Dighton Rock.
[l260]
But were we to go so far as to admit that the Northmen came here and
began the settlements ascribed to them, they certainly neither
appreciated nor published their exploits. Their colony, wherever it was,
endured but for a day, and it, with its locality, speedily passed from
knowledge in Scandinavia itself. America had not yet, in effect, been
discovered.
The Old Stone Mill at Newport, R. I.
[1300]
We must remember that long anterior to Columbus's day unbiassed and
thoughtful men had come to believe the earth to be round. They also knew
that Europe constituted but a small part of it. In the year 1260 the
Venetian brothers Niccolo and Maffeo Polo made their way to China, the
first men from Western Europe ever to travel so far. They returned in
1269, but in 1271 set out again, accompanied by Niccolo's son, a youth
of seventeen. This son was the famous Marco Polo, whose work, "The
Wonders of the World," reciting his extended journeys through China and
the extreme east and southeast of Asia, and his eventful voyage home by
sea, ending in 1295, has come down to our time, one of the most
interesting volumes in the world. Friar Orderic's eastern travels in
1322-1330, as appropriated by Sir John Mandeville, were published before
1371.
Columbus knew these writings, and the reading and re-reading of them had
made him an enthusiast. In Polo's book he had learned of Mangi and Far
Cathay, with their thousands of gorgeous cities, the meanest finer than
any then in Europe; of their abounding mines pouring forth infinite
wealth, their noble rivers, happy populations, curious arts, and benign
government. Polo had told him of Cambalu (Peking), winter residence of
the Great Khan, Kublai--Cambalu with its palaces of marble,
golden-roofed, its guard of ten thousand soldiers, its imperial stables
containing five thousand elephants, its unnumbered army, navy, and
merchant marine; of oxen huge as elephants; of richest spices, nuts
large as melons, canes fifteen yards long, silks, cambrics, and the
choicest furs; and of magic Cipango (Japan), island of pearls, whose
streets were paved with gold.
Globus Martini Behaim Narinbergensis 1492.
[1456]
Columbus believed all this, and it cooperated with his intense and even
bigoted religious faith to kindle in him an all-consuming ambition to
reach this distant Eden by sea, that he might carry the Gospel to those
opulent heathen and partake their unbounded temporal riches in return.
Poor specimen of a saint as Columbus is now known to have been, he
believed himself divinely called to this grand enterprise.
Christopher Columbus, or Christobal Colon, as he always signed himself
after he entered the service of Spain, was born in Genoa about 1456.
Little is certainly known of his early life. His father was a humble
wool-carder. The youth possessed but a sorry education, spite of his few
months at the University of Pavia. At the age of fourteen he became a
sailor, knocking about the world in the roughest manner, half the time
practically a pirate. In an all-day's sea fight, once, his ship took
fire and he had to leap overboard; but being a strong swimmer he swam,
aided by an oar, eight leagues to land.
[1470]
From 1470 to 1484 we find him in Portugal, the country most interested
and engaged then in ocean-going and discovery. Here he must have known
Martin Behem, author of the famous globe, finished in 1492, whereon Asia
is exhibited as reaching far into the same hemisphere with Europe.
Prince Henry of Portugal earnestly patronized all schemes for
exploration and discovery, and the daughter, Philippa, of one of his
captains, Perestrello, Columbus married. With her he lived at Porto
Santo in the Madeiras, where he became familiar with Correo, her
sister's husband, also a distinguished navigator. The islanders fully
believed in the existence of lands in the western Atlantic. West winds
had brought to them strange woods curiously carved, huge cane-brakes
like those of India described by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned canoes,
and corpses with skin of a hue unknown to Europe or Africa.
Prince Henry of Portugal--"The Navigator." From an old print
[1475-1484]
Reflecting on these things, studying Perestrello's and Correo's charts
and accounts of their voyages, corresponding with Toscanelli and other
savans, himself an adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for a time his
occupation in Lisbon, cruising here and there, once far northward to
Iceland, and talking with navigators from every Atlantic port, Columbus
became acquainted with the best geographical science of his time.
This had convinced him that India could be reached by sailing westward.
The theoretical possibility of so doing was of course admitted by all
who held the earth to be a sphere, but most regarded it practically
impossible, in the then condition of navigation, to sail the necessary
distance. Columbus considered the earth far smaller than was usually
thought, a belief which we find hinted at so early as 1447, upon the
famous mappe-Monde of the Pitti Palace in Florence, whereon Europe
appears projected far round to the northwest. Columbus seems to have
viewed this extension as a sort of yoke joining India to Scandinavia by
the north. He judged that Asia, or at least Cipango, stretched
two-thirds of the way to Europe, India being twice as near westward as
eastward. Thirty or forty days he deemed sufficient for making it.
Toscanelli and Behem as well as he held this belief; he dared boldly to
act upon it.
Queen Isabella of Spain.
But to do so required resources. There are indications that Columbus at
some time, perhaps more than once, urged his scheme upon Genoa and
Venice. If so it was in vain. Nor can we tell whether such an attempt,
if made, was earlier or later than his plea before the court of
Portugal, for this cannot be dated. The latter was probably in 1484.
King John II. was impressed, and referred Columbus's scheme to a council
of his wisest advisers, who denounced it as visionary. Hence in 1485 or
1486 Columbus proceeded to Spain to lay his project before Ferdinand and
Isabella.
On the way he stopped at a Franciscan convent near Palos, begging bread
for himself and son. The Superior, Marchena, became interested in him,
and so did one of the Pinzons--famous navigators of Palos. The king and
queen were at the time holding court at Cordova, and thither Columbus
went, fortified with a recommendation from Marchena. The monarchs were
engrossed in the final conquest of Granada, and Columbus had to wait
through six weary and heart-sickening years before royal attention was
turned to his cause. It must have been during this delay that he
despatched his brother Bartholomew to England with an appeal to Henry
VII. Christopher had brought Alexander Geraldinus, the scholar, and also
the Archbishop of Toledo, to espouse his mission, and finally, at the
latter's instance, Ferdinand, as John of Portugal had done, went so far
as to convene, at Salamanca, a council of reputed scholars to pass
judgment upon Columbus and his proposition. By these, as by the
Portuguese, he was declared a misguided enthusiast. They were too much
behind the age even to admit the spherical figure of the earth.
According to Scripture, they said, the earth is flat, adding that it was
contrary to reason for men to walk heads downward, or snow and rain to
ascend, or trees to grow with their roots upward.