EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS. HIS BIRTH AND BIRTHPLACE--HIS EARLY EDUCATION--HIS EXPERIENCE AT SEA-HIS MARRIAGE AND RESIDENCE IN LISBON--HIS PLANS FORTHE DISCOVERY OF A WESTWARD PASSAGE TO THE INDIES.

　　Christopher Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa. The honorof his birth-place has been claimed by many villages in that Republic, andthe house in which he was born cannot be now pointed out with certainty.

　　But the best authorities agree that the children and the grown people of theworld have never been mistaken when they have said: "America wasdiscovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa." Hisname, and that of his family, is always written Colombo, in the Italianpapers which refer to them, for more than one hundred years before histime. In Spain it was always written Colon; in France it is written asColomb; while in England it has always kept its Latin form, Columbus. Ithas frequently been said that he himself assumed this form, becauseColumba is the Latin word for "Dove," with a fanciful feeling that, incarrying Christian light to the West, he had taken the mission of the dove.

　　Thus, he had first found land where men thought there was ocean, and hewas the messenger of the Holy Spirit to those who sat in darkness. It hasalso been assumed that he took the name of Christopher, "the Christ-bearer," for similar reasons. But there is no doubt that he was baptized"Christopher," and that the family name had long been Columbo. Thecoincidences of name are but two more in a calendar in which poetrydelights, and of which history is full.

　　Christopher Columbus was the oldest son of Dominico Colombo andSuzanna Fontanarossa. This name means Red-fountain. He bad twobrothers, Bartholomew and Diego, whom we shall meet again. Diego isthe Spanish way of writing the name which we call James.

　　It seems probable that Christopher was born in the year 1436, thoughsome writers have said that he was older than this, and some that he wasyounger. The record of his birth and that of his baptism have not beenfound.

　　His father was not a rich man, but he was able to send Christopher, asa boy, to the University of Pavia, and here he studied grammar, geometry,geography and navigation, astronomy and the Latin language. But this wasas a boy studies, for in his fourteenth year he left the university andentered, in hard work, on "the larger college of the world." If the dategiven above, of his birth, is correct, this was in the year 1450, a few yearsbefore the Turks took Constantinople, and, in their invasion of Europe,affected the daily life of everyone, young or old, who lived in theMediterranean countries. From this time, for fifteen years, it is hard totrace along the life of Columbus. It was the life of an intelligent youngseaman, going wherever there was a voyage for him. He says himself, "Ipassed twenty-three years on the sea. I have seen all the Levant, all thewestern coasts, and the North. I have seen England; I have often made thevoyage from Lisbon to the Guinea coast." This he wrote in a letter toFerdinand and Isabella. Again he says, "I went to sea from the most tenderage and have continued in a sea life to this day. Whoever gives himself upto this art wants to know the secrets of Nature here below. It is more thanforty years that I have been thus engaged. Wherever any one has sailed,there I have sailed."Whoever goes into the detail of the history of that century will comeupon the names of two relatives of his--Colon el Mozo (the Boy, or theYounger) and his uncle, Francesco Colon, both celebrated sailors. Thelatter of the two was a captain in the fleets of Louis XI of France, andimaginative students may represent him as meeting Quentin Durward atcourt. Christopher Columbus seems to have made several voyages underthe command of the younger of these relatives. He commanded theGenoese galleys near Cyprus in a war which the Genoese had with theVenetians. Between the years 1461 and 1463 the Genoese were acting asallies with King John of Calabria, and Columbus had a command ascaptain in their navy at that time.

