Christopher Columbus: His Life and His Work

by Charles Kendall Adams

Columbus is quoted as saying that he “sailed one hundred leagues beyond the island of Tile, the south part of which was distant from the equinoctial line seventy-three leagues, and not sixty-three, as some have asserted; neither does it lie within the line which includes the west of that referred to by Ptolemy, but is much more westerly. To this island, which is as large as England, the English, especially from Bristol, came with their merchandise. At the time he was there, the sea was not frozen, but the tides were so great as to rise and fall twenty-six fathoms.”

Nothing more is known of this voyage than is contained in this letter; but notwithstanding the gross inaccuracies of the statement, it seems sufficient ground for believing that Columbus visited Iceland, or at least went beyond it. The size of the island indicates that it could have been no other. Whether he landed there, and if so, whether he obtained from the natives any knowledge of the continent lying far to the west and southwest, must, perhaps, forever be a matter of mere conjecture. It is, however, hardly probable that in the year 1477 Columbus would go to Iceland without making inquiries in regard to lands lying beyond. The Icelanders had long been the great explorers of the north. As we shall presently see, Columbus had already received the famous letter of Toscanelli, in which the practicability of reaching Asia by sailing due west was fully set forth; and we know in other ways that the mind of Columbus was already fully imbued with the idea of the westward voyage of discovery. It is certain, moreover, that the Icelanders could have given him considerable valuable information. The voyages that had been made by the Norwegians from time to time during the eleventh and twelfth centuries must have been known at least by the more intelligent of the people of Iceland. It seems highly improbable, moreover, that Columbus, already thirsting for more geographical knowledge, would visit such an island without availing himself of every opportunity of securing further information.

But on the other hand, we must not exaggerate the importance of this conjecture. There is no evidence whatever that he even landed. In all of the writings of Columbus there is nowhere any hint of any knowledge gained from these sources; and this very important truth should not be lost sight of in the weighing of probabilities. In view of all the facts, it seems hardly possible that Columbus can have gained from this expedition anything more than at best a somewhat vague confirmation of the ideas and purposes that had already taken definite shape in his mind.

Another fact worthy of note during these earlier years was his vocation during the intervals between his voyages. He seems to have interlarded his more or less piratical expeditions on the sea with the gentle experiences of a bookseller and map-maker on the land. The art of printing had but recently been invented, and few books had been issued from the press; but there was some trade in books for all that. There is abundant evidence that this youthful enthusiast, at the period of his life between fifteen and twenty-four, availed himself of whatever knowledge came in his way in regard to the subject that was beginning to fill and monopolize his mind. During the fifteenth century, as hereafter we shall have occasion to see, a large number of books on geography became generally known. Many of the classics, after lying dormant for a thousand years, sprang suddenly into life; and it is quite within the scope of a reasonable historical imagination to conjecture that, even during his years at Genoa, many of the leisure hours of what could hardly have been a very absorbing vocation as a bookseller were spent in gaining such knowledge as was possible concerning the shape and size of the earth. It would be out of place in this connection to consider details; it is enough to know that even in his earliest writings on the subject, he alluded freely to the geographical writers whose works he had read.

At some time between 1470 and 1473, Columbus changed his abode from Genoa to Lisbon. There were two facts that made this transfer of his activities both natural and beneficial. The first was that during the early part of the fifteenth century Portugal had placed herself far in advance of other nations, by her maritime expeditions and achievements. Prince Henry, with a courage and enterprise that have secured for him imperishable renown, had pushed out the boundaries of geographical knowledge, and had awakened an enthusiastic zeal for further discoveries. The fleets of Portugal had made themselves at length familiar with the west coast of Africa; and the bugbear of a tropical sea whose slimy depths were supposed to make navigation impossible, had been dispelled. The interest of every geographical explorer had been aroused and excited. Lisbon was the centre of this new ferment.

The second consideration of importance was the fact that Bartholomew, a younger brother of Columbus, had established himself at the Portuguese capital as a maker and publisher of maps and charts. For the products of this handicraft there had been created an active demand. Nothing was more natural, then, than that this young enthusiast, in whom there were already welling up all kinds of maritime ambitions, should remove to that centre of geographical knowledge and interest, and ally himself with his brother in so congenial and promising a vocation.

