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

4

nterprise

upon the vasty deep, or following the western coast of Africa, had for some time been a not unusual topic of talk among the seamen of the Mediterranean. It may be only less probable that an intercourse of seafaring Mediterranean people with the Arabs of the Levant had brought rumors of voyages in the ocean that washed the eastern shores of Africa. These stories from the Orient might well have induced some to specul

stions stood in Portugal in 1473, and

ese sea

on the Sea

Sanut

into the enticing and yet forbidding Sea of Darkness, not often perhaps willingly out of sight of land; but storms not infrequently gave them the experience of sea and sky, and nothing else. The great ocean was an untried waste for cartography. A few straggling beliefs in islands lying wes

Cana

hese islands stand in the planisphere of Sanuto at the beginning of the fourteenth century, to be casually visited by the Spaniards and others for a hundred years and more before the Norman, Jean de Béthencourt, in the beginning of the fifteenth centur

ese in P

whose exploits may not have been unknown to Columbus, that t

de

en considered, for several reasons, the work of Genoese, and as probably recording the voyage by the Genoese Pezagno for the Portuguese king,-at least Major holds that to be demonstrable. The real right of the Portuguese to t

or

a

ter group of the Azores had been found by Portuguese vessels under Genoese commanders. We find the

LAURENTIAN

or's Prin

rt M

achin's company, but some of his crew reached Africa in a boat and were made captives by the Moors. In 1416, the Spaniards sent an expedition to redeem Christian captives held by these same Moors,

and Madeira

and subsequently, under the prompting of Morales, he rediscovered Madeira, then uninhabited. This was in 1418 or 1419, and though there are some diverg

estrell

atched colonists to occupy the two islands, and among them was a gentleman of the household, Bartolomeo Perestrello, whose name, in a d

a

ry to order his seamen to rediscover those islands. That they are laid down on Valsequa's Catalan map of 1439 is held to indicate the accompli

's map

er

the island-studded waste of the Atlantic. Between this date and the period of the arrival of Columbus in Portugal, the best known names of the map makers of

or

ered the island of Flores. From what Columbus says in the journal of his first voyage, forty years later, this

ANDREA

eog. Ephemeride

g themselves to these hazards of the open ocean. Without knowing it they had, in the discovery of Flores, actually reached the fa

an route

osmographical problem lying to the south,-a

plants were nobler, animals were statelier. Everything but man was more lordly. He had been fed there so luxuriously that he was believed to have dwindled in character. Europe was the world of active intelligence, the inheritor of Gre

in

urse (A. D. 166). With India, China had some trade by sea as early as the fourth century, and with Babylonia possibly in the fifth century. There were Christian Nestorian missionaries there as early as the

th

co

sions for the Church, returned to Europe respectively in 1247 and 1255. It was not, however, till Marco Polo returned from his visit to Kublai Khan, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, that a new enlargement of the ideas of Europe respecting the far Orient took place. The influence of his marvelous tales continued down to t

route and

frica

at the south so as to connect with a southern prolongation of eastern Asia. This view had been adopted by Ptolemy, whose opinions were dominating at this time the Western mind. Nevertheless, that Africa ended in a southern cape seems to have been conceived of by those who doubted the authority of Ptolemy early enough for Sanuto, in 1306, to portray such a cape in his planisphere. If Sanuto really knew of its exis

ast discov

such a route to Asia as might enable the people of the Iberian peninsula to share with those of the Italian the trade with the East, which the latter had long conducted wholly or

nry, the

n laid before the English reader within twenty years, abundantly elucidated by the careful hand of Richard H. Major. The Prince had assisted King Jo?o in the attack on the Moors at Ceuta

Boj

Bojador for a while blocked their way, just as it had stayed other hardy adventurers even before the birth of Henry. "We may wonder," says Helps, "that he never took personal command of any of his expeditions, b

gr

ether he so organized his efforts as to establish here a school of navigation is in dispute, but it is probably merely a question of what constitutes a school. There seems no doubt that he built an observatory and drew about him skillful men in the nautical

seama

h he couples a consideration of the nautical astronomy with the needs of this age of discovery, we find an easy path among the intricacies of the

