dubio, Adamo Bremensi quondam persuaserat insulam esse in ultimo septentrione sitam, mari glaciali vicinam, vini feracem, & ea propter fide tamen Danorum, _Vinlandiam_ dictam prout ipse ... fateri non dubitat. Sed deceptum eum hae sive Danorum fide, sive credulitate sua planum facit affine isti vocabulum _Finlandiae_ provinciae ad Regnum nostrum pertinentis, pro quo apud Snorronem & in Hist. Regum non semel occurrit _Vinlandiae_ nomen, cujus promontorium ad ultimum septentrionem & usque ad mare glaciale sese extendit." Rudbeck, _Atland eller Manheim_, Upsala, cir. 1689, p. 291.]

[Sidenote: If he had heard it, he would probably have classed it with such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle.]

But to hear about Vinland was one thing, to be guided by it to Japan was quite another affair. It was not the mention of timber and peltries and Skraelings that would fire the imagination of Columbus; his dreams were of stately cities with busy wharves where ships were laden with silks and jewels, and of Oriental magnates decked out with "barbaric pearl and gold," dwelling in pavilions of marble and jasper amid flowery gardens in "a summer fanned with spice." The mention of Vinland was no more likely to excite Columbus's attention than that of St. Brandan's isle or other places supposed to lie in the western ocean. He was after higher game.

[Sidenote: He could not have obtained from such a source his opinion of the width of the ocean.]

To suppose that Columbus, even had he got hold of the Saga of Eric the Red and conned it from beginning to end, with a learned interpreter at his elbow, could have gained from it a knowledge of the width of the Atlantic ocean, is simply preposterous. It would be impossible to extract any such knowledge from that document to-day without the aid of our modern maps. The most diligent critical study of all the Icelandic sources of information, with all the resources of modern scholarship, enables us with some confidence to place Vinland somewhere between Cape Breton and Point Judith, that is to say, somewhere between two points distant from each other more than four degrees in latitude and more than eleven degrees in longitude! When we have got thus far, knowing as we do that the coast in question belongs to the same continental system as the West Indies, we can look at our map and pick up our pair of compasses and measure the width of the ocean at the twenty-eighth parallel. But it is not the mediaeval document, but our modern map that guides us to this knowledge. And yet it is innocently assumed that Columbus, without any knowledge or suspicion of the existence of America, and from such vague data concerning voyages made five hundred years before his time, by men who had no means of reckoning latitude and longitude, could have obtained his figure of 2,500 miles for the voyage from the Canaries to Japan![476] The fallacy here is that which underlies the whole Scandinavian hypothesis and many other fanciful geographical speculations. It is the fallacy of projecting our present knowledge into the past.

[Footnote 476: The source of such a confusion of ideas is probably the ridiculous map in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanae_, upon which North America is represented in all the accuracy of outline attainable by modern maps, and then the Icelandic names are put on where Rafn thought they ought to go, i. e. Markland upon Nova Scotia, Vinland upon New England, etc. Any person using such a map is liable to forget that it cannot possibly represent the crude notions of locality to which the reports of the Norse voyages must have given rise in an ignorant age. (The reader will find the map reproduced in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i. 95.) Rafn's fault was, however, no greater than that committed by the modern makers of so-called "ancient atlases"--still current and in use in schools--when, for example, they take a correct modern map of Europe, with parts of Africa and Asia, and upon countries so dimly known to the ancients as Scandinavia and Hindustan, but now drawn with perfect accuracy, they simply print the ancient names!! Nothing but confusion can come from using such wretched maps. The only safe way to study the history of geography is to reproduce the ancient maps themselves, as I have done in the present work. Many of the maps given below in the second volume will illustrate the slow and painful growth of the knowledge of the North American coast during the two centuries after Columbus.]

[Sidenote: If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive for concealing it.]

We have next to inquire, if Columbus had heard of Vinland and comprehended its relation to his own theory about land at the west, why in the world should he have concealed this valuable knowledge? The notion seems to be that he must have kept it secret through an unworthy desire to claim a priority in discovery to which he knew that he was not entitled.[477] This is projecting our present knowledge into the past with a vengeance. Columbus never professed to have discovered America; he died in the belief that what he had done was to reach the eastern shores of Asia by a shorter route than the Portuguese. If he had reason to suppose that the Northmen had once come down from the Arctic seas to some unknown part of the Asiatic coast, he had no motive for concealing such a fact, but the strongest of motives for proclaiming it, inasmuch as it would have given him the kind of inductive argument which he sorely needed. The chief obstacle for Columbus was that for want of tangible evidence he was obliged to appeal to men's reason with scientific arguments. When you show things to young children they are not content with looking; they crave a more intimate acquaintance than the eyes alone can give, and so they reach out and handle the things. So when ideas are presented to grown-up men, they are apt to be unwilling to trust to the eye of reason until it has been supplemented by the eye of sense; and indeed in most affairs of life such caution is wholesome. The difference between Columbus and many of the "practical" men whom he sought to convince was that he could see with his mind's eye solid land beyond the Sea of Darkness while they could not. To them the ocean, like the sky, had nothing beyond, unless it might be the supernatural world.[478] For while the argument from the earth's rotundity was intelligible enough, there were few to whom, as to Toscanelli, it was a living truth. Even of those who admitted, in theory, that Cathay lay to the west of Europe, most deemed the distance untraversable. Inductive proof of the existence of accessible land to the west was thus what Columbus chiefly needed, and what he sought every opportunity to find and produce; but it was not easy to find anything more substantial than sailors' vague mention of driftwood of foreign aspect or other outlandish jetsam washed up on the Portuguese strand.[479] What a godsend it would have been for Columbus if he could have had the Vinland business to hurl at the heads of his adversaries! If he could have said, "Five hundred years ago some Icelanders coasted westward in the polar regions, and then coasted southward until they reached a country beyond the ocean and about opposite to France or Portugal; therefore that country must be Asia, and I can reach it by striking boldly across the ocean, which will obviously be shorter than going down by Guinea,"--if he could have said this, he would have had precisely the unanswerable argument for lack of which his case was waiting and suffering. In persuading men to furnish hard cash, for his commercial enterprise, as Colonel Higginson so neatly says, "an ounce of Vinland would have been worth a pound of cosmography."[480] We may be sure that the silence of Columbus about the Norse voyages proves that he knew nothing about them or quite failed to see their bearings upon his own undertaking. It seems to me absolutely decisive.

[Footnote 477: "The fault that we find with Columbus is, that he was not honest and frank enough to tell where and how he had obtained his previous information about the lands which he pretended to discover." Anderson, _America not discovered by Columbus_, p. 90.]

[Footnote 478: See below, p. 398, note.]

[Footnote 479: For example, the pilot Martin Vicenti told Columbus that 1,200 miles west of Cape St. Vincent he had picked up from the sea a piece of carved wood evidently not carved with iron tools. Pedro Correa, who had married Columbus's wife's sister, had seen upon Porto Santo a similar piece of carving that had drifted from the west. Huge reeds sometimes floated ashore upon those islands, and had not Ptolemy mentioned enormous reeds as growing in eastern Asia? Pine-trees of strange species were driven by west winds upon the coast of Fayal, and two corpses of men of an unknown race had been washed ashore upon the neighbouring island of Flores. Certain sailors, on a voyage from the Azores to Ireland, had caught glimpses of land on the west, and believed it to be the coast of "Tartary;" etc., etc. See _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. ix. Since he cited these sailors, why did he not cite the Northmen also, if he knew what they had done?]

[Footnote 480: _Larger History of the United States_, p. 54.]

[Sidenote: No trace of a thought of Vinland appears in the voyages of Columbus.]

Furthermore, this silence is in harmony with the fact that in none of his four voyages across the Atlantic did Columbus betray any consciousness that there was anything for him to gain by steering toward the northwest. If he could correctly have conceived the position of Vinland he surely would not have conceived it as south of the fortieth parallel. On his first voyage he steered due west in latitude 28 deg. because Toscanelli placed Japan opposite the Canaries. When at length some doubts began to arise and he altered his course, as we shall hereafter see, the change was toward the southwest. His first two voyages did not reveal to him the golden cities for which he was looking, and when on his third and fourth voyages he tried a different course it was farther toward the equator, not farther away from it, that he turned his prows. Not the slightest trace of a thought of Vinland appears in anything that he did.

[Sidenote: Why did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?]

Finally it may be asked, if the memory of Vinland was such a living thing in Iceland in 1477 that a visitor would be likely to be told about it, why was it not sufficiently alive in 1493 to call forth a protest from the North? When the pope, as we shall presently see, was proclaiming to the world that the Spanish crown was entitled to all heathen lands and islands already discovered or to be discovered in the ocean west of the Azores, why did not some zealous Scandinavian at once jump up and cry out, "Look here, old Columbus, _we_ discovered that western route, you know! Stop thief!" Why was it necessary to wait more than a hundred years longer before the affair of Vinland was mentioned in this connection?

[Sidenote: The idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of America until the seventeenth century.]

Simply because it was not until the seventeenth century that the knowledge of North American geography had reached such a stage of completeness as to suggest to anybody the true significance of the old voyages from Greenland. That significance could not have been understood by Leif and Thorfinn themselves, or by the compilers of Hauks-bok and Flateyar-bok, or by any human being, until about the time of Henry Hudson. Not earlier than that time should we expect to find it mentioned, and it is just then, in 1610, that we do find it mentioned by Arngrim Jonsson, who calls Vinland "an island of _America_, in the region of Greenland, perhaps the modern Estotilandia."[481] This is the earliest glimmering of an association of the idea of Vinland with that of America.

[Footnote 481: "Terram vero Landa Rolfoni quaesitam existimarem esse Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam nempe Americae e regione Gronlandiae, quae forte hodie Estotilandia," etc. _Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, p. 120.

Abraham Ortelius in 1606 speaks of the Northmen coming to America, but bases his opinion upon the Zeno narrative (published in 1558) and upon the sound of the name _Norumbega_, and apparently knows nothing of Vinland:--"Iosephus Acosta in his book _De Natura noui orbis_ indeuors by many reasons to proue, that this part of _America_ was originally inhabited by certaine Indians, forced thither by tempestuous weather ouer the South sea which now they call Mare del Zur. But to me it seemes more probable, out of the historie of the two Zeni, gentlemen of Venice, ... that this New World many ages past was entred upon by some islanders of _Europe_, as namely of _Groenland_, Island, and Frisland; being much neerer thereunto than the Indians, nor disioyned thence ... by an Ocean so huge, and to the Indians so vnnauigable. Also, what else may we coniecture to be signified by this _Norumbega_ [the name of a North region of _America_] but that from _Norway_, signifying a North land, some Colonie in times past hath hither beene transplanted?" _Theatre of the Whole World_, London, 1606, p. 5. These passages are quoted and discussed by Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, pp. 95, 96. The supposed connection of _Norumbega_ with _Norway_ is very doubtful. Possibly Stephanius, in his map of 1570 (Torfaeus, _Gronlandia antiqua_, 1706), may have had reference to Labrador or the north of Newfoundland.]

[Sidenote: Resume of the genesis of Columbus's scheme.]

