3. There was trade between Europe and certain parts of Asia which they called the Indies, and reached by going east and south by land; but this marvelous country of the Grand Khan lay beyond, and its riches remained a golden dream, known only by the travelers' reports. That was what was known of Asia. Of Africa, even less; for, fifty years before Columbus was born, only a strip across the northern part of it was known, and south of that lay "nothing," said the people. And of America, our wide-stretching America, they never dreamed.

4. Some fifty years before the birth of Columbus, Prince Henry of Portugal, studying the matter, came to the conclusion that the world did not necessarily end at "Cape Nothing," on the African coast, as people said, but perhaps extended a long way farther; and, having an abundance of time and money, he began to send out ships to sail along beyond the cape and see what they could find. And they found a long, long coast. Year after year, until the prince was a gray-haired old man, he sent out vessel after vessel; and, though often storm-driven and wrecked, and unsuccessful, they many times came back with accounts of new discoveries. One by one they brought the numerous islands lying off the northwest coast of Africa to the notice of the people of Europe. And after they once got past that mysterious "Cape Nothing," they sailed along the coast, going farther and farther on successive voyages, until, in 1487, long after Prince Henry's death, and just before Columbus's great voyage, the most southern point was rounded, the African continent was known, and the long-sought water-way to the Indies was established.

THE IDEA.

5. As to the date of Columbus's birth, historians can not agree within some ten years. It was doubtless some where between 1435 and 1446. They also give different accounts as to his birthplace; but it seems most probable that he was born in Genoa, on the Mediterranean, the son of a wool-carder, and that he went to school in Pavia. At fourteen he became a sailor.

6. Up and down the seas, first in the sunny Mediterranean, later along the stormy Atlantic coast, sailed the lad, the young man, in the small sailing vessels of the time, and learned well the ocean which he afterward so boldly trusted.

[Illustration: View of Genoa]

7. He was a daring, quick-witted, handsome, bronzed young man when he went to Lisbon, where his brother Bartholomew was established as a cosmographer, making charts for seamen; and with all his enthusiasm for his sea-faring life, he had enough interest in ordinary pursuits to fall in love most romantically. It happened on account of his being so regular at church. Every day he must attend service, and every day to church came Donna Philippa Palestrello, who lived in a convent near by. Across the seats flitted involuntary glances between the cloistered maiden and the handsome brown sailor—with a dimple in his chin, some pictures have him; something besides prayers were read between the lines of the prayer-book, and the marriage which closed this churchly wooing proved the wisdom of both parties.

8. Philippa's father had been one of Prince Henry's famous seamen and the governor of Porto Santo, one of the new-found islands; and after his marriage, Columbus lived sometimes at Porto Santo, sometimes at Lisbon, and much of the time on the sea. He sailed south along the African coast to Guinea; north he sailed to England, and farther on to Iceland. Wherever ships could go, there went he, intent on learning all there was to know of the world he lived in. He read eagerly all that was written about the earth's shape and size. The modern science of his time he well understood. He pored over the maps of the ancient geographer Ptolemy, over the maps of Cosmas, a later geographer, over Palestrello's charts, given him by Philippa's mother.

9. Ptolemy said the world is round, but Cosmas, whom good Christians were bound to believe, since he founded his science on the Bible, said it is flat, with a wall around it to hold up the sky—very probable, certainly. But that notion of the ancients that the world is "round like a ball" had been caught up and believed by a handful of men scattered sparsely down through the centuries, and of late lead gained, among advanced scientists, more of a following than ever. And Columbus, who, with all his enthusiasm for adventure and his reverence for religion and he church, had a clear, unbiased, scientific head, mentally turned his back upon Cosmas, and clasped hands with the ancients and the wisest scientists of his own day.

10. The north was known, the south was fast becoming so, the east had been penetrated, but the west was unexplored. Stretching along from Thule, the distant Iceland, to the southern part of the great African continent, thousands of miles, lay the "Sea of Darkness," as the people called it. What lay beyond? The question had been asked before, times enough; times enough answered for any reasonable man. "Hell was there," said one superstition, "Haven't you seen the flames at sunset-time?" "A sea thick like paste, in which no ships can sail," said another. "Darkness," said another, "thick darkness, the blackness of nothing, and the end of all created things!"