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

f his

4

he escaped from a burning ship by swimming to land with the aid of an oar. It is easily proved, however, that notarial entries in Italy show him to have been in that country on August 7, 1473. We may, indeed, by

d naval

mbus's arrival in Portugal, since this particular action is known to have taken place on August 22, 1485. Those who defend the Historie, like D'Avezac, claim that its account simply confounds the battle of 1485 with an earlier one, and that the story of the oar must be accepted as an incident of this supposable anterior fight. The action in 1485 took

rrival in

doubt its inconsistencies and anachronisms, and, once discarded, we are thrown back upon the notarial evidence in Italy, by which we may venture to accept the date of 1473-74 as that of the entrance of Columbus into Portugal. Irving, though he discards the associated incidents, accepts the earlie

maritime d

t explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, without profiting in the slightest degree through territorial return. Cadamosto and Cabot, the Venetians, Columbus, the Genoese, Vespucius and Verrazano, the Florentines, are, on the wh

l, there is not a single act of his life that can be credited with an exact

ion in

books, and that Christopher naturally fell, for a while, into similar occupations. He was not, we are also told, unmindful of his father's distresses in Italy, when he disposed of his small earnings. We likewise know

country when the incident occurred at Lisbon which led

marr

of Bartolomeo Perestrello, a gentleman of Italian origin, who is associated with the colonization of Madeira and Porto Santo. From anything which Columbus himself says and is preserved to us, we know nothing more than that he desired in his will that masses should be said for the repose of her soul; for she was then long dead, and, as

erest

ter the island had been discovered by one of the expeditions which had been down the African coast. It is of him the story goes that, taking some rabbits thither, their progeny so quickly possessed the island that its settlers deserted it! Such genealogical information as can be acquired of this earliest Perestrello is against the supposition of his being the father of Felipa Mo?iz, but r

nd of the island of Porto Santo, by another son-in-law, Pedro Correa da Cunha, who married a daughter of his first marriage,-o

sister had married the Perestrello of the Historie story. The successive wills of Diego Columbus, it may be observed, call her in one (1509) Philippa Mo?iz, and in the other (1523) Philippa Mu?iz, without the addition of Perestrello. The genealogical table of the count's monograph, on the other hand, makes Felipa to be the child of Isabella Mo?iz, who was the second

's son D

e at Lisbon, and not before 1474 at the earliest, a date not difficult to reconcile with the year (1473-74) now held to be that of his arrival in Portugal. It is supposed that it was while Columbus was living at Porto Santo, where his wife h

rello'

aw, Perestrello, that Columbus found documents and maps which prompted him to the conception of a western passage to Asia. In that case, this may perhaps have bee

lor dying in C

olumbus, and had died there, but not before he had disclosed to him a discovery he had made of land to the west. This story is not told in any writer that is now known before Gomara (1552), and we are warned by Benzoni that in Gomara's hands this pilot story was simply

Mela, St

Solinus,

Pomponius Mela began with the first edition in Latin, which was printed at Milan in 1471, followed soon by other editions in Venice. The De Situ Orbis of Strabo had already been given to the world in Latin as early as 1469, and during the next few years this text was several times reprinted at Rome and Venice. The teaching of the sphericity of the earth in the astronomical poem of Manilius, long a favorite with the monks of the Middle Ages, who repeated it in their la

elli's

ter to

merchant settled in Lisbon. It seems probable that no knowledge of Martinez's correspondence with Toscanelli had come to the notice of Columbus; and that the message which the Genoese sent to the Florentine was due simply to the same current rumors of Toscanelli's views which had attracted the attention of the king. So in replying to Columbus Toscanelli simply shortened his task by inclosing, with a brief introduction, a copy of the letter, which he says he had sent "some days before

s in the minds of thinking men, it can hardly be denied that the latent faith in a westward passage only needed a vigilant mind to develop the theory, and an adventurous spirit to prove its correctness. The developme

iting of Columbus himself, on the flyleaf of an ?neas Sylvius (1477), once belonging to Columbus, and still preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville. The letter which is given in the Historie is accompanied by an antescript, which says that the copy had been sent to Columbus at his request, and that it had been originally addre

s visions o

arcana of the Zu?i have been in our own days. Two hundred towns, whose marble bridges spanned a single river, and whose commerce could incite the cupidity of the world, was a tale easily to stir numerous circles of listeners in the maritime towns of the Medit

which depicted his notions of the Asiatic coast lying over against that of Spain, is lost to us, but various attempts have been made to restore it, as is done in the sketch annexed. It will be a precious memorial, if ever recovered, w

