RE-DISCOVERER OF AMERICA, WHO GAVE
A NEW CONTINENT TO THE WORLD.
(1436-1506)
THE good and genial friar Juan Perez was working, one day, in front of the convent of La Rabida, which had been dedicated to Santa Maria de Rabida, near the pleasant city of Palos, in Spain. It was a lonely place, built upon beetling cliffs which overhung the blue ocean. The friar, with his brown cassock tucked up around his fat legs, was busily engaged in hoeing some beans, when he saw a man standing at the little wicket gate which was between himself and the roadway. The man was thin, care-worn, and cadaverous-looking. His hair was quite gray and he held a small boy by the hand.
“Kind priest,” said he, “I am faint with hunger.”
The good friar dropped his hoe and stood there smiling; for he had a warm heart, and the little boy, whom the stranger held by the hand, was very wistful.
“In God’s name, my poor fellow,” said Juan Perez, “come into the convent with me, and I will give you all that you wish, for I see that you are faint with hunger. And the little boy is surely very ill.”
So the white-haired man and the little boy went into the convent of Santa Maria de Rabida, and there the priest fell into a long conversation with this traveler. He found out that the wanderer was named Christopher Columbus and that he had been born in Genoa, in Italy. The little boy was his son, Ferdinand.
The priest was a man of great learning and had been confessor to the Queen of Spain. He soon perceived that this Christopher Columbus was a man of considerable learning, also, and found out that he had been a sailor ever since he had been a boy of fourteen. Charmed and delighted with the conversation of this penniless mariner, he asked him to remain as a guest at the convent, for he saw that, within the lean body of this white-haired sailor, burned a spirit of adventure which was like a beacon light.
“Had I the money, the ships, and the men,” said Columbus, “I could discover a new country lying far to the west. But, you see, I am a pauper.”