　　"In 1477," he says, in one of his letters, "in the month of February, Isailed more than a hundred leagues beyond Tile." By this he means Thule,or Iceland. "Of this island the southern part is seventy-three degrees fromthe equator, not sixty-three degrees, as some geographers pretend." But here he was wrong. The Southern part of Iceland is in the latitude of sixty-three and a half degrees. "The English, chiefly those of Bristol, carry theirmerchandise, to this island, which is as large as England. When I wasthere the sea was not frozen, but the tides there are so strong that they riseand fall twenty-six cubits."The order of his life, after his visit to Iceland, is better known. He wasno longer an adventurous sailor-boy, glad of any voyage which offered; hewas a man thirty years of age or more. He married in the city of Lisbonand settled himself there. His wife was named Philippa. She was thedaughter of an Italian gentleman named Bartolomeo Muniz de Perestrello,who was, like Columbus, a sailor, and was alive to all the new interestswhich geography then presented to all inquiring minds. This was in theyear 1477, and the King of Portugal was pressing the expeditions which,before the end of the century, resulted in the discovery of the route to theIndies by the Cape of Good Hope.

　　The young couple had to live. Neither the bride nor her husband hadany fortune, and Columbus occupied himself as a draftsman, illustratingbooks, making terrestrial globes, which must have been curiouslyinaccurate, since they had no Cape of Good Hope and no AmericanContinent, drawing charts for sale, and collecting, where he could, thematerial for such study. Such charts and maps were beginning to assumenew importance in those days of geographical discovery. The valueattached to them may be judged from the statement that Vespucius paidone hundred and thirty ducats for one map. This sum would be more thanfive hundred dollars of our time.

　　Columbus did not give up his maritime enterprises. He made voyagesto the coast of Guinea and in other directions.

　　It is said that he was in command of one of the vessels of his relativeColon el Mozo, when, in the Portuguese seas, this admiral, with hissquadron, engaged four Venetian galleys returning from Flanders. Abloody battle followed. The ship which Christopher Columbuscommanded was engaged with a Venetian vessel, to which it set fire.

　　There was danger of an explosion, and Columbus himself, seeing thisdanger, flung himself into the sea, seized a floating oar, and thus gained the shore. He was not far from Lisbon, and from this time made Lisbon hishome for many years.[*]

　　[*] The critics challenge these dates, but there seems to be goodfoundation for the story.

　　It seems. clear that, from the time when he arrived in Lisbon, formore than twenty years, he was at work trying to interest people in his"great design," of western discovery. He says himself, "I was constantlycorresponding with learned men, some ecclesiastics and some laymen,some Latin and some Greek, some Jews and some Moors." Theastronomer Toscanelli was one of these correspondents.

　　We must not suppose that the idea of the roundness of the earth wasinvented by Columbus. Although there were other theories about its shape,many intelligent men well understood that the earth was a globe, and thatthe Indies, though they were always reached from Europe by going to theEast, must be on the west of Europe also. There is a very funny story inthe travels of Mandeville, in which a traveler is represented as havinggone, mostly on foot, through all the countries of Asia, but finallydetermines to return to Norway, his home. In his farthest easterninvestigation, he hears some people calling their cattle by a peculiar cry,which he had never heard before. After he returned home, it was necessaryfor him to take a day's journey westward to look after some cattle he hadlost. Finding these cattle, he also heard the same cry of people callingcattle, which he had heard in the extreme East, and now learned, for thefirst time, that he had gone round the world on foot, to turn and come backby the same route, when he was only a day's journey from home,Columbus was acquainted with such stories as this, and also had theastronomical knowledge which almost made him know that the world wasround, "and, like a ball, goes spinning in the air." The difficulty was topersuade other people that, because of this roundness, it would be possibleto attain Asia by sailing to the West.

　　Now all the geographers of repute supposed that there was not nearlyso large a distance as there proved to be, in truth, between Europe andAsia. Thus, in the geography of Ptolemy, which was the standard book atthat time, one hundred and thirty-five degrees, a little more than one-third of the earth's circumference, is given to the space between the extremeeastern part of the Indies and the Canary Islands. In fact, as we now know,the distance is one hundred and eighty degrees, half the world'scircumference. Had Columbus believed there was any such immensedistance, he would never have undertaken his voyage.