[Sidenote: Martin Behaim's improved astrolabe.]

[Sidenote: Negotiations of Columbus with John II. of Portugal.]

[Sidenote: A shabby trick.]

[Sidenote: Columbus leaves Portugal,]

[Sidenote: and enters the service of the Spanish sovereigns, 1486.]

[Sidenote: The junto at Salamanca.]

The genesis of the grand scheme of Columbus has now been set forth, I believe, with sufficient fulness. The cardinal facts are 1, that the need for some such scheme was suggested in 1471, by the discovery that the Guinea coast extended south of the equator; 2, that by 1474 advice had been sought from Toscanelli by the king of Portugal, and not very long after 1474 by Columbus; 3, that upon Toscanelli's letters and map, amended by the Ptolemaic estimate of the earth's size and by the authority of passages quoted in the book of Alliacus (one of which was a verse from the Apocrypha), Columbus based his firm conviction of the feasibleness of the western route. How or by whom the suggestion of that route was first made--whether by Columbus himself or by Toscanelli or by Fernando Martinez or, as Antonio Gallo declares, by Bartholomew Columbus,[482] or by some person in Portugal whose name we know not--it would be difficult to decide. Neither can we fix the date when Columbus first sought aid for his scheme from the Portuguese government. There seems to be no good reason why he should not have been talking about it before 1474; but the affair did not come to any kind of a climax until after his return from Guinea, some time after 1482 and certainly not later than 1484. It was on some accounts a favourable time. The war with Castile was out of the way, and Martin Behaim had just invented an improved astrolabe which made it ever so much easier to find and keep one's latitude at sea. It was in 1484 that Portuguese discoveries took a fresh start after a ten years' lull, and Diego Cam, with the learned Behaim and his bran-new astrolabe on board, was about to sail a thousand miles farther south than white men had ever gone before. About this time the scheme of Columbus was formally referred by King John II. to the junto of learned cosmographers from whom the crown had been wont to seek advice. The project was condemned as "visionary,"[483] as indeed it was,--the outcome of vision that saw farther than those men could see. But the king, who had some of his uncle Prince Henry's love for bold enterprises, was more hospitably inclined toward the ideas of Columbus, and he summoned a council of the most learned men in the kingdom to discuss the question.[484] In this council the new scheme found some defenders, while others correctly urged that Columbus must be wrong in supposing Asia to extend so far to the east, and it must be a much longer voyage than he supposed to Cipango and Cathay,[485] Others argued that the late war had impoverished the country, and that the enterprises on the African coast were all that the treasury could afford. Here the demands of Columbus were of themselves an obstacle to his success. He never at any time held himself cheap,[486] and the rewards and honours for which he insisted on stipulating were greater than the king of Portugal felt inclined to bestow upon a plain Genoese mariner. It was felt that if the enterprise should prove a failure, as very likely it would, the less heartily the government should have committed itself to it beforehand, the less it would expose itself to ridicule. King John was not in general disposed toward unfair and dishonest dealings, but on this occasion, after much parley, he was persuaded to sanction a proceeding quite unworthy of him. Having obtained Columbus's sailing plans, he sent out a ship secretly, to carry some goods to the Cape Verde islands, and then to try the experiment of the westward voyage. If there should turn out to be anything profitable in the scheme, this would be safer and more frugal than to meet the exorbitant demands of this ambitious foreigner. So it was done; but the pilots, having no grand idea to urge them forward, lost heart before the stupendous expanse of waters that confronted them, and beat an ignominious retreat to Lisbon; whereupon Columbus, having been informed of the trick,[487] departed in high dudgeon, to lay his proposals before the crown of Castile. He seems to have gone rather suddenly, leaving his wife, who died shortly after, and one or two children who must also have died, for he tells us that he never saw them again. But his son Diego, aged perhaps four or five years, he took with him as far as the town of Huelva, near the little port of Palos in Andalusia, where he left him with one of his wife's sisters, who had married a man of that town named Muliar.[488] This arrival in Spain was probably late in the autumn of 1484, and Columbus seems to have entered into the service of Ferdinand and Isabella January 20, 1486. What he was doing in the interval of rather more than a year is not known. There is a very doubtful tradition that he tried to interest the republic of Genoa in his enterprise,[489] and a still more doubtful rumour that he afterwards made proposals to the Venetian senate.[490] If these things ever happened, there was time enough for them in this year, and they can hardly be assigned to any later period. In 1486 we find Columbus at Cordova, where the sovereigns were holding court. He was unable to effect anything until he had gained the ear of Isabella's finance minister Alonso de Quintanilla, who had a mind hospitable to large ideas. The two sovereigns had scarcely time to attend to such things, for there was a third king in Spain, the Moor at Granada, whom there now seemed a fair prospect of driving to Africa, and thus ending the struggle that had lasted with few intermissions for nearly eight centuries. The final war with Granada had been going on since the end of 1481, and considering how it weighed upon the minds of Ferdinand and Isabella it is rather remarkable that cosmography got any hearing at all. The affair was referred to the queen's confessor Fernando de Talavera, whose first impression was that if what Columbus said was true, it was very strange that other geographers should have failed to know all about it long ago. Ideas of evolution had not yet begun to exist in those days, and it was thought that what the ancients did not know was not worth knowing. Toward the end of 1486 the Spanish sovereigns were at Salamanca, and Talavera referred the question to a junto of learned men, including professors of the famous university.[491] There was no lack of taunt and ridicule, and a whole arsenal of texts from Scripture and the Fathers were discharged at Columbus, but it is noticeable that quite a number were inclined to think that his scheme might be worth trying, and that some of his most firmly convinced supporters were priests. No decision had been reached when the sovereigns started on the Malaga campaign in the spring of 1487.

[Footnote 482: Gallo, _De navigatione Columbi_, apud Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom. xxiii. col. 302.]

[Footnote 483: Lafuente, _Historia de Espana_, tom. ix, p. 428.]

[Footnote 484: Vasconcellos, _Vida del rey Don Juan II._, lib. iv.; La Clede, _Histoire de Portugal_, lib. xiii.]

[Footnote 485: The Portuguese have never been able to forgive Columbus for discovering a new world for Spain, and their chagrin sometimes vents itself in amusing ways. After all, says Cordeiro, Columbus was no such great man as some people think, for he did not discover what he promised to discover; and, moreover, the Portuguese geographers were right in condemning his scheme, because it really is not so far by sea from Lisbon around Africa to Hindustan as from Lisbon by any practicable route westward to Japan! See Luciano Cordeiro, _De la part prise par les Portugais dans la decouverte d'Amerique_, Lisbon, 1876, pp. 23, 24, 29, 30. Well, I don't know that there is any answer to be made to this argument. Logic is logic, says the wise Autocrat:--

"End of the wonderful one-hoss shay, Logic is logic, that's all I say."

Cordeiro's book is elaborately criticised in the learned work of Prospero Peragallo, _Cristoforo Colombo in Portogallo: studi critici_, Genoa, 1882.]

[Footnote 486: "Perciocche essendo l' Ammiraglio di generosi ed alti pensieri, volle capitolare con suo grande onore e vantaggio, per lasciar la memoria sua, e la grandezza della sua casa, conforme alla grandezza delle sue opere e de' suoi meriti." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi. The jealous Portuguese historian speaks in a somewhat different tone from the affectionate son:--"Veo requerer a el rey Dom Joao que le desse algums navios pera ir a descobrir a ilha de Gypango [_sic_] per esta mar occidental.... El rey, porque via ser este Christovao Colom homem falador e glorioso em mostrar suas habilidades, e mas fantastico et de imaginacao com sua ilha de Cypango, que certo no que dezia: davalhe pouco credito." Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, liv. iii. cap. xi. fol. 56.]

[Footnote 487: It has been urged in the king's defence that "such a proceeding was not an instance of bad faith or perfidy (!) but rather of the policy customary at that time, which consisted in distrusting everything that was foreign, and in promoting by whatever means the national glory." Yes, indeed, whether the means were fair or foul. Of course it was a common enough policy, but it was lying and cheating all the same. "Nao foi sem duvida por ma fe ou perfidia que tacitamente se mandon armar hum navio a cujo capitao se confiou o plano que Colombo havia proposto, e cuja execucao se lhe encarregou; mas sim por seguir a politica naquelle tempo usada, que toda consistia em olhar com desconfianca para tudo o que era estrangeiro, e en promover por todos os modos a gloria nacional. O capitao nomeado para a empreza, como nao tivesse nem o espirito, nem a conviccao de Colombo, depois de huma curta viagem nos mares do Oeste, fez-se na volta da terra: e arribou a Lisboa descontente e desanimado." Campe, _Historia do descobrimento da America_, Paris, 1836, tom. i. p. 13. The frightened sailors protested that YOU MIGHT AS WELL EXPECT TO FIND LAND IN THE SKY AS IN THAT WASTE OF WATERS! See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 221. Las Casas calls the king's conduct by its right name, _dobladura_, "trickery."]

[Footnote 488: It has generally been supposed, on the authority of _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., that his wife had lately died; but an autograph letter of Columbus, in the possession of his lineal descendant and representative the present Duke of Veraguas, proves that this is a mistake. In this letter Columbus says expressly that when he left Portugal he left wife and children, and never saw them again. (Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. doc. cxxxvii. p. 255.) As Las Casas, who knew Diego so well, also supposed his mother to have died before his father left Portugal, it is most likely that she died soon afterwards. Ferdinand Columbus says that Diego was left in charge of some friars at the convent of La Rabida near Palos (_loc. cit._); Las Casas is not quite so sure; he thinks Diego was left with some friend of his father at Palos, or perhaps (_por ventura_) at La Rabida. (_Historia_, tom. i. p. 227.) These mistakes were easy to make, for both La Rabida and Huelva were close by Palos, and we know that Diego's aunt Muliar was living at Huelva. (Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 241; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 279, 356, 391; tom. ii. p. 229.) It is pretty clear that Columbus never visited La Rabida before the autumn of 1491 (see below, p. 412). My own notion is that Columbus may have left his wife with an infant and perhaps one older child, relieving her of the care of Diego by taking him to his aunt, and intending as soon as practicable to reunite the family. He clearly did not know at the outset whether he should stay in Spain or not.]

[Footnote 489: It rests upon an improbable statement of Ramusio, who places the event as early as 1470. The first Genoese writer to allude to it is Casoni, _Annali della Republica di Genova_, Genoa, 1708, pp. 26-31. Such testimony is of small value.]

[Footnote 490: First mentioned in 1800 by Marin, _Storia del commercio de Veneziani_, Venice, 1798-1808, tom. vii. p. 236.]

[Footnote 491: The description usually given of this conference rests upon the authority of Remesal, _Historia de la prouincia de Chyapa_, Madrid, 1619, lib. ii. cap. vii. p. 52. Las Casas merely says that the question was referred to certain persons at the court, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 228. It is probably not true that the project of Columbus was officially condemned by the university of Salamanca as a corporate body. See Camara, _Religion y Ciencia_, Valladolid, 1880, p. 261.]

[Sidenote: Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, Aug. 15, 1488.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope, Dec, 1487.]