AP AS RESTORED

sage we

ble, it was seriously claimed that the vast stretch of its extension could be broken by a halfway station on Jacque

ill

oretical discoverers in planning the chances of a desperate voyage far out into a sea of gorgons and chimeras dire. Toscanelli's map sought to direct the course of any one who d

ich the Portuguese had laid that island down in their charts in the latitude of Lisbon, as one occupied by their people in 714, when Spain was conquered by the Moo

lands of th

ts. In part they were the a?rial creation of popular mythologies, going back to a remoteness of which it is impossible to trace the beginning, and which got a variable color from the popular fancies of succeeding generations. The whole subject is curiously without the field of geography, t

Bran

entities is to place geography in such a marvelous guise as would have satisfied the monk Philoponus and the rest of the credulous fictionmongers who hang

or the Sev

e eighth century. It never quite died out from the recognition of curious minds, and was even thought to have been seen by the Portuguese, not far from the time when Columbus was born. Peter Martyr also, after Columbus had returned from his first voyage,

il I

shape in the word Brazil. We can trace it back into the portolanos of the middle of the fourteenth century; and it had not disappeared as a survival twenty or thirty years ago in the admiralty charts of Great Brit

s in the

and whose names he possibly brought for the first time to the attention

SIA, WITH THE OL

Yule's

co

Genoese prison in 1298, the original narrative of his experiences in Cathay. The inquiry has engaged the attention of all

IA, CATALA

e's Catha

CO

original

talian. Nor is it likely that Columbus could have read the earliest edition which was put in type, for it was in German in 1477; but there is the interesting possibility that this work of the Nuremberg press may have been known to Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger then in Lisbon, and likely enough to have been a familiar of Columbus. The fact that there is in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville a

olombina was not known, and these later developments have shown how such a question was not to be settled as

hn Man

pen to the English knight's bewildering fancies. The same negation of evidence, however, that satisfied Humboldt as respects Marco Polo will hardly suffice to establish Columbus's ignorance of the marvels which did more, perhaps, than the narratives of

o di

ry in the far East. In Conti's new marvels, the Florentine scholar saw a rejuvenation of the wonders of Marco Polo. It was from Conti, doubtless, t

es, and translated the stories into Latin. In this condition Columbus may have known the narrative at a later day. The information which Conti gave was eagerly availed of by the cosmogr

li's dea

, in 1463, the dedication by Regiomontanus of his treatise on the quadrature of the circle. He was, as has been said, an old man of seventy-seven when Columbu

confers w

his time, too, when that eminent artist conducted a correspondence with Columbus about a western way to Asia. But there is little need of particularizing other advocates of a belief which had within the range of credible history never ceased to have exponents. The conception was in no respect the merit of Columbus, except as he grasped a tradition, which

s out reasons

divide easily into three groups: First, those based on deductions drawn from scientific research, and as expressed in the beliefs of Ptolemy, Marinus, Strabo, and Pliny; second, views which the authority of eminent writers had

which did he prove to be right, except as regards the sphericity of the earth; and the last was a belief which had

ty of th

n of the be

rth century before Christ, Aristotle and others, by watching the moon's shadow in an eclipse, and by observing the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies in different latitudes, had proved the roundness of the earth to their satisfaction; Eratosthenes first measured a degree of latitude in the third century; Hipparchus, in the second century, was the earliest to establish geographical positions; and in the second century of the Christian era Ptolemy had

icero, Virgil, and Ovid. So the belief became the heirloom of the learned throughout the classic times, and it was directly coupled in the minds