　　Almost all the detailed knowledge of the Indies which the people ofhis time had, was given by the explorations of Marco Polo, a Venetiantraveler of the thirteenth century, whose book had long been in thepossession of European readers. It is a very entertaining book now, andmay well be recommended to young people who like stories of adventure.

　　Marco Polo had visited the court of the Great Khan of Tartary at Pekin, theprince who brought the Chinese Empire into very much the condition inwhich it now is. He had, also, given accounts of Japan or Cipango, whichhe had himself never visited. Columbus knew, therefore, that, well east ofthe Indies, was the island of Cipango, and he aimed at that island, becausehe supposed that that was the nearest point to Europe, as in fact it is. Andwhen finally he arrived at Cuba, as the reader will see, he thought he wasin Japan.

　　Columbus's father-in-law had himself been the Portuguese governor ofthe island of Porto Santo, where he had founded a colony. He, therefore,was interested in western explorations, and probably from him Columbuscollected some of the statements which are known to have influenced him,with regard to floating matters from the West, which are constantly borneupon that island by the great currents of the sea.

　　The historians are fond of bringing together all the intimations whichare given in the Greek and Latin classics, and in later authors, with regardto a land beyond Asia. Perhaps the most famous of them is that of Seneca,"In the later years there shall come days in which Ocean shall loose hischains, and a great land shall appear . . . and Thule shall not be the last ofthe worlds."In a letter which Toscanelli wrote to Columbus in 1474, he inclosed acopy of a letter which he had already sent to an officer of Alphonso V, theKing of Portugal. In writing to Columbus, he says, "I see that you have agreat and noble desire to go into that country (of the East) where the spices come from, and in reply to your letter I send you a copy of that which Iaddressed some years ago to my attached friend in the service of the mostserene King of Portugal. He had an order from his Highness to write meon this subject. . . . If I had a globe in my hand, I could show you what isneeded. But I prefer to mark out the route on a chart like a marine chart,which will be an assistance to your intelligence and enterprise. On thischart I have myself drawn the whole extremity of our western shore fromIreland as far down as the coast of Guinea toward the South, with all theislands which are to be found on this route. Opposite this [that is, theshores of Ireland and Africa] I have placed directly at the West thebeginning of the Indies with the islands and places where you will land.

　　You will see for yourself how many miles you must keep from the arcticpole toward the equator, and at what distance you will arrive at theseregions so fertile and productive of spices and precious stones." InToscanelli's letter, he not only indicates Japan, but, in the middle of theocean, he places the island of Antilia. This old name afterwards gave thename by which the French still call the West Indies, Les Antilles.

　　Toscanelli gives the exact distance which Columbus will have to sail:

　　"From Lisbon to the famous city of Quisay [Hang-tcheou-fou, then thecapital of China] if you take the direct route toward the West, the distancewill be thirty-nine hundred miles. And from Antilia to Japan it will be twohundred and twenty-five leagues." Toscanelli says again, "You see that thevoyage that you wish to attempt is much legs difficult than would bethought. You would be sure of this if you met as many people as I do whohave been in the country of spices."While there were so many suggestions made that it would be possibleto cross the Atlantic, there was one man who determined to do this. Thisman was Christopher Columbus. But he knew well that he could not do italone. He must have money enough for an expedition, he must haveauthority to enlist crews for that expedition, and he must have power togovern those crews when they should arrive in the Indies. In our timessuch adventures have been conducted by mercantile corporations, but inthose times no one thought of doing any such thing without the directassistance and support of some monarch.

　　It is easy now to see and to say that Columbus himself was singularlywell fitted to take the charge of the expedition of discovery. He was anexcellent sailor and at the same time he was a learned geographer and agood mathematician. He was living in Portugal, the kings of whichcountry had, for many years, fostered the exploration of the coast of Africa,and were pushing expeditions farther and farther South.

