THE UNCERTAINTIES OF THE EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS.
The condition of knowledge respecting Columbus's early life was such, when Prescott wrote, that few would dispute his conclusion that it is hopeless to unravel the entanglement of events, associated with the opening of his career. The critical discernment of Harrisse and other recent investigators has since then done something to make the confusion even more apparent by unsettling convictions too hastily assumed. A bunch of bewildering statements, in despite of all that present scholarship can do, is left to such experts as may be possessed in the future of more determinate knowledge. It may well be doubted if absolute clarification of the record is ever to be possible.
His education.
The student naturally inquires of the contemporaries of Columbus as to the quality and extent of his early education, and he derives most from Las Casas and the Historie of 1571. It has of late been ascertained that the woolcombers of Genoa established local schools for the education of their children, and the young Christopher may have had his share of their instruction, in addition to whatever he picked up at his trade, which continued, as long as he remained in Italy, that of his father. We know from the manuscripts which have come down to us that Columbus acquired the manual dexterity of a good penman; and if some existing drawings are not apocryphal, he had a deft hand, too, in making a spirited sketch with a few strokes. His drawing of maps, which we are also told about, implies that he had fulfilled Ptolemy's definition of that art of the cosmographer which could represent the cartographic outlines of countries with supposable correctness. He could do it with such skill that he practiced it at one time, as is said, for the gaining of a livelihood. We know, trusting the Historie, that he was for a brief period at the University of Pavia, perhaps not far from 1460, where he sought to understand the mysteries of cosmography, astrology, and geometry.
DRAWING ASCRIBED TO COLUMBUS.
At Pavia.
Bossi has enumerated the professors in these departments at that time, from whose teaching Columbus may possibly have profited. Harrisse with his accustomed distrust, throws great doubt on the whole narrative of his university experiences, and thinks Pavia at this time offered no peculiar advantages for an aspiring seaman, to be compared with the practical instruction which Genoa in its commercial eminence could at the same time have offered to any sea-smitten boy. It was at Genoa at this very time (1461), that Benincasa was producing his famous sea-charts.
ANDREAS BENINCASA, 1476.
[From St. Martin's Atlas.]