The Life of Columbus

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led the point in favour of that city. "Thence I came," he says, "and there was I born." As to the date of his birth there is no such direct evidence; and conjectures and inferences, founded on various statements in his own writings, and in those of his contemporaries, range over the twenty years from 1436 to 1456, in attempting to assign the precise time of his appearance in the world. Mr. Irving adopts the earlier of these two dates, upon the a

ned white before he was thirty." This would add to h

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eat man's ancestors. Christopher was not, he says in a letter to a lady of the Spanish court, the first admiral of his family-referring, evidently, to two naval commanders bearing his name, who had attained some distinction in the maritime service of Genoa and France, and the younger of whom, Colombo el Mozo, was in command of a French squadron in the

and spoils of glorious victories; and he may have heard, now and then, news of the latest conclusions of the Arabic geographers at Senaar, and rumours of explorations down the African coast, which would be sure to excite interest among the maritime population of his birthplace. It is not wonderful that, exposed to

YAGES OF

ago. "I have been seeking out the secrets of nature for forty years," he says, "and wherever ship has sailed, there have I voyaged." But beyond a few vague allusions of this kind, we know scarcely anything of these early voyages. However, he mentions particularly his having been employed by King Rene of Provence to intercept a Venetian galliot. And this exploit furnishes illustrations both of his boldness and his tact. During the voyage the news was brought that the

et. Of course this an absurdity; for no tides in Europe rise much above 50 feet. We have no record of the exact words used by Columbus, but in the extant Italian translation he is made to speak of the rise being venti sei bracchia, i.e. twenty-six ells (not fathoms), or about fifty-two feet. But even this reduced estimate m

ISTICS OF

speak with certainty on the subject. Strangely enough, too, no well-authenticated portrait of the great discoverer exists. Ferdinand Columbus, who would be a good authority, fails to give us, in describing his father, any of those little touches which make up a good literary photograph. We learn, howeve

as, indeed, one of the great spirits of the earth; but still of the same order of soul to which great inventors and discoverers have mostly belonged. Lowe

n most men of something infinitely above what even their imaginations can compass. He was as magnanimous as it was possible, perhaps, for so sensitive and impassioned a person to be. He was humane, self-denying, courteous. He had an intellect of that largely inquiring kind which may remind us of our great English philosopher, Bacon. He was singularly resolute and enduring. The Spani

DESIRE FO

he idea which has rendered him famous was not in his mind at the outset of his career of investigation, at any rate he had from the first a desire for discovery, or, as he says himself, the wish to know the secrets of this world. It may be a question whether this impulse soon brought him to his utmost height of survey, and that he then only applied to learning to confirm his first views; or whether the impulse merely carried him along with growing perception of the great truth he was to prove, into deep thinking upon cosmographical studies, Portuguese discoveries, the dreams of learned men, the labours of former geographers, the dim prophetic notices of great unknown lands, and vague reports amongst mariners of driftwood seen on the seas. But at any rate we know that he arrived

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inent. The farther that continent extended to the eastward the nearer it came round towards Spain. And this, in a greater or less degree, had been the opinion of the ancient geographers. Both Aristotle and Seneca thought that a ship might sail "in a few days" from Cadiz to India. Strabo, too, b

IACO'S "COS

large stags, and is able to cross the ocean;" and the wonders of the unknown world are enunciated with a circumstantial minuteness which must have easily won the credence of a willing disciple like Columbus. He was also confirmed in his views of the existence of a western passage to the Indies by Paulo Toscanelli, the Florentine philosopher, to whom much credit is due for the encouragement he afforded to the enterprise. That the notices, however, of western lands were not such as to have much weight with other men is sufficiently proved by the difficulty which Columbus had in contending with adverse geographers and men of science in general, of who

OF A WES

of mammoth reeds, corresponding with Ptolemy's account of those indigenous to India; even of two corpses, cast up on one of the Azores, and presenting an appearance quite unlike that of a

me Venetian merchantmen on their way home from Flanders. At break of day the battle began, off Cape St. Vincent, and lasted till nightfall. The privateer commanded by Columbus grappled a huge Venetian galley, which, after a hand-to-hand struggle, caught fire, and the fl

AT PORT

governor of Porto Santo. On that island, after a short residence in the Portuguese capital, Columbus took up his abode, busying himself with the papers of his deceased father-in-law, and earning a livelihood by making maps and charts for sale. It is a curious fact that the great chief of American dis

CEUTA; RETURN

tened with attention to the exposition of his scheme, and indeed, according to the account of Fernando, to have given a sort of qualified promise of his support, but to have disagreed with Columbus as to terms. The king referred the matter to a Committee of Council for Geographical Affairs, before whom Columbus laid his plans; but it is possible that even in the fifteenth century Boards had come to regard projectors as their natural enemies, and the report of the Committee was entirely adverse to the scheme for Atlantic discovery. But it seems tha