　　In doing this, they were, in a fashion, making new discoveries. ForEurope was wholly ignorant of the western coast of Africa, beyond theCanaries, when their expeditions began. But all men of learning knew that,five hundred years before the Christian era, Hanno, a Carthaginian, hadsailed round Africa under the direction of the senate of Carthage. Theefforts of the King of Portugal were to repeat the voyage made by Hanno.

　　In 1441, Gonzales and Tristam sailed as far as Sierra Leone. They broughtback some blacks as slaves, and this was the beginning of the slave trade.

　　In 1446 the Portuguese took possession of the Azores, the mostwestern points of the Old World. Step by step they advanced southward,and became familiar with the African coast. Bold navigators were eager tofind the East, and at last success came. Under the king's orders, in August,1477, three caravels sailed from the Tagus, under Bartolomeo Diaz, forsouthern discovery. Diaz was himself brave enough to be willing to go onto the Red Sea, after he made the great discovery of the Cape of GoodHope, but his crews mutinied, after he had gone much farther than hispredecessors, and compelled him to return. He passed the southern cape ofAfrica and went forty miles farther. He called it the Cape of Torments,"Cabo Tormentoso," so terrible were the storms he met there. But whenKing John heard his report he gave it that name of good omen which it hasborne ever since, the name of the "Cape of Good Hope."In the midst of such endeavors to reach the East Indies by the longvoyage down the coast of Africa and across an unknown ocean, Columbuswas urging all people who cared, to try the route directly west. If the worldwas round, as the sun and moon were, and as so many men of learningbelieved, India or the Indies must be to the west of Portugal. The value ofdirect trade with the Indies would be enormous. Europe had alreadyacquired a taste for the spices of India and had confidence in the drugs of India. The silks and other articles of clothing made in India, and thecarpets of India, were well known and prized. Marco Polo and others hadgiven an impression that there was much gold in India; and the pearls andprecious stones of India excited the imagination of all who read histravels.

　　The immense value of such a commerce may be estimated from onefact. When, a generation after this time, one ship only of all the squadronof Magellan returned to Cadiz, after the first voyage round the world, shewas loaded with spices from the Moluccas. These spices were sold by theSpanish government for so large a sum of money that the king wasremunerated for the whole cost of the expedition, and even made a verylarge profit from a transaction which had cost a great deal in its outfit.

　　Columbus was able, therefore, to offer mercantile adventurers thepromise of great profit in case of success; and at this time kings werewilling to take their share of such profits as might accrue.

　　The letter of Toscanelli, the Italian geographer, which has been spokenof, was addressed to Alphonso V, the King of Portugal. To him and hissuccessor, John the Second, Columbus explained the probability ofsuccess, and each of them, as it would seem, had confidence in it. ButKing John made the great mistake of intrusting Columbus's plan to anotherperson for experiment. He was selfish enough, and mean enough, to fit outa ship privately and intrust its command to another seaman, bidding himsail west in search of the Indies, while he pretended that he was on avoyage to the Cape de Verde Islands. He was, in fact, to follow the routeindicated by Columbus. The vessel sailed. But, fortunately for the fame ofColumbus, she met a terrible storm, and her officers, in terror, turned fromthe unknown ocean and returned to Lisbon. Columbus himself tells thisstory. It was in disgust with the bad faith the king showed in thistransaction that he left Lisbon to offer his great project to the King andQueen of Spain.

　　In a similar way, a generation afterward, Magellan, who was in theservice of the King of Portugal, was disgusted by insults which hereceived at his court, and exiled himself to Spain. He offered to theSpanish king his plan for sailing round the world and it was accepted. He sailed in a Spanish fleet, and to his discoveries Spain owes the possessionof the Philippine Islands. Twice, therefore, did kings of Portugal lose forthemselves, their children and their kingdom, the fame and therecompense which belong to such great discoveries.

　　The wife of Columbus had died and he was without a home. He leftLisbon with his only son, Diego, in or near the end of the year 1484.