a's M

sm

us Magnus, Pi

and how, if the earth was a sphere, those at the antipodes could see Christ at his coming. That settled the question in his mind. The Venerable Bede, however, in the eighth century, was not constrained by any such arguments, and taught the spherical theory. Jourdain, a modern French authority, has found distinct evidence that all through the Middle Ages the belief in the western way was kept alive by the study of Aristotle; and we know how the Arabs perpetuated the teachings of that philosopher, which in turn were percolated through the Levant to Mediterranean peoples. It is a striking fact that at a time when Spain w

ion, ignorance, and fear might magnify the obstacles to a passage through that drear Sea of Darkness, but in Columbus's time, in som

TUS M

usner's

opposed by

, the belief fell with the disciples of Pythagoras. There had been, during the days of St. Chrysostom and other of the fathers, a decision of the Church against it. There were doubtless, as Humboldt says, conservers, during all thi

Ailly's I

con's Op

Strabo, and Seneca, and to a degree greater perhaps than he was aware of he took thence the wisdom of Roger Bacon. It was through the Opus Majus (1267) of this English philosopher that western Europe found accessible the stories of the "silver walls and golden towers" of Quins

to know nothing of Marco Polo, Bacon's contemporary, and he never speaks of Cathay, even when he urg

report, though possibly he may have met with manuscripts of the work; for it was not till after he had

y and gr

t, the ship sank with the declivity of the earth's contour, how was she going to mount such an elevation on her return voyage?-a doubt not so unreasonable in a

f the

new calculation, made by Posidonius of Rhodes, reduced the magnitude to a globe of about four fifths its proper size. It was palpably certain to the observant philosophers, from the beginning of their observations on the size of the earth, that the portion known to commerce and curiosity was but a small part of what might yet be known. The unknown, however, is always a terror. Going north from temperate Europe increased the cold, going south augmented the

wn re

inus on the si

the earth. The corresponding extension of Marinus of Tyre in the second century after Christ stretched over 225 degrees. This geographer did not define the land's border on the ocean at the east, but it was not unusual with the cosmographers who followed him to carry the farthest limits of Asia to what i

my's

contemporary of Marinus, about seventy-nine degrees wide, sixteen of these being south of the equatorial li

elli's

rious computations of this time gave such scant dimensions to the unknown proportion of the line. The Laon globe, which was made ten or twelve years later than Toscanelli's time, was equally scant. Behaim, who figured out the relations of the known to the unknown circuit, during the summer before Col

N G

r D'A

of Col

een hours, or two thirds of the circumference of 360 degrees. There were left eight hours, or one hundred and twenty degrees, to represent the space between the Azores and Asia. This calculation in reality brought the Asiatic coast forward to the meridian of California, obliterating the width of the Pacific at that latitude, and reducing by so much the size of the globe as Columbus measured it, on the assumption that Marinus was corre

of a

was some difference of opinion. Toscanelli had so reduced a degree's length that China was brou

in

out the great Chinese city of Quinsay, or Kanfu, Hangtscheufu, and Kingszu, as it has been later called, was more easily summoned than if the actual distance of two hundred and thirty-one degrees had been recognized, or even the two hundred and four degrees necessary in reality to reach Cipango, or Japan. The views of Toscanelli, as we have seen, reduced the duration of risk westward to so small

ic is

pa

Portuguese e

men differently believed, interjacent along this known zone between the ascertained extreme east in Asia and the accepted most distant west at Cape St. Vincent in Spain, as was thought in Strabo's time, or at the Canaries, as was comprehended in the days of Ptolemy. What there was in this unknown space between Spain and Cathay was the problem which balked the philosophers quite as much as that other uncertainty, which concerned what might possibly be found in the southern hemisphere, could one dare to enter the torrid heats of the supposed equatorial ocean, or in the northern

f Dar

of the literary and spiritual instincts, seeking to give a habitation to fancies. It is equally in human nature that what the intellect has habilitated in this way the fears, desires, and superstitions of men in due time turn to their own use. It was easy, under the stress of all this complexity of belief and anticipation, for this supposab