[Sidenote: Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. Sept., 1488;]

[Sidenote: and sends him to England.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. Feb., 1490;]

[Sidenote: and goes thence to France before 1492.]

After the surrender of Malaga in August, 1487, Columbus visited the court in that city. For a year or more after that time silken chains seem to have bound him to Cordova. He had formed a connection with a lady of noble family, Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, who gave birth to his son Ferdinand on the 15th of August, 1488.[492] Shortly after this event, Columbus made a visit to Lisbon, in all probability for the purpose of meeting his brother Bartholomew, who had returned in the last week of December, 1487, in the Dias expedition, with the proud news of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope,[493] which was rightly believed to be the extremity of Africa; and we can well understand how Christopher, on seeing the success of Prince Henry's method of reaching the Indies so nearly vindicated, must have become more impatient than ever to prove the superiority of his own method. It was probably not long after Bartholomew's return that Christopher determined to go and see him, for he applied to King John II. for a kind of safe-conduct, which was duly granted March 20, 1488. This document[494] guarantees Christopher against arrest or arraignment or detention on any charge civil or criminal whatever, during his stay in Portugal, and commands all magistrates in that kingdom to respect it. From this it would seem probable that in the eagerness of his geographical speculations he had neglected his business affairs and left debts behind him in Portugal for which he was liable to be arrested. The king's readiness to grant the desired privilege seems to indicate that he may have cherished a hope of regaining the services of this accomplished chart-maker and mariner. Christopher did not avail himself of the privilege until late in the summer,[495] and it is only fair to suppose that he waited for the birth of his child and some assurance of its mother's safety. On meeting Bartholomew he evidently set him to work forthwith in making overtures to the courts of England and France. It was natural enough that Bartholomew should first set out for Bristol, where old shipmates and acquaintances were sure to be found. It appears that on the way he was captured by pirates, and thus some delay was occasioned before he arrived in London and showed the king a map, probably similar to Toscanelli's and embellished with quaint Latin verses. An entry on this map informs us that it was made by Bartholomew Columbus in London, February 10, 1488, which I think should be read 1489 or even 1490, so we may suppose it to have been about that time or perhaps later that he approached the throne.[496] Henry VII. was intelligent enough to see the bearings of Bartholomew's arguments, and at the same time, as a good man of business, he was likely to be cautious about investing money in remote or doubtful enterprises. What arguments were used we do not know, but the spring of 1492 had arrived before any decisive answer had been given. Meanwhile Bartholomew had made his way to France, and found a powerful protector in a certain Madame de Bourbon,[497] while he made maps for people at the court and waited to see if there were any chances of getting help from Charles VIII.

[Footnote 492: Some historians, unwilling to admit any blemishes in the character of Columbus, have supposed that this union was sanctioned by marriage, but this is not probable. He seems to have been tenderly attached to Beatriz, who survived him many years. See Harrisse, tom. ii. pp. 353-357.]

[Footnote 493: The authority for Bartholomew Columbus having sailed to the Cape of Good Hope with Dias is a manuscript note of his own in Christopher's copy of the _Imago Mundi_: "Nota quod hoc anno de 88 [it should be 87] in mense decembri appulit in Ulixbona Bartholomeus Didacus capitaneus trium carabelarum quem miserat serenissimus rex Portugalie in Guineam ad tentandum terrain. Et renunciavit ipse serenissimo regi prout navigaverat ultra jam navigata leuchas 600, videlicet 450 ad austrum et 150 ad aquilonem usque montem per ipsum nominatum _Cabo de boa esperanca_ quem in Agesimba estimamus. Qui quidem in eo loco invenit se distare per astrolabium ultra lineam equinoctialem gradus 35. Quem viagium pictavit et scripsit de leucha in leucham in una carta navigationis ut oculi visum ostenderet ipso serenissimo regi. In quibus omnibus interfui." M. Varnhagen has examined this note and thinks it is in the handwriting of Christopher Columbus (_Bulletin de Geographie_, janvier, 1858, tom. xv. p. 71); and M. d'Avezac (_Canevas chronologique_, p. 58), accepting this opinion, thinks that the words _in quibus omnibus interfui_, "in all of which I took part," only mean that Christopher was present in Lisbon when the expedition returned, and heard the whole story! With all possible respect for such great scholars as MM. d'Avezac and Varnhagen, I submit that the opinion of Las Casas, who first called attention to this note, must be much better than theirs on such a point as the handwriting of the two brothers. When Las Casas found the note he wondered whether it was meant for Bartholomew or Christopher, i. e. wondered which of the two was meant to be described as having "taken part;" but at all events, says Las Casas, the handwriting is Bartholomew's:--"Estas son palabras escritas de la mano de Bartolome Colon, no se si las escribio de si o de su letra por su hermano Cristobal Colon." Under these circumstances it seems idle to suppose that Las Casas could have been mistaken about the handwriting; he evidently put his mind on that point, and in the next breath he goes on to say, "la letra yo conozco ser de Bartolome Colon, porque tuve muchas suyas," i. e. "I know it is Bartholomew's writing, for I have had many letters of his;" and again "estas palabras ... de la misma letra y mano de Bartolome Colon, la cual muy bien conoci y agora tengo hartas cartas y letras suyas, tratando deste viaje," i. e. "these words ... from the very writing and hand of Bartholomew Columbus, which I knew very well, and I have to-day many charts and letters of his, treating of this voyage." (_Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. pp. 213, 214.) This last sentence makes Las Casas an independent witness to Bartholomew's presence in the expedition, a matter about which he was not likely to be mistaken. What puzzled him was the question, not whether Bartholomew went, but whether Christopher could have gone also, "pudo ser tambien que se hallase Cristobal Colon." Now Christopher certainly did not go on that voyage. The expedition started in August, 1486, and returned to Lisbon in December, 1487, after an absence of sixteen months and seventeen days, "anendo dezaseis meses et dezasete dias que erao partidos delle." (Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, tom. i. fol. 42, 44.) The account-book of the treasury of Castile shows that sums of money were paid to Christopher at Seville, May 5, July 3, August 27, and October 15, 1487; so that he could not have gone with Dias (see Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 191). Neither could Christopher have been in Lisbon in December, 1487, when the little fleet returned, for his safe-conduct from King John is dated March 20, 1488. It was not until the autumn of 1488 that Columbus made this visit to Portugal, and M. d'Avezac has got the return of the fleet a year too late. Bartholomew's note followed a custom which made 1488 begin at Christmas, 1487.

In reading a later chapter of Las Casas for another purpose (tom. i. p. 227), I come again upon this point. He rightly concludes that Christopher could not have gone with Dias, and again declares most positively that the handwriting of the note was Bartholomew's and not Christopher's.

This footnote affords a good illustration of the kind of difficulties that surround such a subject as the life of Columbus, and the ease with which an excess of ingenuity may discover mare's nests.]

[Footnote 494: It may be found in Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii. pp. 5, 6.]

[Footnote 495: The account-book of the treasury shows that on June 16 he was still in Spain. See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 355.]

[Footnote 496: The entry, as given by Las Casas, is "Pro authore, seu pictore, || Gennua cui patria est, nomen cui Bartolomeus || Columbus de terra rubea, opus edidit istud || Londonije: anno domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno || Atque insuper anno octavo: decimaque die mensis Februarii. || Laudes Christo cantentur abunde." _Historia_, tom. i. p. 225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly educated man, writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of the king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which made the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas, so that his February, 1488, means the next month but one after December, 1488, i. e. what in our new style becomes February, 1489. Bartholomew returned to Lisbon from Africa in the last week of December, 1487, and it is not likely that his plans could have been matured and himself settled down in London in less than seven weeks. The logical relation of the events, too, shows plainly that Christopher's visit to Lisbon was for the purpose of consulting his brother and getting first-hand information about the greatest voyage the world had ever seen. In the early weeks of 1488 Christopher sends his request for a safe-conduct, gets it March 20, waits till his child is born, August 15, and then presently goes. Bartholomew may have sailed by the first of October for England, where (according to this reading of his date) we actually find him four months later. What happened to him in this interval? Here we come to the story of the pirates. M. Harrisse, who never loses an opportunity for throwing discredit upon the _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, has failed to make the correction of date which I have here suggested. He puts Bartholomew in London in February, 1488, and is thus unable to assign any reason for Christopher's visit to Lisbon. He also finds that in the forty-six days between Christmas, 1487, and February, 10, 1488, there is hardly room enough for any delay due to so grave a cause as capture by pirates. (_Christophe Colomb_, vol. ii. p. 192.) He therefore concludes that the statement in the _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., is unworthy of credit, and it is upon an accumulation of small difficulties like this that he bases his opinion that Ferdinand Columbus cannot have written that book. But Las Casas also gives the story of the pirates, and adds the information that they were "Easterlings," though he cannot say of what nation, i. e. whether Dutch, German, or perhaps Danes. He says that Bartholomew was stripped of his money and fell sick, and after his recovery was obliged to earn money by map-making before he could get to England. (_Historia_, tom. i. p. 225.) Could all this have happened within the four months which I have allowed between October, 1488, and February, 1489? Voyages before the invention of steamboats were of very uncertain duration. John Adams in 1784 was fifty-four days in getting from London to Amsterdam (see my _Critical Period of American History_, p. 156). But with favourable weather a Portuguese caravel in 1488 ought to have run from Lisbon to Bristol in fourteen days or less, so that in four months there would be time enough for quite a chapter of accidents. Las Casas, however, says it was _a long time_ before Bartholomew was able to reach England:--"Esto fue causa que enfermase y viniese a mucha pobreza, y estuviese mucho tempo sin poder llegar a Inglaterra, hasta tanto que quiso Dies sanarle; y reformado algo, por su industria y trabajos de sus manos, haciendo cartas de marear, llego a Inglaterra, y, pasados un dia y otros, hobo de alcanzar que le oyese Enrique VII." It is impossible, I think, to read this passage without feeling that at least a year must have been consumed; and I do not think we are entitled to disregard the words of Las Casas in such a matter. But how shall we get the time?