It was during the years between 1473 and 1484 that a large part of the maritime experiences of Columbus already adverted to took place. The most of them, perhaps all of them, occurred after Columbus established himself at Lisbon. But unfortunately, there is no contemporaneous evidence to show the course of his life. In the records of the time we find his name here and there in connection with such events as those we have already mentioned; but, as yet, it is impossible to weave these scattered statements into a connected narrative that will bear the test of critical examination. We are obliged, therefore, to be content with mere glimpses of individual events and experiences.

If we have judged correctly as to the year of the Admiral’s birth, he was about twenty-six or seven when he took up his abode in Lisbon. Not long after this change of residence, but in what year we cannot ascertain, an event took place which must have had an important influence, not only on his private life, but also on the development of his maritime plans. It was at about this time that he was married; but when, under what circumstances, and with whom, are questions which, notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, cannot now be confidently determined. Following the statement of Fernando, it has been customary for historians to say that Columbus married the daughter of an old navigator of Porto Santo, Perestrello by name, to whom Prince Henry had given the governorship of the island in recognition of explorations and discoveries on the coast of Africa. But like so many other of the statements of Fernando, this turns out on examination to be extremely improbable. Harrisse is entitled to the credit of having traced the history of the Perestrello family, and of having found the names of the daughters, and even of their husbands. Not only is the name Columbus lacking in these lists, but it contains no one of the three sisters of Columbus’s wife. This, it is true, is negative evidence only, but it is quite enough to shake our confidence in the statement of Fernando. Of positive evidence there is none whatever. The first mention of his having been married at all occurs in a letter presently to be quoted; and the second was in the clause of his will providing for the saying of masses for his soul and for the souls of his father, mother, and wife. This document bears date of Aug. 25, 1505, and contains no mention of his wife’s name. A name first appears eighteen years later, in the will of Diego, who calls himself the son of Christopher Columbus and his wife Donna Philippa Moñiz. Elsewhere in the same will he refers to himself as the son of Felipa Muñiz, the wife of Columbus, whose ashes repose in the monastery of Carmen at Lisbon. It is possible that Moñiz, or Muñiz, was not the father’s name; but the giving of the maiden name alone in such a connection was not usual at that time, and therefore, in the absence of other evidence, it would seem improbable that the name given was the surname of the father. It was not until nearly fifty years later that the narrative of Fernando first mentions the name of Perestrello. Las Casas and other later writers have done nothing but copy the statement of Fernando, without further investigation. The matter would be of trifling significance but for the fact that later historians have magnified this supposed marriage into a matter of considerable professional importance. Las Casas tells us that he had learned from Diego Columbus that the Admiral and his wife lived for some time with the widow of Perestrello at Porto Santo, and that “all the papers, charts, journals, and maritime instruments” of the old navigators were placed at his disposal. But all the evidence of this fact now obtainable consists simply of repetitions of this statement. The most careful search of all the records has failed to discover a scrap of testimony that Columbus ever lived at Porto Santo or on any of the other islands off the coast of Africa. Harrisse has devoted more than thirty octavo pages to a very critical examination of all the evidence on the marriage of Columbus; but he is unable to reach any other positive conclusion than that very many of the early statements in regard to the matter cannot possibly be correct. As the result of his investigations, he inclines to the belief that the story of the Admiral’s living at Porto Santo and profiting by the maritime possessions and experiences of Perestrello must be abandoned. Beyond the fact that the Admiral’s wife bore the name of Philippa Moñiz, nothing on the subject can be regarded as absolutely known. It seems probable that Columbus was not married till after 1474; but the exact date cannot be established.

As we shall not have occasion to refer to Columbus’s married life again, one fact more should here be noted. Fernando asserts that his father left Portugal in 1484 on account of the grief he experienced at the death of his wife. That the statement was incorrect, is shown by a letter, still in existence, in the handwriting of the Admiral himself. This letter, which was written to Donna Juanna de la Torre, a noble lady at the Spanish court, for the purpose of presenting his cause and arguing it with the evident expectation that his plea would reach the attention of the sovereigns, finally uses these words:—

“I beg you to take into consideration all I have written, and how I came from afar to serve these princes,—abandoning wife and children, whom for this reason I never afterward saw.”