The Boy's Book of Heroes

by Helena Peake

Two centuries had passed since Marco Polo, the bold Venetian explorer, had set out from Constantinople for the land of the Tartars. There he had found a friend in the great Kublai Khan, who ruled over Tartary and China, and was sent by him on a mission to China and India, being thus the first European who visited China Proper. On his return he told such extraordinary tales of the people he had seen, and their customs, that most men were afraid to believe in them, and thought they were pure inventions. Years after, when the countries he had described became known to the Europeans, it was found that he had spoken a great deal of truth, and his example caused fresh enterprises to be projected. Men must not despair because they do not at once see the fruit of their labour: if they only undertake it in a true and steadfast spirit, it is sure to turn sooner or later to the benefit of their fellow-creatures. Truly great men do not toil for themselves but for the good they may do to others; they sow the seed, and in God's time, not theirs, it will bear fruit.

In Lisbon Columbus married Doña Felippa, the daughter of a poor but noble Italian named Perestrello, the governor of the island of Porto Santo, one of the Madeiras, which had only lately been found. Perestrello was a very famous navigator, and lost his life in the service of Portugal. After his marriage Columbus went to live in the house of his wife's mother, and she gave him all the charts her husband had drawn, and the accounts he had written of his voyages, which proved very useful to him because they made him familiar with all the parts of the world the Portuguese had hitherto explored. So he lived on in Lisbon, supporting his wife and his mother by making and selling maps and globes, besides which he used to send a part of the money he earned to his aged father at Genoa, and helped his brothers also by enabling them to go to school. Sometimes he would leave home for a while, and take part in the expeditions that were directed towards the coast of Guinea, or he would visit Porto Santo, where he had a friend in Pietro Correo, who had once been governor of the island, and was married to his wife's sister. Yet although he was made very happy by the birth of his son Diego, it was sad to wait year after year without any chance of starting on his voyage; for, poor as he was, it was quite impossible for him to buy vessels and man them at his own expense.

Some of the ancient philosophers who flourished centuries before the birth of our Lord had convinced themselves that the earth was round. That such is the case is shown by the appearance of a vessel after it has left the shore. At a certain distance the whole of it is seen; farther off only its hulk or body; at a greater distance still, the topmast alone is visible. This proves that something hides the lower part of the ship from the spectator, and that something, is the roundness of the earth. Again—when an eclipse of the moon takes place the moon enters the shadow of the earth, and cannot get the light of the sun, which, reflected on her surface, gives her the bright silvery glow which makes her so lovely by night, and so we appear to lose the whole, or part of her face. Now the shadow that is seen being round, the earth must be round from which it is cast. And when men found, in the days when very long voyages were undertaken, that by sailing and journeying in one direction they came back to the point whence they had started, they wanted indeed no further proof that such was the correct figure of the earth. Thus it was natural for Columbus to expect to reach the eastern shore of India, or of Cathay (as China was then called) by sailing westward across the Atlantic, never dreaming that the earth was so large as it is, and that the pathway he went would make known to the people of the Old World the whole vast continent of America, and the Pacific, the greatest of all Oceans!

Having been refused assistance in his native city, he resolved at last to lay his plans before John the Second of Portugal. The king referred the matter to a Council, where it was soon decided that the voyage could not be carried out, but Columbus was not easily disheartened, as his patience during one-and-twenty years proved, and he begged the Portuguese monarch so earnestly to assist him that he had almost been supplied with the vessels he required, had there not been in Lisbon some persons who were very jealous of him, and wanted the glory of making the attempt themselves. These persons gained information of the proposed route, and then set out in secret to try it, not unknown, as it is said, to the king. But when they had been out at sea some time, and saw the waves spread out around them as far as sight could reach, they lost all courage, and put back to Lisbon as quickly as they could, saying on their return that the voyage could never be tried.

Columbus was indignant at being treated thus: he had passed fourteen years of his life in waiting, and had thought and studied so much for the enterprise on which he had set his heart that he had made no fortune for himself. His gentle wife Felippa was dead; and one day he bid farewell to his home in Lisbon and quitted Portugal with the idea of laying his cause before Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. First of all, however, he went to Genoa, where he saw his father, and provided out of his own scanty means for the old man's comfort.

When he arrived in Spain he sought the favour and assistance of two powerful Spanish nobles, the duke of Medina Sidonia and the Duke of Medina Cœli. The latter was the kinder of the two; he was just going to give Columbus three or four caravels, which lay opposite the port of Cadiz, when he suddenly thought that the enterprise was so vast, that none but a king should direct it. He spoke so kindly, however, of Columbus to Queen Isabella, that she desired him to repair to her court at Cordova.