Is it possible that Las Casas made a slight mistake in deciphering the date on Bartholomew's map? Either that mariner did not give the map to Henry VII., or the king gave it back, or more likely it was made in duplicate. At any rate Las Casas had it, along with his many other Columbus documents, and for aught we know it may still be tumbling about somewhere in the Spanish archives. It was so badly written (_de muy mala e corrupta letra_), apparently in abbreviations (_sin ortografia_), that Las Casas says he found extreme difficulty in making it out. Now let us observe that date, which is given in fantastic style, apparently because the inscription is in a rude doggerel, and the writer seems to have wished to keep his "verses" tolerably even. (They don't scan much better than Walt Whitman's.) As it stands, the date reads _anno domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno atque insuper anno octavo_, i. e. "in the year of our Lord the thousandth, four hundredth, AND EIGHT-TIMES-ONE, and thereafter the eighth year." What business has this cardinal number _octiesque uno_ in a row of ordinals? If it were translatable, which it is not, it would give us 1,000 + 400 + 8 + 8 = 1416, an absurd date. The most obvious way to make the passage readable is to insert the ordinal _octogesimo primo_ instead of the incongruous _octiesque uno_; then it will read "in the year of our Lord the one-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-first, and thereafter the eighth year," that is to say 1489. Now translate old style into new style, and February, 1489, becomes February, 1490, which I believe to be the correct date. This allows sixteen months for Bartholomew's mishaps; it justifies the statement in which Las Casas confirms Ferdinand Columbus; and it harmonizes with the statement of Lord Bacon: "For Christopherus Columbus, refused by the king of Portugal (who would not embrace at once both east and west), employed his brother Bartholomew Columbus unto King Henry to negotiate for his discovery. And it so fortuned that he was taken by pirates at sea; by which accidental impediment he was long ere he came to the king; so long that before he had obtained a capitulation with the king for his brother the enterprise was achieved, and so the West Indies by Providence were then reserved for the crown of Castilia." _Historie of the Raygne of K. Henry the Seventh_, Bacon's _Works_, Boston, 1860, vol. xi. p. 296. Lord Bacon may have taken the statement from Ferdinand's biography; but it probably agreed with English traditions, and ought not to be slighted in this connection.]

[Footnote 497: One of the sisters of Charles VIII. See Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 194.]

[Sidenote: The Duke of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for Columbus,]

[Sidenote: but Isabella withholds her consent.]

[Sidenote: Columbus makes up his mind to get his family together and go to France, Oct., 1491.]

As for Christopher Columbus, we find him back in Spain again, in May, 1489, attending court at Cordova. In the following autumn there was much suffering in Spain from floods and famine,[498] and the sovereigns were too busy with the Moorish war to give ear to Columbus. It was no time for new undertakings, and the weary suitor began to think seriously of going in person to the French court. First, however, he thought it worth while to make an attempt to get private capital enlisted in his enterprise, and in the Spain of that day such private capital meant a largess from some wealthy grandee. Accordingly about Christmas of 1489, after the Beza campaign in which Columbus is said to have fought with distinguished valour,[499] he seems to have applied to the most powerful nobleman in Spain, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, but without success. But at the hands of Luis de la Cerda, Duke of Medina-Celi, he met with more encouragement than he had as yet found in any quarter. That nobleman entertained Columbus most hospitably at his castle at Puerto de Santa Maria for nearly two years, until the autumn of 1491. He became convinced that the scheme of Columbus was feasible, and decided to fit up two or three caravels at his own expense, if necessary, but first he thought it proper to ask the queen's consent, and to offer her another chance to take part in the enterprise.[500] Isabella was probably unwilling to have the duke come in for a large share of the profits in case the venture should prove successful. She refused the royal license, saying that she had not quite made up her mind whether to take up the affair or not, but if she should decide to do so she would be glad to have the duke take part in it.[501] Meanwhile she referred the question to Alonso de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of Castile. This was in the spring of 1491, when the whole country was in a buzz of excitement with the preparations for the siege of Granada. The baffled Columbus visited the sovereigns in camp, but could not get them to attend to him, and early in the autumn, thoroughly disgusted and sick at heart, he made up his mind to shake the dust of Castile from his feet and see what could be done in France. In October or November he went to Huelva, apparently to get his son Diego, who had been left there, in charge of his aunt. It was probably his intention to take all the family he had--Beatriz and her infant son Ferdinand, of whom he was extremely fond, as well as Diego--and find a new home in either France or England, besides ascertaining what had become of his brother Bartholomew, from whom he had not heard a word since the latter left Portugal for England.[502]

[Footnote 498: Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, cap. xci.]

[Footnote 499: Zuniga, _Anales de Sevilla_, lib. xii. p. 404.]

[Footnote 500: See the letter of March 19, 1493, from the Duke of Medina-Celi to the Grand Cardinal of Spain (from the archives of Simancas) in Navarrete _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii. p. 20.]

[Footnote 501: This promise was never fulfilled. When Columbus returned in triumph, arriving March 6, 1493, at Lisbon, and March 15 at Palos, the Duke of Medina-Celi wrote the letter just cited, recalling the queen's promise and asking to be allowed to send to the Indies once each year an expedition on his own account; for, he says, if he had not kept Columbus with him in 1490 and 1491 he would have gone to France, and Castile would have lost the prize. There was some force in this, but Isabella does not appear to have heeded the request.]

[Footnote 502: This theory of the situation is fully sustained by Las Casas, tom. i. p. 241.]

[Sidenote: He stops at La Rabida, and meets the prior Juan Perez.]

[Sidenote: Perez writes to the queen,]

[Sidenote: and Columbus is summoned back to court.]

But now at length events took a favourable turn. Fate had grown tired of fighting against such indomitable perseverance. For some years now the stately figure of Columbus had been a familiar sight in the streets of Seville and Cordova, and as he passed along, with his white hair streaming in the breeze, and countenance aglow with intensity of purpose or haggard with disappointment at some fresh rebuff, the ragged urchins of the pavement tapped their foreheads and smiled with mingled wonder and amusement at this madman. Seventeen years had elapsed since the letter from Toscanelli to Martinez, and all that was mortal of the Florentine astronomer had long since been laid in the grave. For Columbus himself old age was not far away, yet he seemed no nearer the fulfilment of his grand purpose than when he had first set it forth to the king of Portugal. We can well imagine that when he started from Huelva, with his little son Diego, now some eleven or twelve years old, again to begin renewing his suit in a strange country, his thoughts must have been sombre enough. For some reason or other--tradition says to ask for some bread and water for his boy--he stopped at the Franciscan monastery of La Rabida, about half a league from Palos. The prior, Juan Perez, who had never seen Columbus before, became greatly interested in him and listened with earnest attention to his story. This worthy monk, who before 1478 had been Isabella's father-confessor, had a mind hospitable to new ideas. He sent for Garcia Fernandez, a physician of Palos, who was somewhat versed in cosmography, and for Martin Alonso Pinzon, a well-to-do ship-owner and trained mariner of that town, and in the quiet of the monastery a conference was held in which Columbus carried conviction to the minds of these new friends. Pinzon declared himself ready to embark in the enterprise in person. The venerable prior forthwith sent a letter to the queen, and received a very prompt reply summoning him to attend her in the camp before Granada. The result of the interview was that within a few days Perez returned to the convent with a purse of 20,000 maravedis (equivalent to about 1,180 dollars of the present day), out of which Columbus bought a new suit of clothes and a mule; and about the first of December he set out for the camp in company with Juan Perez, leaving the boy Diego in charge of the priest Martin Sanchez and a certain Rodriguez Cabejudo, upon whose sworn testimony, together with that of the physician Garcia Fernandez, some years afterward, several of these facts are related.[503]

[Footnote 503: My account of these proceedings at La Rabida differs in some particulars from any heretofore given, and I think gets the events into an order of sequence that is at once more logical and more in harmony with the sources of information than any other. The error of Ferdinand Columbus--a very easy one to commit, and not in the least damaging to his general character as biographer--lay in confusing his father's two real visits (in 1484 and 1491) to Huelva with two visits (one imaginary in 1484 and one real in 1491) to La Rabida, which was close by, between Huelva and Palos. The visits were all the more likely to get mixed up in recollection because in each case their object was little Diego and in each case he was left in charge of somebody in that neighbourhood. The confusion has been helped by another for which Ferdinand is not responsible, viz.: the friar Juan Perez has been confounded with another friar Antonio de Marchena, who Columbus says was the only person who from the time of his first arrival in Spain had always befriended him and never mocked at him. These worthy friars twain have been made into one (e. g. "the prior of the convent, Juan Perez de Marchena," Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 128), and it has often been supposed that Marchena's acquaintance began with Columbus at La Rabida in 1484, and that Diego was left at the convent at that time. But some modern sources of information have served at first to bemuddle, and then when more carefully sifted, to clear up the story. In 1508 Diego Columbus brought suit against the Spanish crown to vindicate his claim to certain territories discovered by his father, and there was a long investigation in which many witnesses were summoned and past events were busily raked over the coals. Among these witnesses were Rodriguez Cabejudo and the physician Garcia Fernandez, who gave from personal recollection a very lucid account of the affairs at La Rabida. These proceedings are printed in Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. iii. pp. 238-591. More recently the publication of the great book of Las Casas has furnished some very significant clues, and the elaborate researches of M. Harrisse have furnished others. (See Las Casas, lib. i. cap. xxix., xxxi.; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 341-372; tom. ii. pp. 237-231; cf. Peragallo, _L' autenticita_, etc., pp. 117-134.)--It now seems clear that Marchena, whom Columbus knew from his first arrival in Spain, was not associated with La Rabida. At that time Columbus left Diego, a mere infant, with his wife's sister at Huelva. Seven years later, intending to leave Spain forever, he went to Huelva and took Diego, then a small boy. On his way from Huelva to the Seville road, and thence to Cordova (where he would have been joined by Beatriz and Ferdinand), he happened to pass by La Rabida, where up to that time he was evidently unknown, and to attract the attention of the prior Juan Perez, and the wheel of fortune suddenly and unexpectedly turned. As Columbus's next start was not for France, but for Granada, his boy was left in charge of two trustworthy persons. On May 8, 1492, the little Diego was appointed page to Don John, heir-apparent to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, with a stipend of 9,400 maravedis. On February 19, 1498, after the death of that young prince, Diego became page to Queen Isabella.]

[Sidenote: The junto before Granada, Dec, 1491.]

At once upon the arrival of Columbus in the camp before Granada, his case was argued then and there before an assembly of learned men and was received more hospitably than formerly, at Salamanca. Several eminent prelates had come to think favourably of his project or to deem it at least worth a trial. Among these were the royal confessors, Deza and Talavera, the latter having changed his mind, and especially Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo, who now threw his vast influence decisively in favour of Columbus.[504] The treasurers of the two kingdoms, moreover, Quintanilla for Castile and Luis de Santangel for Aragon, were among his most enthusiastic supporters; and the result of the conference was the queen's promise to take up the matter in earnest as soon as the Moor should have surrendered Granada.

[Footnote 504: In popular allusions to Columbus it is quite common to assume or imply that he encountered nothing but opposition from the clergy. For example the account in Draper's _Conflict between Science and Religion_, p. 161, can hardly be otherwise understood by the reader. But observe that Marchena who never mocked at Columbus, Juan Perez who gave the favourable turn to his affairs, the great prelates Deza and Mendoza, and the two treasurers Santangel and Quintanilla, were every one of them priests! Without cordial support from the clergy no such enterprise as that of Columbus could have been undertaken, in Spain at least. It is quite right that we should be free-thinkers; and it is also desirable that we should have some respect for facts.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Granada, Jan. 2, 1492.]

[Sidenote: Columbus negotiates with the queen.]

[Sidenote: His terms are considered exorbitant.]

