Map-making at that time offered a fine field to an imaginative man, and Columbus was not slow to cultivate it. He made beautiful charts of the Atlantic Ocean, putting Japan, India, and other desirable Asiatic countries on its western shore, and placing quantities of useful islands where he considered that they would do the most good. These maps may possibly have been somewhat inferior in breadth of imagination to an average Herald map, but they were far superior in beauty; and the array of novel animals with which the various continents and large islands were sprinkled made them extremely attractive. The man who bought one of Columbus’s maps received his full money’s worth, and what with map-selling, and occasional sea voyages to and from Guinea at times when Madame Perestrello became rather too free in the use of the stove-lid, Columbus managed to make a tolerably comfortable living.
The island of Porto Santo, then recently discovered, lay in the track of vessels sailing between Portugal and Guinea, and must have attracted the attention of Columbus while engaged in the several voyages which he made early in his married life.
It so happened that Doña Felipa came into possession, by inheritance, of a small property in Porto Santo, and Columbus thereupon abandoned Lisbon and with his family took up his residence on that island. Here he met one Pedro Correo, a bold sailor and a former governor of Porto Santo, who was married to Doña Felipa’s sister. Columbus and Correo soon became warm friends, and would sit up together half the night, talking about the progress of geographical discovery and the advantages of finding some nice continent full of gold and at a great distance from the widow Perestrello.
At that time there were certain unprincipled mariners who professed to have discovered meritorious islands a few hundred miles west of Portugal; and though we know that these imaginative men told what was not true, Columbus may have supposed that their stories were not entirely without a basis of truth. King Henry of Portugal, who died three years after Columbus arrived at Lisbon, had a passion for new countries, and the fashion which he set of fitting out exploring expeditions continued to prevail after his death.
There is no doubt that there was a general feeling, at the period when Columbus and Correo lived at Porto Santo, that the discovery of either a continent on the western shore of the Atlantic, or a new route to China, would meet a great popular want. Although the Portuguese had sailed as far south as Cape Bojador, they believed that no vessel could sail any further in that direction without meeting with a temperature so great as to raise the water of the ocean to the boiling-point, and it was thus assumed that all future navigators desirous of new islands and continents must search for them in the west. The more Columbus thought of the matter, the more firmly he became convinced that he could either discover valuable islands by sailing due west, or that at all events he could reach the coast of Japan, China, or India; and that it was clearly the duty of somebody to supply him with ships and money and put him in command of an exploring expedition. With this view Correo fully coincided, and Columbus made up his mind that he would call on a few respectable kings and ask them to fit out such an expedition.
[Æt. 34; 1474]
Fernando Columbus informs us that his father based his conviction that land could be found by sailing in a westerly direction, upon a variety of reasons. Although many learned men believed that the earth was round, the circumference of the globe was then unknown; and as every one had therefore a right to call it what he chose, Columbus assumed that it was comparatively small, and that the distance from the Cape Verde Islands eastward to the western part of Asia was fully two thirds of the entire circumference. He also assumed that the remaining third consisted in great part of the eastern portion of Asia, and that hence the distance across the Atlantic, from Portugal to Asia, was by no means great. In support of this theory he recalled the alleged fact that various strange trees and bits of wood, hewn after a fashion unknown in Europe, had from time to time been cast on the European shores, and must have come out of the unknown west.
This theory, founded as it was upon gratuitous assumptions, and supported by driftwood of uncertain origin and doubtful veracity, was regarded by Columbus as at least the equal of the binomial theorem in credibility, and he felt confident that the moment he should bring it to the attention of an enterprising king, that monarch would instantly present him with a fleet and make him Governor-General of all lands which he might discover.
It was the invariable custom of Columbus to declare that his chief reason for desiring to discover new countries was, that he might carry the Gospel to the pagan inhabitants thereof, and also find gold enough to fit out a new crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. Whether old Pedro Correo winked when Columbus spoke in this pious strain, or whether Doña Felipa, with the charming frankness of her sex, remarked “fiddlesticks!” we shall never know.
[Æt. 38; 1474]