of Atl

f the

ian co

llars of Hercules; and which, in a great inundation, had sunken beneath the sea, leaving in mid ocean large mud shoals to impede navigation and add to the terrors of a vast unknown deep. There have been those since the time of Gomara who have believed that the land which Columbus found dry and inhabited was a resurrected Atlantis, and geographers even of the seventeenth century have mapped out its provinces within the usual outline of the American continents. Others have held, and some still hold, that the Atlantic islands are but peaks of this submerged continent. There is no evidence to show that these fancies of th

yages on t

nic

hagi

ma

Siculus has been interpreted to signify. Then five hundred years later or more we observe the Carthaginians pursuing their adventurous way outside the Pillars of Hercules, going down the African coast under Hanno to try the equatorial horrors, or running westerly under Hamilko to wonder at the Sargasso sea. Later, the Ph?nicians seem to have made some lodgment in the islands off the coasts of northwestern Africa. The Romans in the fourth century before Christ pushed their way out into the Atlantic under Pytheas and Euthymenes, the one daring to go as far as Thule-whatever that was-in the north, and the ot

nternational rivalry. The interest in the western ocean subsided into merely speculative concern; and wild fanc

f such earl

XVth

voyage

heard discussed in the maritime circles of Portugal; and indeed it was to his own countrymen, Marino Sanuto, Pizignani, Bianco, and Fra Mauro, that Portuguese navigators were most indebted for the broad cartographical treatment of their own discoveries. At the same time there was no dearth of legends of the venturesome Genoese, with fortunes not always reassuring. There was a story, for instance, of some of th

zards hung naturally abou

ill

ith seven cities, where its sailors found the people speaking Portuguese, who said they had desert

nds

essel to go in quest of land, occasionally seen to the westward from that island. Similar stories were not unknown to him of like apparitions being familiar in the Azores. A story which he had

Basq

to be commemorated in the island of Stokafixia, which stands far away to the westward in the Bianco map of 1436. All these tales of the early visits of the Basques to what imaginative minds have supposed parts of the American coasts derive

banks possi

ailed to the codfish coast of Newfoundland as early as 1464, but Barrow seems to be the only write

upposed t

westerly in a voyage to Ireland, he had seen land, which he then thought to be Tartary. Some similar experiences were also told to Columbus by Pie

e-Columbia

ached by balancing everything, and not by assimilating that which easily suits. Almost all these discussions of pre-Columbian voyagings to America afford illustrations of this perverted method. Events in which there is no inherent untruth are not left with the natural defense of probability, but are proved by deductions and inferences which could j

IC CU

s's Amériqu

western la

o hold nine bottles of wine, and dead bodies with strange, broad faces. Even canoes, with living men in them of wonderful aspects, had at times been reported as thrown upon the Atlantic islands. Such events had not been unnoticed ever since the Canaries and the Azores had been inhabited by a continental

Str

f Newfoundland, before it became clear that the currents of the Atlantic, grazing the Cape of Good Hope and whirling in the Gulf of Mexico, sprayed

unks of trees, carved timbers, edible nuts, and seeds of alien plants, which the Gulf Stream is still bringing to the shores of Europe. It might have found in the dust settling upon the throngs of

tuguese discover

es of Reg

of their extending acquaintance with the African coast. His wife's sister, by the accepted accounts, had married Pedro Correa, a navigator not without fame in those days, and a companion in maritime inquiry upon whom Columbus could naturally depend,-unless, as Harrisse decides, he was no navigator at all. Columbus was also at hand to o

in B

se adventurer, but it is not improbable that he did. His position was one that would attract Columbus, who might never have been sought by Behaim. The Nuremberger's standing was, indeed, such as to gain the attention of t

ABLES OF REGIOMO

CAN COAS

ski?ld's Fac

coast

o reache

2, they had said their first mass on the Guinea coast, and the castle of San Jorge da Mina was soon built under the new impulse to enterprise

IN B

Historie claims that he began to reason, from his new experiences, that if land could be discovered to the south there was much the same chance of