Children's Stories in American History

by Henrietta Christian Wright

COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

If you will look at your map you will see on the western shore of Italy a city which has become celebrated as the birthplace of a great man. It is called Genoa, the Superb, and in this city was born, over three hundred years ago, the man who was to make it immortal. Genoa is a beautiful city. It looks from the sea like a great picture. Its churches, palaces, promenades, and gardens stretch in terraces from the Mediterranean up to the slopes of the Apennines, and behind are seen the ice-covered peaks of the Alps. It has a mild and healthy climate, and on the mountains around grow grain, grapes, oranges, figs, almonds, chestnuts, etc. The streets of the city are mostly narrow, irregular, and sometimes so steep that carriages cannot be used in them, although there are a few that are straight and handsome. Genoa is famed for its palaces and for its great works of sculpture and painting. But its narrow, crooked streets are, after all, the most interesting thing about it, for in them Columbus, when a boy, walked and played. Of course, having been born near the sea, he was naturally very fond of it, and doubtless spent many hours standing on the wharves watching the ships enter and leave the harbor, and while yet a boy he determined that he would be a sailor and spend his life on the great sea which he loved so well. At ten years of age he was sent by his father to the university of Pavia to study navigation and other things, as it was considered necessary that seamen should be well educated, although at that time very few people, even among the nobles, knew how to write. He stayed in Pavia nearly four years, and then returned to Genoa and entered his father's workshop. But here he remained but a short time, for at the age of fourteen he went to sea in a vessel under command of his granduncle, Colombo. For twenty years he followed the sea, during which time he was in many battles, always appearing brave, and often encouraging his sailors by his example. During this time he visited nearly all the ports that were then known, but still he was not satisfied.

YOUNG COLUMBUS.

You must remember that at that time no one knew the real shape of the earth; they had no idea that it was round, but supposed it to be a flat plane, with the ocean lying around its edges. What strange things might be found on the other side of the ocean they did not know. Some said that this ocean, which they called the "Sea of Darkness," and which was supposed to stretch away to the end of the world, had many large islands lying in it, one of which had been visited by some bishops who were flying from the Moors, and who built seven large cities there—one for each bishop; but that, having burned their ships, they could not send back any tidings to the world they had left. A great many people believed this, and there were even some ships sent out to try and find the island, but of course they never did.

Another story which they were very fond of telling was, that a giant called Mildum had actually seen in the western sea an island of gold, with walls of crystal, and offered to swim to it with a ship in tow; but a storm came up, and the giant went ashore and died, and no one ever found the golden island.

But there were some things which made it seem as though there really might be land somewhere out in the Atlantic. For instance, Columbus' brother-in-law had seen a piece of curiously carved wood which had been washed ashore in a westerly gale, and an old pilot had picked up a carved paddle very far west of Portugal. These things were very unlike anything that the Europeans had ever seen before, and they of course supposed that they must have been made by some unknown race of men. Then, besides, cane-stalks of tropic growth had been washed on the Madeiras, and great pine-trees on the Azores; and once, strangest thing of all, two drowned men, of different dress and looks from any they had ever known, had been found on the island of Flores. All these had come from the West—that great, curious, unknown West! Can you not imagine how the little children would go down to the shore and look across the sea, and wonder and wonder what lay beyond it? They had heard such strange stories of giants and monsters and cruel beasts, who were said to live away off there out of the sight of land, and it all seemed so curious to them. They could not believe that there was really land out beyond that blue sea, on which sometimes they could not even see a sail. It only looked to them like a great empty stretch of water, and they felt just as you would feel if you looked up to the sky some cloudless day. You would see nothing but the empty blue stretching away and away and away.

Would you not laugh if some one said to you, "Come, let us take a boat and sail away into the sky, and find a new country that some one says is there?"

Well, in those days, almost every one thought it was just as silly to suppose there was land on the other side of the Atlantic.