Columbus had not long to wait for that great event, which came on the 2d of January, 1492, and was hailed with rejoicings throughout Europe as in some sort a compensation for the loss of Constantinople. It must have been with a manifold sense of triumph that Columbus saw the banner of Spain unfurled to the breeze from the highest tower of the Alhambra. But at this critical moment in his fortunes the same obstacle was encountered that long before had broken off his negotiations with the king of Portugal. With pride and self-confidence not an inch abated by all these years of trial, he demanded such honours and substantial rewards as seemed extravagant to the queen, and Talavera advised her not to grant them. Columbus insisted upon being appointed admiral of the ocean and viceroy of such heathen countries as he might discover, besides having for his own use and behoof one eighth part of such revenues and profits as might accrue from the expedition. In principle this sort of remuneration did not differ from that which the crown of Portugal had been wont to award to its eminent discoverers;[505] but in amount it was liable to prove indefinitely great, enough perhaps to raise to princely power and rank this foreign adventurer. Could he not be satisfied with something less? But Columbus was as inexorable as the Sibyl with her books, and would hear of no abatement in his price. For this "great constancy and loftiness of soul,"[506] Las Casas warmly commends his friend Columbus. A querulous critic might call it unreasonable obstinacy. But in truth the good man seems to have entertained another grand scheme of his own, to which he wished to make his maritime venture contribute. It was natural that his feelings toward Turks should have been no more amiable than those of Hannibal toward the Romans. It was the Turks who had ruined the commerce of his native Genoa, in his youth he had more than once crossed swords with their corsairs, and now he looked forward to the time when he might play the part of a second Godfrey de Bouillon and deliver Jerusalem from the miscreant followers of Mahound.[507] Vast resources would be needed for such work, and from Cipango with its gold-roofed temples, and the nameless and numberless isles of spices that crowded the Cathayan seas, he hoped to obtain them. Long brooding over his cherished projects, in which chimeras were thus mixed with anticipations of scientific truth, had imparted to his character a tinge of religious fanaticism. He had come to regard himself as a man with a mission to fulfil, as God's chosen instrument for enlarging the bounds of Christendom and achieving triumphs of untold magnificence for its banners. In this mood he was apt to address kings with an air of equality that ill comported with his humble origin and slender means; and on the present occasion, if Talavera felt his old doubts and suspicions reviving, and was more than half inclined to set Columbus down as a mere vendor of crotchets, one can hardly wonder.

[Footnote 505: Our Scandinavian friends are fond of pointing to this demand of Columbus as an indication that he secretly expected to "discover America," and not merely to find the way to Asia. But how about Ferdinand and Isabella, who finally granted what was demanded, and their ministers who drew up the agreement, to say nothing of the clerks who engrossed it? What did they all understand by "discovering islands and continents in the ocean"? Were they all in this precious Vinland secret? If so, it was pretty well kept. But in truth there was nothing singular in these stipulations. Portugal paid for discovery in just this way by granting governorships over islands like the Azores, or long stretches of continent like Guinea, along with a share of the revenues yielded by such places. See for example the cases of Gonzalo Cabral, Fernando Gomez, and others in Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, pp. 238, 321, and elsewhere. In their search for the Indies the Portuguese were continually finding new lands, and it was likely to be the same with the western route, which was supposed (see Catalan, Toscanelli, and Behaim maps) to lead among spice islands innumerable, and to Asiatic kingdoms whose heathen people had no rights of sovereignty that Christian monarchs felt bound to respect.]

[Footnote 506: Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom i. p. 243.]

[Footnote 507: See his letter of February, 1502, to Pope Alexander VI. in Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 280; and cf. Helps, _Spanish Conquest in America_, vol. i. p. 96; Roselly de Lorgues, _Christophe Colomb_, p. 394.]

[Sidenote: Interposition of Luis de Santangel.]

The negotiations were broken off, and the indomitable enthusiast once more prepared to go to France. He had actually started on his mule one fine winter day, when Luis de Santangel rushed into the queen's room and spoke to her with all the passionate and somewhat reproachful energy of one who felt that a golden opportunity was slipping away forever. His arguments were warmly seconded by Quintanilla, who had followed him into the room, as well as by the queen's bosom friend Beatriz de Bobadilla, Marchioness of Moya, who happened to be sitting on the sofa and was a devoted admirer of Columbus. An impulse seized Isabella. A courier was sent on a fleet horse, and overtook Columbus as he was jogging quietly over the bridge of Pinos, about six miles out from Granada. The matter was reconsidered and an arrangement was soon made. It was agreed:--

[Sidenote: Agreement between Columbus and the sovereigns.]

"1. That Columbus should have, for himself, during his life, and for his heirs and successors forever, the office of admiral in all the islands and continents which he might discover or acquire in the ocean, with similar honours and prerogatives to those enjoyed by the high admiral of Castile in his district.

"2. That he should be viceroy and governor-general over all the said lands and continents; with the privilege of nominating three candidates for the government of each island or province, one of whom should be selected by the sovereigns.

"3. That he should be entitled to reserve for himself one tenth of all pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and all other articles and merchandises, in whatever manner found, bought, bartered, or gained within his admiralty, the costs being first deducted.

"4. That he, or his lieutenant, should be the sole judge in all causes and disputes arising out of traffic between those countries and Spain, provided the high admiral of Castile had similar jurisdiction in his district.

"5. That he might then, and at all after times, contribute an eighth part of the expense in fitting out vessels to sail on this enterprise, and receive an eighth part of the profits."[508]

[Footnote 508: I cite this version from Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 142, making a slight amendment in the rendering; the original text is in Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 7. A few days later the title of "Don" was granted to Columbus and made hereditary in his family along with the offices of viceroy and governor-general.]

Columbus was not long in finding friends to advance or promise on his account an eighth part of the sum immediately required. A considerable amount was assessed upon the town of Palos in punishment for certain misdeeds or delinquencies on the part of its people or some of them. Castile assumed the rest of the burden, though Santangel may have advanced a million maravedis out of the treasury of Aragon, or out of the funds of the _Hermandad_,[509] or perhaps more likely on his own account.[510] In any case it was a loan to the treasury of Castile simply. It was always distinctly understood that Ferdinand as king of Aragon had no share in the enterprise, and that the Spanish Indies were an appurtenance to the crown of Castile. The agreement was signed April 17, 1492, and with tears of joy Columbus vowed to devote every maravedi that should come to him to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.

[Footnote 509: A police organization formed in 1476 for suppressing highway robbery.]

[Footnote 510: It is not easy to give an accurate account of the cost of this most epoch-making voyage in all history. Conflicting statements by different authorities combine with the fluctuating values of different kinds of money to puzzle and mislead us. According to M. Harrisse 1,000,000 maravedis would be equivalent to 295,175 francs, or about 59,000 gold dollars of United States money at present values. Las Casas (tom. i. p. 256) says that the eighth part, raised by Columbus, was 500,000 maravedis (29,500 dollars). Account-books preserved in the archives of Simancas show that the sums paid from the treasury of Castile amounted to 1,140,000 maravedis (67,500 dollars). Assuming the statement of Las Casas to be correct, the amounts contributed would perhaps have been as follows:--

Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury $67,500 " loan from Santangel 59,000 Columbus 29,500 Other sources, including contribution levied upon the town of Palos 80,000 -------- Total $236,000

This total seems to me altogether too large for probability, and so does the last item, which is simply put at the figure necessary to make the total eight times 29,500. I am inclined to suspect that Las Casas (with whom arithmetic was not always a strong point) may have got his figures wrong. The amount of Santangel's loan also depends upon the statement of Las Casas, and we do not know whether he took it from a document or from hearsay. Nor do we know whether it should be added to, or included in, the first item. More likely, I think, the latter. The only item that we know with documentary certainty is the first, so that our statement becomes modified as follows:--

Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury $67,500 " loan from Santangel ? Columbus ? { rent of two fully Town of Palos { equipped caravels { for two months, etc. ---------------------- Total ?

(Cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 391-404.) Unsatisfactory, but certain as far as it goes. Alas, how often historical statements are thus reduced to meagreness, after the hypothetical or ill-supported part has been sifted out! The story that the Pinzon brothers advanced to Columbus his portion is told by Las Casas, but he very shrewdly doubts it. The famous story that Isabella pledged her crown jewels (_Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xiv.) has also been doubted, but perhaps on insufficient grounds, by M. Harrisse. It is confirmed by Las Casas (tom. i. p. 249). According to one account she pledged them to Santangel in security for his loan,--which seems not altogether improbable. See Pizarro y Orellana, _Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo_, Madrid, 1639, p. 16.]

[Sidenote: Dismay at Palos.]

[Sidenote: The three famous caravels; the Santa Maria.]

[Sidenote: The Pinta.]

[Sidenote: The Nina.]

When he reached Palos in May, with royal orders for ships and men, there had like to have been a riot. Terrible dismay was felt at the prospect of launching out for such a voyage upon the Sea of Darkness. Groans and curses greeted the announcement of the forced contribution. But Martin Pinzon and his brothers were active in supporting the crown officials, and the work went on. To induce men to enlist, debts were forgiven and civil actions suspended. Criminals were released from jail on condition of serving. Three caravels were impressed into the service of the crown for a time unlimited; and the rent and maintenance of two of these vessels for two months was to be paid by the town. The largest caravel, called the Santa Maria or Capitana, belonged to Juan de La Cosa, a Biscayan mariner whose name was soon to become famous.[511] He now commanded her, with another consummate sailor, Sancho Ruiz, for his pilot. This single-decked craft, about ninety feet in length by twenty feet breadth of beam, was the Admiral's flag-ship. The second caravel, called the Pinta, a much swifter vessel, was commanded by Martin Pinzon. She belonged to two citizens of Palos, Gomez Rascon and Cristobal Quintero, who were now in her crew, sulky and ready for mischief. The third and smallest caravel, the Nina ("Baby"), had for her commander Vicente Yanez Pinzon, the youngest of the brothers, now about thirty years of age. Neither the Pinta nor the Nina were decked amidships. On board the three caravels were just ninety persons.[512] And so they set sail from Palos on Friday, August 3, 1492, half an hour before sunrise, and by sunset had run due south five and forty geographical miles, when they shifted their course a couple of points to starboard and stood for the Canaries.

[Footnote 511: Navarrete, _Biblioteca maritima_, tom. ii. pp. 208, 209.]

[Footnote 512: The accounts of the armament are well summed up and discussed in Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 405-408. Eighty-seven names, out of the ninety, have been recovered, and the list is given below, Appendix C.]

[Sidenote: They go to the Canaries and are delayed there.]

No thought of Vinland is betrayed in these proceedings. Columbus was aiming at the northern end of Cipango (Japan). Upon Toscanelli's map, which he carried with him, the great island of Cipango extends from 5 deg. to about 28 deg. north latitude. He evidently aimed at the northern end of Cipango as being directly on the route to Zaiton (Chang-chow) and other Chinese cities mentioned by Marco Polo. Accordingly he began by running down to the Canaries, in order that he might sail thence due west on the 28th parallel without shifting his course by a single point until he should see the coast of Japan looming up before him.[513] On this preliminary run signs of mischief began already to show themselves. The Pinta's rudder was broken and unshipped, and Columbus suspected her two angry and chafing owners of having done it on purpose, in order that they and their vessel might be left behind. The Canaries at this juncture merited the name of Fortunate Islands; fortunately they, alone among African islands, were Spanish, so that Columbus could stop there and make repairs. While this was going on the sailors were scared out of their wits by an eruption of Teneriffe, which they deemed an omen of evil, and it was also reported that some Portuguese caravels were hovering in those waters, with intent to capture Columbus and carry him off to Lisbon.