Arte de

gar of Raymond Lully, or Lullius, gave mariners a handbook, which, so far as

NRY THE N

in the National

rob

inized Sacrobosco. His Sphera Mundi was not put into type till 1472, just before Columbus's arrival in Portugal,-a work which is mainly paraphrased from Ptol

load

the magnet. We are in much doubt, however, as to the prevalence of its use in navigation. If we are to believe some writers on the subject, it was known to the Norsemen a

tic n

ape record by the chroniclers of maritime progress. In the fourteenth century, the adventurous spirit of the Catalans and the Normans stretched the scope of their observations from the Hebrides on th

ions for

astr

instrument, which had been long in use among the Mediterranean seamen, and had been described by Raymond Lullius in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Before Columbus's time it had been somewhat improved by Johannes Müller of K?nigsberg, who beca

recko

favorable circumstances was not usually beyond four miles an hour. The hourglass gave them the time, and afforded the multiple according as the eye adjusted the apparent number of miles which the ship was making hour by hour. This was the method by which Col

eaman

how he has made the history of the log a subject of special investigation in the sixth volume of his Examen Critique de l'Histo

ABE OF REG

on ocean steamers, I find that experienced commanders quite as willingly depend on the report of their engineers as to the number of revolutions which the wheel or screw has made in the twenty-four hours. In this they were anticipated by the

NUS'S ASTR

Nuremberg, shown in E. Mayer's Die

and Normans, there seems to have been no skill beyond that of the eyes in measuring the speed of vessels. After the days of Columbus, it is only when we come to the voyages

enry's c

d contests with the Moor. He was the staple and lofty exemplar of this great age of discovery. He was more so than Columbus, and rendered the adventitious career of the Genoese possible. He knew how to manage men, and stuck devotedly to his work. He respected his helpers too much to drug them with deceit, and there is a straightforward honesty of purpose in his endeavors. He was a trainer of men, and they grew courageous under his instruction. To sail into the supposed burning z

ador pas

f Hercules, and follow him southerly possibly to Cape Verde or its vicinity; and this, if Major's arguments are to be accepted, is the only antecedent venture beyond Cape Bojador, though there have been claims set up for the Genoese, the Catalans, and the Dieppese. That the map of Marino Sanuto in 1306, and the so-called Laurentian portolano of 1351, both of which establish a vague southerly limit to Africa, rather give expression to a theory than chronicle the experience of navigators is the opinion of Major. It is of course possible that some indefinite knowledge

OF AFRICA

The Pope had granted to the Portuguese monarchy the exclusive right to discovered la

nco pass

ll pushed on little by little, bringing home in 1442 some negroes for slaves, the firs

de reach

asterly trend did much to encourage the Portuguese, with the illusory hope that the way to India was at last opened. T

osto,

erde I

hern Cross. In the following year, still patronized by Prince Henry, who fitted out one of his vessels, Cadamosto discovered the Cape Verde Islands, or at least his narrative would indicate that he did. By comparison of documents, however, Major has made i

O'S WORL

ro's ma

INCE HENRY

or's Prin

enry die

Bianco, a famous cartographer of the time. This great map came to Portugal the year before the Prince died, and it stands as his final record, left behind him at his death, November 13, 1460, to attest his constancy and leadership. The pecunia

PRINCE HEN

or's Prin

that an Indian junk from the East had rounded the cape with the sun in 1420. In this Mauro map the easterly trend of the coast beyond Cape Verde is adequately shown, but it is mad

eone, Go

M

ld Coast were farmed out in 1469, it was agreed that discovery should be pushed a hundred leagues farther south annually; and by 1474, when the contract expired, Fernam G

content with the rich product of the Guinea coast that it was some years later before the Portuguese began to push still farther to the south. The desire to extend