Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery

d with the opening of his career. The critical discernment of Harrisse and other recent investigators has since then done something to make the confusion even more apparent by unsettling conviction

solute clarification of the

educ

, which continued, as long as he remained in Italy, that of his father. We know from the manuscripts which have come down to us that Columbus acquired the manual dexterity of a good penman; and if some existing drawings are not apocryphal, he had a deft hand, too, in making a spirited sketch with a few strokes. His drawing of maps, which we are also told about, implies that he had fulfilled Ptolemy's definition of that a

SCRIBED T

Pav

n the whole narrative of his university experiences, and thinks Pavia at this time offered no peculiar advantages for an aspiring seaman, to be compared with the practical instruction whi

BENINCAS

. Martin

to

not more than fourteen years old. The attractions of the sea at that period of the fifteenth century were great for adventurous youths. There was a spice of piracy in even the soberest ventures of commerce. The ships of one Christian state preyed on another. Private ventures were buccaneerish, and the hand of the Catalonian a

nry, the

the great inland sea, there might have come jumping from port to port, westerly along the Mediterranean shores, the story of the death of

FTEENTH

e Isolar

s expe

n his lot with that naval armament, and embarked with his own subsidiary command. There is mention of a certain doughty captain, Colombo by name, as leading one part of this expeditionary force. He was very likely one of those French corsairs of that name, already mentioned, and likely to have been a man of importance in the Franco-Genoese train. He has, indeed, been sometimes made a kinsm

n 1461, because the reverses of that year drove the unfortunate René into permanent retirement. The rebuttal of this testimony depends largely upon the date of Columbus's birth; and if that is placed in 1446, as seems well established, Columbus, the Genoese mariner, could hardly have commanded a galley in

early experiences; but, unfortunately, Columbus was chronically given to looseness of statement, and the testimony of his contemporaries is often the better a

rial records of Savona are correct in calling Columbus a wool-comber in 1472, and he was of the Savona family, and born in 1446, he was then twenty-six years old, and of the adult age that is claimed by the Psalter and by other early writers, who either knew or mentioned him, when he began his seafaring life. In that case he could have had

g life of Columbus, whenever beginning, is deserving of much credit, an

. Certain reports which most likely concern his namesakes, the French corsairs, are sometimes associated with

e daily life of the school-boy, apprentice, cabin boy, mariner, and corsair, even to the receiving of a wound which we know trou