[Footnote 513: "Para de alli tomar mi derrota, y navegar tanto que yo llegase a las Indias," he says in his journal, Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. i.p. 3.]

[Footnote 514: Martin Behaim was born at Nuremberg in 1436, and is said to have been a pupil of the celebrated astronomer, Regiomontanus, author of the first almanac published in Europe, and of Ephemerides, of priceless value to navigators. He visited Portugal about 1480, invented a new kind of astrolabe, and sailed with it in 1484 as cosmographer in Diego Cam's voyage to the Congo. On his return to Lisbon he was knighted, and presently went to live on the island of Fayal, of which his wife's father was governor. He was a friend of Columbus. Toward 1492 he visited Nuremberg, to look after some family affairs, and while there "he gratified some of his townspeople by embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in the maritime countries; and the globe was finished before Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493) Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent to the Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by English cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and reaching the Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is scarcely heard of again." (Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, ii. 104.) He died in May, 1506. A ridiculous story that he anticipated Columbus in the discovery of America originated in the misunderstanding of an interpolated passage in the Latin text of Schedel's _Registrum_, Nuremberg, 1498, p. 290 (the so-called _Nuremberg Chronicle_). See Winsor, _op. cit._ ii. 34; Major's _Prince Henry_, p. 326; Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. i.p. 256; Murr, _Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim_, Nuremberg, 1778; Cladera, _Investigaciones historicas_, Madrid, 1794; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, pp. 37-43.--The globe made by Behaim may now be seen in the city hall at Nuremberg. It "is made of _papier-mache_, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter." (Winsor, _op. cit._ ii. 105.) The portion west of the 330th meridian is evidently copied from Toscanelli's map. I give below (p. 429) a sketch (from Winsor, after Ruge's _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 230) of Behaim's ocean, with the outline of the American continent superimposed in the proper place.]

[Sidenote: Columbus starts for Japan, Sept. 6, 1492.]

At length, on the 6th of September, they set sail from Gomera, but were becalmed and had made only thirty miles by the night of the 8th. The breeze then freshened, and when next day the shores of Ferro, the last of the Canaries, sank from sight on the eastern horizon, many of the sailors loudly lamented their unseemly fate, and cried and sobbed like children. Columbus well understood the difficulty of dealing with these men. He provided against one chief source of discontent by keeping two different reckonings, a true one for himself and a false one for his officers and crews. He was shrewd enough not to overdo it and awaken distrust. Thus after a twenty-four hours' run of 180 miles on September 10, he reported it as 144 miles; next day the run was 120 miles and he announced it as 108, and so on. But for this prudent if somewhat questionable device, it is not unlikely that the first week of October would have witnessed a mutiny in which Columbus would have been either thrown overboard or forced to turn back.

[Sidenote: Deflection of the needle.]

The weather was delicious, and but for the bug-a-boos that worried those poor sailors it would have been a most pleasant voyage. Chief among the imaginary terrors were three which deserve especial mention. At nightfall on September 13 the ships had crossed the magnetic line of no variation, and Columbus was astonished to see that the compass-needle, instead of pointing a little to the right of the pole-star, began to sway toward the left, and next day this deviation increased. It was impossible to hide such a fact from the sharp eyes of the pilots, and all were seized with alarm at the suspicion that this witch instrument was beginning to play them some foul trick in punishment of their temerity; but Columbus was ready with an ingenious astronomical explanation, and their faith in the profundity of his knowledge prevailed over their terrors.

[Sidenote: The Sargasso Sea.]

The second alarm came on September 16, when they struck into vast meadows of floating seaweeds and grasses, abounding in tunny fish and crabs. They had now come more than 800 miles from Ferro and were entering the wonderful Sargasso Sea, that region of the Atlantic six times as large as France, where vast tangles of vegetation grow upon the surface of water that is more than 2,000 fathoms deep, and furnish sustenance for an untold wealth of fishy life.[515] To the eye of the mariner the Sargasso Sea presents somewhat the appearance of an endless green prairie, but modern ships plough through it with ease and so did the caravels of Columbus at first. After two or three days, however, the wind being light, their progress was somewhat impeded. It was not strange that the crews were frightened at such a sight. It seemed uncanny and weird, and revived ancient fancies about mysterious impassable seas and overbold mariners whose ships had been stuck fast in them. The more practical spirits were afraid of running aground upon submerged shoals, but all were somewhat reassured on this point when it was found that their longest plummet-lines failed to find bottom.

[Footnote 515: The situation of this Sargasso region in mid-ocean seems to be determined by its character as a quiet neutral ground between the great ocean-currents that flow past it on every side. Sargasso plants are found elsewhere upon the surface of the waves, but nowhere else do they congregate as here. There are reasons for supposing that in ancient times this region extended nearer to the African coast. Skylax (_Periplus_, cap. 109) says that beyond Kerne, at the mouth of Rio d' Ouro the sea cannot be navigated on account of the mud and seaweed. Sataspes, on his return to Persia, B. C. 470, told King Xerxes that his voyage failed because his ship stopped or was stuck fast. (Herodotus, iv. 43.) Festus Avienus mentions vast quantities of seaweed in the ocean west of the Pillars of Hercules:--

Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens Atque impeditur aestus ex uligine.... Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem, Sic segnis humor aequoris pigri stupet. Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites Exstare fucum, et saepe virgulti vice Retinere puppim, etc. Avienus, _Ora Maritima_, 108, 117.

See also Aristotle, _Meteorol._, ii. 1, 14; Pseudo-Aristotle, _De Mirab. Auscult._, p. 106; Theophrastus, _Historia plantarum_, iv. 7 Jornandes, _De rebus Geticis_, apud Muratori, tom. i.p. 191; according to Strabo (iii. 2, Sec. 7) tunny fish were caught in abundance in the ocean west of Spain, and were highly valued for the table on account of their fatness which was due to submarine vegetables on which they fed. Possibly the reports of these Sargasso meadows may have had some share in suggesting to Plato his notion of a huge submerged island Atlantis (_Timaeus_, 25; _Kritias_, 108; cf. the notion of a viscous sea in Plutarch, _De facie in Orbe Luna_, 26), Plato's fancy has furnished a theme for much wild speculation. See, for example, Bailly, _Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon_, Paris, 1779. The belief that there can ever have been such an island in that part of the Atlantic is disposed of by the fact that the ocean there is nowhere less than two miles in depth. See the beautiful map of the Atlantic sea-bottom in Alexander Agassiz's _Three Cruises of the Blake_, Boston, 1888, vol. i.p. 108, and compare chap. vi. of that noble work, on "The Permanence of Continents and of Oceanic Basins;" see also Wallace's _Island Life_, chap. vi. It was formerly supposed that the Sargasso plants grow on the sea-bottom, and becoming detached rise to the surface (Peter Martyr, _De rebus oceanicis_, dec. iii. lib. v. p. 53; Humboldt, _Personal Narrative_, book i. chap, i.); but it is now known that they are simply rooted in the surface water itself. "L'accumulation de ces plantes marines est l'exemple le plus frappant de plantes congeneres reunies sur le meme point. Ni les forets colossales de l'Himalaya, ni les graminees qui s'etendent a perte de vue dans les savanes americaines ou les steppes siberiens ne rivalisent avec ces prairies oceaniques. Jamais sur un espace aussi etendu, ne se rencontrent de telles masses de plantes semblables. Quand on a vu la mer des Sargasses, on n'oublie point un pareil spectacle." Paul Gaffarel, "La Mer des Sargasses," _Bulletin de Geographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e serie, tom. iv. p. 622.]

[Sidenote: The trade wind.]

On September 22 the journal reports "no more grass." They were in clear water again, and more than 1,400 geographical miles from the Canaries. A third source of alarm had already begun to disturb the sailors. They were discovering much more than they had bargained for. They were in the belt of the trade winds, and as the gentle but unfailing breeze wafted them steadily westward, doubts began to arise as to whether it would ever be possible to return. Fortunately soon after this question began to be discussed, the wind, jealous of its character for capriciousness even there, veered into the southwest.

[Sidenote: Impatience of the crews.]

By September 25 the Admiral's chief difficulty had come to be the impatience of his crews at not finding land. On that day there was a mirage, or some such illusion, which Columbus and all hands supposed to be a coast in front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at dawn next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights of strange birds and other signs of land kept raising hopes which were presently dashed again, and the men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to show that they were entering a realm of enchantment. Somebody, perhaps one of the released jail-birds, hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some night to push the Admiral overboard, it could be plausibly said that he had slipped and fallen while star-gazing. His situation grew daily more perilous, and the fact that he was an Italian commanding Spaniards did not help him. Perhaps what saved him was their vague belief in his superior knowledge; they may have felt that they should need him in going back.

[Sidenote: Change of course from W. to W. S. W.]

[Sidenote: Land ahead! Oct. 12 (N. S. 21), 1492.]

By October 4 there were ominous symptoms of mutiny, and the anxiety of Columbus was evinced in the extent of his bold understatement of that day's run,--138 miles instead of the true figure 189. For some days his pilots had been begging him to change his course; perhaps they had passed between islands. Anything for a change! On the 7th at sunrise, they had come 2,724 geographical miles from the Canaries, which was farther than the Admiral's estimate of the distance to Cipango; but according to his false statement of the runs, it appeared that they had come scarcely 2,200 miles. This leads one to suspect that in stating the length of the voyage, as he had so often done, at 700 leagues, he may have purposely made it out somewhat shorter than he really believed it to be. But now after coming more than 2,500 miles he began to fear that he might be sailing past Cipango on the north, and so he shifted his course two points to larboard, or west-southwest. If a secret knowledge of Vinland had been his guiding-star he surely would not have turned his helm that way; but a glance at the Toscanelli map shows what was in his mind. Numerous flights of small birds confirmed his belief that land at the southwest was not far off. The change of direction was probably fortunate. If he had persisted in keeping on the parallel, 720 miles would have brought him to the coast of Florida, a little south of Cape Malabar. After the change he had but 505 miles of water before him, and the temper of the sailors was growing more dangerous with every mile,[516]--until October 11, when the signs of land became unmistakable, and the wildest excitement prevailed. A reward of 10,000 maravedis had been promised to the person who should first discover land, and ninety pair of eyes were strained that night with looking. About ten o'clock the Admiral, standing on the tower-like poop of his vessel, saw a distant light moving as if somebody were running along the shore with a torch. This interpretation was doubted, but a few hours later a sailor on the Pinta saw land distinctly, and soon it was visible to all, a long low coast about five miles distant. This was at two in the morning of Friday, October 12,[517]--just ten weeks since they had sailed from Palos, just thirty-three days since they had lost sight of the coast of Ferro. The sails were now taken in, and the ships lay to, awaiting the dawn.