When he arrived he found the city like a camp, and the king and queen entirely occupied in preparing for a grand campaign against the Moors. One Moorish city after another had indeed yielded to the Spanish arms, but the invaders who had held ground in Spain for nearly eight hundred years, were still in possession of much of the southern part of the country. At such a moment Isabella had no time to listen to the demands of a needy adventurer like Columbus, and his humble dress and his poverty made him an object of contempt in the eyes of the haughty Spanish grandees. At last, through the efforts of the Grand Cardinal of Spain, he was allowed to enter the presence of Ferdinand. The king ordered him to plead his cause before a great council of learned monks at Salamanca. During the time it was held, Columbus was a guest in the convent of St. Stephen, which was the foundation of the famous university of Salamanca. The monks of the convent were kind to him; they entered into his plans, and believed that the voyage he proposed would lead to great discoveries; and prove the source of infinite benefit to mankind; but those who came to confer with them were not of the same opinion, and they tried, by quoting the Holy Scriptures, to convince Columbus that he was in error. Now Columbus was a very devout man, and one strong inducement for him to undertake the voyage was, the hope of spreading the gospel in distant parts of the world, and he must have been greatly pained when sentence was passed against him, and his views except by a few, were misunderstood and treated as idle dreams. Nevertheless he lingered on in Spain, in the hope that his appeal for aid might be heard one day by Isabella herself, who was of a more noble and generous character than her husband. So he followed the court from place to place as the seat of war changed, and in one campaign he bore an honourable part in the struggle with the Moors; while part of the time he remained in Spain he lived quietly at Cordova, earning his bread by making charts, and maps, as he had done before at Lisbon. When he heard that the city of Granada, the stronghold of the Moors, was to be invested by the Spanish army, he determined to make one more appeal, for he was sure that the king and queen would be too busy to listen to him, when the siege had once begun. All they would do was to promise to hear him when they should be released from the cares of war, and Columbus, grieving to think that he had wasted so many years of his life in useless waiting, made up his mind to leave Spain for ever, and apply for aid at the court of France.

From the time he left Cordova little is known of him until he appeared at the gate of the Convent of St. Maria de Rabida, which stood in the midst of a forest of pine trees, near the port of Palos, in Andalusia. His son Diego was with him; the boy was both tired and hungry, for they had come a long way without resting. Just as Columbus was asking for some bread and water for him at the gate, Friar Juan Perez, the guardian of the convent happened to pass by. The good friar welcomed the strangers kindly; he bade them enter, and in the course of conversation Columbus opened his heart to him and told him about his plans, and his firm trust that by the grace of God he should be able to carry them out. Friar Juan had already thought on the subject himself, and he was so delighted with the ideas of Columbus that he sent for two friends to confer with him: one was Fernandez Garcia, a physician of Palos, who had a great longing to go in search of unknown lands; the other was Martin Alonzo Pinzon, a merchant who had vessels of his own, and traded with many foreign ports. These were presently joined by some mariners of Palos, who had had much experience at sea.

Friar Juan persuaded Columbus to stay a little longer in Spain, and wrote a letter to Queen Isabella, hoping that his influence might induce her to sanction the enterprise, since he had once been her confessor, and had always been held by her in great esteem. The court had removed to Santa Fé, and an honest pilot, named Sebastian Rodriguez, undertook to convey the letter thither. At the end of a fortnight he brought back an answer from the queen which gave hope and joy to Columbus and his friends, and caused Friar Juan to saddle his mule in haste, and set out at midnight for the Spanish court. Isabella was indeed beginning to think the voyage worthy of consideration, and wished to talk on the subject with Juan himself. And very soon she summoned Columbus to Santa Fé, and sent him some money to enable him to buy a mule for his journey, and a dress suitable to appear in at court, so that he might no longer be despised for his needy attire.

Columbus arrived in time to see Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings in Spain, deliver the keys of the Alhambra into the hands of the Spanish sovereigns: the hundred thousand Moors, who had shut themselves up within the massive walls of Granada, had been forced to yield; the Crescent was thrown down, and the Royal standard of Spain was planted on the red towers of the most beautiful of Moorish palaces. There were rejoicings and festivities without end among the Spaniards, but Columbus was sad and forlorn in the midst of all the gaiety; the courtiers were jealous of the favour Isabella had shown him on his arrival, and although the king and queen kept their promise and listened to him once more, they were persuaded, by a haughty and powerful priest named Talavera, now Bishop of Granada, to offer him terms which he could not accept. He began to feel utterly disheartened, and resolving again to leave Spain and ask help from France, he mounted his mule and quitted Santa Fé. He had reached the pass of Pinos, two leagues from Granada, when to his surprise a courier overtook him and recalled him to the Court. Some of his friends had at last persuaded Isabella to grant him real assistance, and she became all at once so eager for the voyage to be carried out, that she declared her kingdom of Castille should defray the cost of it, and offered to pledge her own jewels to furnish money besides.