Successful and triumphant as was this voyage of Diaz, it eventually tended to injure the interests of Portugal, inasmuch as it withdrew the regards of King John from other and important plans of discovery, and rendered him inattentive to the efforts of rival powers upon the ocean. It caused him, amid the intoxication of the moment, to refuse the services and reject the science of one who now offered to conduct the vessels of Portugal to the Indies by an untried route. It caused him, as we shall soon have occasion to narrate, to turn a deaf ear to the proposals of Columbus, who had humbly brought to Lisbon the mighty scheme with which he had been contemptuously repulsed from Genoa. We have arrived at the Great Era in Navigation,—the age of Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
CHAPTER XIV.
BIRTH OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS—HIS EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION—HIS FIRST VOYAGE—HIS MARRIAGE—HIS MARITIME CONTEMPLATIONS—HE MAKES PROPOSALS TO THE SENATE OF GENOA, THE COURT OF VENICE, AND THE KING OF PORTUGAL—THE DUPLICITY OF THE LATTER—COLUMBUS VISITS SPAIN—JUAN DE MARCHENA—COLUMBUS REPAIRS TO CORDOVA—HIS SECOND MARRIAGE—HIS LETTER TO THE KING—THE JUNTO OF SALAMANCA—COLUMBUS RESOLVES TO SHAKE THE DUST OF SPAIN FROM HIS FEET—MARCHENA'S LETTER TO ISABELLA—THE QUEEN GIVES AUDIENCE TO COLUMBUS—THE CONDITIONS STIPULATED BY THE LATTER—ISABELLA ACCEPTS THE ENTERPRISE, WHILE FERDINAND REMAINS ALOOF.
Cristofero Colombo (in Spanish Colon, in French Colomb, in Latin and English Columbus) was born in Genoa, in the year 1435.[1] His father was a wool-comber, and Christopher followed, for a time, the same occupation. He was sent, however, at the age of ten years, to the University of Pavia, where he seems to have studied, though with little advantage, natural philosophy and astronomy, or, as it was then called, astrology. Returning to his father's bench, he worked at wool-combing, with his brother Bartholomew, till he was fourteen years of age. By this time the natural influence of the situation, the atmosphere, and the traditions of Genoa had awakened in him the tastes and the ambition of a sailor. The sea had long been the home and the life of the Genoese: it was the theatre of their glory, and their avenue to wealth. Christopher's great-uncle, Colombo, commanded a fleet intrusted to him by the king, and with which he carried on a predatory warfare against the Venetians and Neapolitans. His nephew joined his ship, and thus became acquainted with the whole extent of the Mediterranean, which was at that period ploughed by the pirates of the Archipelago and the corsairs of the Barbary States. As the vessel went armed to the teeth, the young sailor not only learned the art of navigation, but acquired those habits of discipline and subordination, of self-command and presence of mind, which afterwards served him in so good stead. This manner of life lasted for many years, till Columbus, at the age of thirty, was wrecked off the coast of Portugal, and reached, with some difficulty, the city of Lisbon. Here he found his brother Bartholomew settled, and occupying himself in drawing plans, charts, and maps for the use of navigators. Christopher joined him, and gained a sufficient livelihood by copying manuscripts and black-letter books, and aiding his brother in his avocations. He soon married an Italian lady named Felippa di Perestrello, whose father, now dead, had been Governor of the island of Porto Santo, one of the Madeiras. This union between the humble son of a wool-comber and the daughter of an Italian gentleman is deemed, by several of the biographers of Columbus, a strong proof of the nobility of his ancestry. After his marriage, he left for Porto Santo,—the sterile dowry of his wife,—where his first son, Diego, was born.
We have already seen that the period was one of the greatest excitement and expectancy in regard to maritime discovery. Columbus had long reflected upon the existence of land in the west, upon the sphericity of the earth, and upon the possibility of crossing the Atlantic. He had already conceived the idea of reaching Asia by following the setting sun across the immensity of the waters. His mind, too, was kindled to religious enthusiasm by the allusions in the Bible to the universal diffusion of the gospel, and, in his dreams of nautical discovery, the belief that he was destined to be an apostle, sent to extend the dominion of the cross, predominated over more worldly aspirations. For years, while struggling with disappointment and harassed by poverty, he pursued this idea with the pertinacity of a monomaniac. When forty years old, and residing at Lisbon, he proposed to the Senate of Genoa to leave the Mediterranean by the Straits of Gibraltar and to proceed to the west, in the sea known as the Ocean, as far as the "lands where spices bloom," and thus circumnavigate the earth. The Genoese, whose maritime knowledge was confined to the Mediterranean, and who had no fancy for adventures upon the ocean, declined listening to the proposition, pretexting the penury of the treasury. It would also seem that overtures made by Columbus to the Council of Venice were similarly rejected. For a time, therefore, he abandoned all efforts to further his desires. In 1477, he made a voyage to Iceland, in order to discover whether it was inhabited, and even sailed one hundred leagues beyond it,—where, to his astonishment, he found the sea not frozen.