[Footnote 516: The often-repeated story that a day or two before the end of the voyage Columbus capitulated with his crew, promising to turn back if land were not seen within three days, rests upon the single and relatively inferior authority of Oviedo. It is not mentioned by Las Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr or Ferdinand Columbus, and it is discredited by the tone of the Admiral's journal, which shows as unconquerable determination on the last day of the voyage as on any previous day. Cf. Irving, vol. i. p. 187.]

[Footnote 517: Applying the Gregorian Calendar, or "new style," it becomes the 21st. The four hundredth anniversary will properly fall on October 21, 1892.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The crews go ashore.]

At daybreak the boats were lowered and Columbus, with a large part of his company, went ashore. Upon every side were trees of unknown kinds, and the landscape seemed exceedingly beautiful. Confident that they must have attained the object for which they had set sail, the crews were wild with exultation. Their heads were dazed with fancies of princely fortunes close at hand. The officers embraced Columbus or kissed his hands, while the sailors threw themselves at his feet, craving pardon and favour.

[Sidenote: The astonished natives.]

[Sidenote: Guanahani: where was it?]

These proceedings were watched with unutterable amazement and awe by a multitude of men, women, and children of cinnamon hue, different from any kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All were stark naked and most of them were more or less greased and painted. They thought that the ships were sea-monsters and the white men supernatural creatures descended from the sky.[518] At first they fled in terror as these formidable beings came ashore, but presently, as they found themselves unmolested, curiosity began to overcome fear, and they slowly approached the Spaniards, stopping at every few paces to prostrate themselves in adoration. After a time, as the Spaniards received them with encouraging nods and smiles, they waxed bold enough to come close to the visitors and pass their hands over them, doubtless to make sure that all this marvel was a reality and not a mere vision. Experiences in Africa had revealed the eagerness of barbarians to trade off their possessions for trinkets, and now the Spaniards began exchanging glass beads and hawks' bells for cotton yarn, tame parrots, and small gold ornaments. Some sort of conversation in dumb show went on, and Columbus naturally interpreted everything in such wise as to fit his theories. Whether the natives understood him or not when he asked them where they got their gold, at any rate they pointed to the south, and thus confirmed Columbus in his suspicion that he had come to some island a little to the north of the opulent Cipango. He soon found that it was a small island, and he understood the name of it to be Guanahani. He took formal possession of it for Castile, just as the discoverers of the Cape Verde islands and the Guinea coasts had taken possession of those places for Portugal; and he gave it a Christian name, San Salvador. That name has since the seventeenth century been given to Cat island, but perhaps in pursuance of a false theory of map-makers; it is not proved that Cat island is the Guanahani of Columbus. All that can positively be asserted of Guanahani is that it was one of the Bahamas: there has been endless discussion as to which one, and the question is not easy to settle. Perhaps the theory of Captain Gustavus Fox, of the United States navy, is on the whole best supported. Captain Fox maintains that the true Guanahani was the little island now known as Samana or Atwood's Cay.[519] The problem well illustrates the difficulty in identifying any route from even a good description of landmarks, without the help of persistent proper names, especially after the lapse of time has somewhat altered the landmarks. From this point of view it is a very interesting problem and has its lessons for us; otherwise it is of no importance.

[Footnote 518: This is a common notion among barbarians. "The Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners _papalangi_, or 'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside." Max Mueller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii. p. 268.]

[Footnote 519: "An Attempt to solve the Problem of the First Landing Place of Columbus in the New World," in _United States Coast and Geodetic Survey--Report for 1880--Appendix 18_, Washington, 1882.]

[Sidenote: Groping for Cipango and the route to Quinsay.]

A cruise of ten days among the Bahamas, with visits to four of the islands, satisfied Columbus that he was in the ocean just east of Cathay, for Marco Polo had described it as studded with thousands of spice-bearing islands, and the Catalan map shows that some of these were supposed to be inhabited by naked savages. To be sure, he could not find any spices or valuable drugs, but the air was full of fragrance and the trees and herbs were strange in aspect and might mean anything; so for a while he was ready to take the spices on trust. Upon inquiries about gold the natives always pointed to the south, apparently meaning Cipango; and in that direction Columbus steered on the 25th of October, intending to stay in that wealthy island long enough to obtain all needful information concerning its arts and commerce. Thence a sail of less than ten days would bring him to the Chinese coast, along which he might comfortably cruise northwesterly as far as Quinsay and deliver to the Great Khan a friendly letter with which Ferdinand and Isabella had provided him. Alas, poor Columbus--unconscious prince of discoverers--groping here in Cuban waters for the way to a city on the other side of the globe and to a sovereign whose race had more than a century since been driven from the throne and expelled from the very soil of Cathay! Could anything be more pathetic, or better illustrate the profound irony with which our universe seems to be governed?

[Sidenote: Columbus reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a certain Asiatic prince.]

On reaching Cuba the Admiral was charmed with the marvellous beauty of the landscape,--a point in which he seems to have been unusually sensitive. He found pearl oysters along the shore, and although no splendid cities as yet appeared, he did not doubt that he had reached Cipango. But his attempts at talking with the amazed natives only served to darken counsel. He understood them to say that Cuba was part of the Asiatic continent, and that there was a king in the neighbourhood who was at war with the Great Khan! So he sent two messengers to seek this refractory potentate,--one of them a converted Jew acquainted with Arabic, a language sometimes heard far eastward in Asia, as Columbus must have known. These envoys found pleasant villages, with large houses, surrounded with fields of such unknown vegetables as maize, potatoes, and tobacco; they saw men and women smoking cigars,[520] and little dreamed that in that fragrant and soothing herb there was a richer source of revenue than the spices of the East. They passed acres of growing cotton and saw in the houses piles of yarn waiting to be woven into rude cloth or twisted into nets for hammocks. But they found neither cities nor kings, neither gold nor spices, and after a tedious quest returned, somewhat disappointed, to the coast.

[Footnote 520: The first recorded mention of tobacco is in Columbus's diary for November 20, 1492:--"Hallaron los dos cristianos por el camino mucha gente que atravesaba a sus pueblos, mugeres y hombres con un tizon en la mano, yerbas para tomar sus sahumerios que acostumbraban," i. e. "the two Christians met on the road a great many people going to their villages, men and women with brands in their hands, made of herbs for taking their customary smoke." Navarrete, tom. i. p. 51.]

[Sidenote: Columbus turns eastward; Pinzon deserts him.]

Columbus seems now to have become perplexed, and to have vacillated somewhat in his purposes. If this was the continent of Asia it was nearer than he had supposed, and how far mistaken he had been in his calculations no one could tell. But where was Cipango? He gathered from the natives that there was a great island to the southeast, abounding in gold, and so he turned his prows in that direction. On the 20th of November he was deserted by Martin Pinzon, whose ship could always outsail the others. It seems to have been Pinzon's design to get home in advance with such a story as would enable him to claim for himself an undue share of credit for the discovery of the Indies. This was the earliest instance of a kind of treachery such as too often marred the story of Spanish exploration and conquest in the New World.

[Sidenote: Columbus arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan.]

[Sidenote: Wreck of the Santa Maria, Dec. 25, 1492.]

For a fortnight after Pinzon's desertion Columbus crept slowly eastward along the coast of Cuba, now and then landing to examine the country and its products; and it seemed to him that besides pearls and mastic and aloes he found in the rivers indications of gold. When he reached the cape at the end of the island he named it Alpha and Omega, as being the extremity of Asia,--Omega from the Portuguese point of view, Alpha from his own. On the 6th of December he landed upon the northwestern coast of the island of Hayti, which he called Espanola, Hispaniola, or "Spanish land."[521] Here, as the natives seemed to tell him of a region to the southward and quite inland which abounded in gold, and which they called Cibao, the Admiral at once caught upon the apparent similarity of sounds and fancied that Cibao must be Cipango, and that at length he had arrived upon that island of marvels. It was much nearer the Asiatic mainland (i. e. Cuba) than he had supposed, but then, it was beginning to appear that in any case somebody's geography must be wrong. Columbus was enchanted with the scenery. "The land is elevated," he says, "with many mountains and peaks ... most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms, accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so tall that they seem to touch the sky; and I have been told that they never lose their foliage. The nightingale [i. e. some kind of thrush] and other small birds of a thousand kinds were singing in the month of November [December] when I was there."[522] Before he had done much toward exploring this paradise, a sudden and grave mishap quite altered his plans. On Christmas morning, between midnight and dawn, owing to careless disobedience of orders on the part of the helmsman, the flag-ship struck upon a sand-bank near the present site of Port au Paix. All attempts to get her afloat were unavailing, and the waves soon beat her to pieces.

[Footnote 521: Not "Little Spain," as the form of the word, so much like a diminutive, might seem to indicate. It is simply the feminine of _Espanol_, "Spanish," sc. _tierra_ or _isla_. Columbus believed that the island was larger than Spain. See his letter to Gabriel Sanchez, in Harrisse, tom. i. p. 428.]

[Footnote 522: Columbus to Santangel, February 15, 1493 (Navarrete, tom. i. p. 168).]

[Sidenote: Columbus decides to go back to Spain.]

This catastrophe brought home, with startling force, to the mind of Columbus, the fact that the news of his discovery of land was not yet known in Europe. As for the Pinta and her insubordinate commander, none could say whether they would ever be seen again or whether their speedy arrival in Spain might not portend more harm than good to Columbus. His armament was now reduced to the little undecked Nina alone, such a craft as we should deem about fit for a summer excursion on Long Island Sound. What if his party should all perish, or be stranded helpless on these strange coasts, before any news of their success should reach the ears of friends in Europe! Then the name of Columbus would serve as a by-word for foolhardiness, and his mysterious fate would simply deter other expeditions from following in the same course. Obviously the first necessity of the situation was to return to Spain immediately and report what had already been done. Then it would be easy enough to get ships and men for a second voyage.

[Sidenote: Building of the blockhouse, La Navidad.]

[Sidenote: Meeting with Pinzon.]

This decision led to the founding of an embryo colony upon Hispaniola. There was not room enough for all the party to go in the Nina, and quite a number begged to be left behind, because they found life upon the island lazy and the natives, especially the women, seemed well-disposed toward them. So a blockhouse was built out of the wrecked ship's timbers and armed with her guns, and in commemoration of that eventful Christmas it was called Fort Nativity (_La Navidad_). Here forty men were left behind, with provisions enough for a whole year, and on January 4, 1493, the rest of the party went on board the Nina and set sail for Spain. Two days later in following the northern coast of Hispaniola they encountered the Pinta, whose commander had been delayed by trading with the natives and by finding some gold. Pinzon tried to explain his sudden disappearance by alleging that stress of weather had parted him from his comrades, but his excuses were felt to be lame and improbable. However it may have been with his excuses, there was no doubt as to the lameness of his foremast; it had been too badly sprung to carry much sail, so that the Pinta could not again run away from her consort.

[Sidenote: Terrible storm in mid-ocean, Feb., 1493.]

On this return voyage the Admiral, finding the trade winds dead against him, took a northeasterly course until he had passed the thirty-seventh parallel and then headed straight toward Spain. On the 12th of February a storm was brewing, and during the next four days it raged with such terrific violence that it is a wonder how those two frail caravels ever came out of it. They were separated this time not to meet again upon the sea. Expecting in all likelihood to be engulfed in the waves with his tiny craft, Columbus sealed and directed to Ferdinand and Isabella two brief reports of his discovery, written upon parchment. Each of these he wrapped in a cloth and inclosed in the middle of a large cake of wax, which was then securely shut up in a barrel. One of the barrels was flung into the sea, the other remained standing on the little quarter-deck to await the fate of the caravel. The anxiety was not lessened by the sight of land on the 15th, for it was impossible to approach it so as to go ashore, and there was much danger of being dashed to pieces.

[Sidenote: Cold reception at the Azores.]

At length on the 18th, the storm having abated, the ship's boat went ashore and found that it was the island of St. Mary, one of the Azores. It is worthy of note that such skilful sailors as the Nina's captain, Vicente Yanez Pinzon, and the pilot Ruiz were so confused in their reckoning as to suppose themselves near the Madeiras, whereas Columbus had correctly maintained that they were approaching the Azores,--a good instance of his consummate judgment in nautical questions.[523] From the Portuguese governor of the island this Spanish company met with a very ungracious reception. A party of sailors whom Columbus sent ashore to a small chapel of the Virgin, to give thanks for their deliverance from shipwreck, were seized and held as prisoners for five days. It afterwards appeared that this was done in pursuance of general instructions from the king of Portugal to the governors of his various islands. If Columbus had gone ashore he would probably have been arrested himself. As it was, he took such a high tone and threatened to such good purpose that the governor of St. Mary was fain to give up his prisoners for fear of bringing on another war between Portugal and Castile.

[Footnote 523: Las Casas, tom. i. pp. 443, 449.]

[Sidenote: Columbus is driven ashore in Portugal, where the king is advised to have him assassinated;]

[Sidenote: but to offend Spain so grossly would be dangerous.]

Having at length got away from this unfriendly island, as the Nina was making her way toward Cape St. Vincent and within 400 miles of it, she was seized by another fierce tempest and driven upon the coast of Portugal, where Columbus and his crew were glad of a chance to run into the river Tagus for shelter. The news of his voyage and his discoveries aroused intense excitement in Lisbon. Astonishment was mingled with chagrin at the thought that the opportunity for all this glory and profit had first been offered to Portugal and foolishly lost. The king even now tried to persuade himself that Columbus had somehow or other been trespassing upon the vast and vague undiscovered dominions granted to the Crown of Portugal by Pope Eugenius IV. Some of the king's counsellors are said to have urged him to have Columbus assassinated; it would be easy enough to provoke such a high-spirited man into a quarrel and then run him through the body.[524] To clearer heads, however, the imprudence of such a course was manifest. It was already impossible to keep the news of the discovery from reaching Spain, and Portugal could not afford to go to war with her stronger neighbour. In fact even had John II. been base enough to resort to assassination, which seems quite incompatible with the general character of Lope de Vega's "perfect prince," Columbus was now too important a personage to be safely interfered with. So he was invited to court and made much of. On the 13th of March he set sail again and arrived in the harbour of Palos at noon of the 15th. His little caravel was promptly recognized by the people, and as her story flew from mouth to mouth all the business of the town was at an end for that day.[525]

[Footnote 524: This story rests upon the explicit statement of a contemporary Portuguese historian of high authority, Garcia de Resende, _Chronica del Rey Dom Joao II._, Lisbon, 1622, cap. clxiv. (written about 1516); see also Vasconcellos, _Vida del Rey Don Juan II._, Madrid, 1639, lib. vi.]

[Footnote 525: "When they learnt that she returned in triumph from the discovery of a world, the whole community broke forth into transports of joy." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 318. This is projecting our present knowledge into the past. We now know that Columbus had discovered a new world. He did not so much as suspect that he had done anything of the sort; neither did the people of Palos.]

[Sidenote: Columbus and Pinzon at Palos; death of Pinzon.]

Towards evening, while the bells were ringing and the streets brilliant with torches, another vessel entered the harbour and dropped anchor. She was none other than the Pinta! The storm had driven her to Bayonne, whence Martin Pinzon instantly despatched a message to Ferdinand and Isabella, making great claims for himself and asking permission to wait upon them with a full account of the discovery. As soon as practicable he made his way to Palos, but when on arriving he saw the Nina already anchored in the harbour his guilty heart failed him. He took advantage of the general hub-bub to slink ashore as quickly and quietly as possible, and did not dare to show himself until after the Admiral had left for Seville. The news from Columbus reached the sovereigns before they had time to reply to the message of Pinzon; so when their answer came to him it was cold and stern and forbade him to appear in their presence. Pinzon was worn out with the hardships of the homeward voyage, and this crushing reproof was more than he could bear. His sudden death, a few days afterward, was generally attributed to chagrin.[526]

[Sidenote: Columbus is received by the sovereigns at Barcelona, April, 1493.]

[Sidenote: General excitement at the news that a way to the Indies had been found.]

From Seville the Admiral was summoned to attend court at Barcelona, where he was received with triumphal honours. He was directed to seat himself in the presence of the sovereigns, a courtesy usually reserved for royal personages.[527] Intense interest was felt in his specimens of stuffed birds and small mammals, his live parrots, his collection of herbs which he supposed to have medicinal virtues, his few pearls and trinkets of gold, and especially his six painted and bedizened barbarians, the survivors of ten with whom he had started from Hispaniola. Since in the vague terminology of that time the remote and scarcely known parts of Asia were called the Indies, and since the islands and coasts just discovered were Indies, of course these red men must be Indians. So Columbus had already named them in his first letter written from the Nina, off the Azores, sent by special messenger from Palos, and now in April, 1493, printed at Barcelona, containing the particulars of his discovery,--a letter appropriately addressed to the worthy Santangel but for whose timely intervention he might have ridden many a weary league on that mule of his to no good purpose.[528] It was generally assumed without question that the Admiral's theory of his discovery must be correct, that the coast of Cuba must be the eastern extremity of China, that the coast of Hispaniola must be the northern extremity of Cipango, and that a direct route--much shorter than that which Portugal had so long been seeking--had now been found to those lands of illimitable wealth described by Marco Polo.[529] To be sure Columbus had not as yet seen the evidences of this Oriental splendour, and had been puzzled at not finding them, but he felt confident that he had come very near them and would come full upon them in a second voyage. There was nobody who knew enough to refute these opinions,[530] and really why should not this great geographer, who had accomplished so much already which people had scouted as impossible,--why should he not know what he was about? It was easy enough now to get men and money for the second voyage. When the Admiral sailed from Cadiz on September 25, 1493, it was with seventeen ships carrying 1,500 men. Their dreams were of the marble palaces of Quinsay, of isles of spices, and the treasures of Prester John. The sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such untold riches were vouchsafed them by the special decree of Heaven, as a reward for having overcome the Moor at Granada and banished the Jews from Spain.[531] Columbus shared these views and regarded himself as a special instrument for executing the divine decrees. He renewed his vow to rescue the Holy Sepulchre, promising within the next seven years to equip at his own expense a crusading army of 50,000 foot and 4,000 horse; within five years thereafter he would follow this with a second army of like dimensions.

[Footnote 526: Charlevoix, _Histoire de l'isle Espagnole, ou de St. Domingue_, Paris, 1730, liv. ii.; Munoz, _Historia de las Indias o Nuevo Mundo_, Madrid, 1793, lib. iv. Sec. 14.]

[Footnote 527: He was also allowed to quarter the royal arms with his own, "which consisted of a group of golden islands amid azure billows. To these were afterwards added five anchors, with the celebrated motto, well known as being carved on his sepulchre." Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_, pt. i. chap. vii. This statement about the motto is erroneous. See below, p. 514. Considering the splendour of the reception given to Columbus, and the great interest felt in his achievement, Mr. Prescott is surprised at finding no mention of this occasion in the local annals of Barcelona, or in the royal archives of Aragon. He conjectures, with some probability, that the cause of the omission may have been what an American would call "sectional" jealousy. This Cathay and Cipango business was an affair of Castile's, and, as such, quite beneath the notice of patriotic Aragonese archivists! That is the way history has too often been treated. With most people it is only a kind of ancestor worship.]

[Footnote 528: The unique copy of this first edition of this Spanish letter is a small folio of two leaves, or four pages. It was announced for sale in Quaritch's Catalogue, April 16, 1891, No. 111, p. 47, for L1,750. Evidently most book-lovers will have to content themselves with the facsimile published in London, 1891, price two guineas. A unique copy of a Spanish reprint in small quarto, made in 1493, is preserved in the Ambrosian library at Milan. In 1889 Messrs. Ellis & Elvey, of London, published a facsimile _alleged_ to have been made from an edition of about the same date as the Ambrosian quarto; but there are good reasons for believing that these highly respectable publishers have been imposed upon. It is a time just now when fictitious literary discoveries of this sort may command a high price, and the dealer in early Americana must keep his eyes open. See Quaritch's note, _op. cit._ p. 49; and Justin Winsor's letter in _The Nation_, April 9, 1891, vol. lii. p. 298.]

[Footnote 529: "The lands, therefore, which Columbus had visited were called the West Indies; and as he seemed to have entered upon a vast region of unexplored countries, existing in a state of nature, the whole received the comprehensive appellation of the New World." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 333. These are very grave errors, again involving the projection of our modern knowledge into the past. The lands which Columbus had visited were called simply the Indies; it was not until long after his death, and after the crossing of the Pacific ocean, that they were distinguished from the East Indies. The _New World_ was not at first a "comprehensive appellation" for the countries discovered by Columbus; it was at first applied to one particular region never visited by him, viz. to that portion of the southeastern coast of South America first explored by Vespucius. See vol. ii. pp. 129, 130.]

[Footnote 530: Peter Martyr, however, seems to have entertained some vague doubts, inasmuch as this assumed nearness of the China coast on the west implied a greater eastward extension of the Asiatic continent than seemed to him probable:--"Insulas reperit plures; has esse, de quibus fit apud cosmographos mentio extra oceanum orientalem, adjacentes Indiae arbitrantur. Nec inficior ego penitus, _quamvis sphaerae magnitudo aliter sentire videatur_; neque enim desunt qui parvo tractu a finibus Hispaniae distare littus Indicum putent." _Opus Epist._, No. 135. The italicizing is mine.]

[Footnote 531: This abominable piece of wickedness, driving 200,000 of Spain's best citizens from their homes and their native land, was accomplished in pursuance of an edict signed March 30, 1492. There is a brief account of it in Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_, pt. i. chap. vi.]

[Sidenote: This voyage was an event without any parallel in history.]

Thus nobody had the faintest suspicion of what had been done. In the famous letter to Santangel there is of course not a word about a New World. The grandeur of the achievement was quite beyond the ken of the generation that witnessed it. For we have since come to learn that in 1492 the contact between the eastern and the western halves of our planet was first really begun, and the two streams of human life which had flowed on for countless ages apart were thenceforth to mingle together. The first voyage of Columbus is thus a unique event in the history of mankind. Nothing like it was ever done before, and nothing like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for a future Columbus to conquer. The era of which this great Italian mariner was the most illustrious representative has closed forever.