His ideas of the form of the earth;
Columbus had formed a crude idea of the extent of the waters which covered the earth; and their presumed limited extent and the shortness of the distance westward, as he supposed, between Spain and the Indies, had, no doubt, exercised considerable influence over him in his determination to fathom the mystery of the Atlantic Ocean.[728]
and love for maritime discovery.
His visit to Lisbon, and treatment by the Portuguese.
From his earliest youth he had evinced a strong inclination for the study of geography as well as geometry and astronomy, of which he had gained a superficial knowledge long before he resolved to push his fortune from the ports of Spain. Trained to the sea at a period when its followers were exposed to more than usual dangers by the piratical habits then prevalent, he had become daring and adventurous, which, combined with his love for geographical discoveries, rendered him peculiarly well adapted for the exploration of unknown seas. Genoa, his native city, was not then, however, in a position to aid his cherished design, for this republic, once so powerful, had been languishing for some time under the embarrassment of a foreign and a foolish war. Falling slowly but surely from her once high estate, her spirit fell with her fortunes, and she had not the inclination, even if she had had the means, to enter upon extensive but doubtful adventures. Columbus had, therefore, to seek aid in other lands. He repaired to Lisbon, where many of his countrymen had settled; and there, in the full vigour of his manhood, he took up his residence about the year 1470, and soon afterwards married a daughter of Bartolomeo de Palestrello, who had been one of the most distinguished navigators under Prince Henry of Portugal and the colonizer and governor of Porto Santo.
By this marriage he obtained access to his father-in-law’s journals and charts, while living with his widowed mother-in-law at Porto Santo,[729] and these were treasures to Columbus. From these and other sources he soon made himself conversant with the various distant sea routes then known to the Portuguese, and learnt also their plans and conceptions for other voyages still more distant, having been allowed to sail occasionally with them in their expeditions to the coast of Guinea. On shore he maintained himself and family by the construction of maps and charts, an occupation which brought him into communication with many men of learning and influence, and notably with Pedro Correa, his wife’s brother-in-law and a famous navigator, and also with Paulo Toscanelli of Florence, the most learned cosmographer of the period.[730] The times, too, were favourable to his views. The discoveries of the Cape Verde Islands and of the Azores, with the explorations along the coasts of Africa, as far as the Cape of Good Hope, had inflamed the imaginations of men with visions of other lands of greater wealth and beauty yet to be discovered, and had again revived the speculation of the ancients, the imaginary Atlantis of Plato, and the great oceanic island which the Carthaginians were said to have found. Columbus, therefore, applied himself with redoubled zeal to the study of every writer on geography ancient or modern, being himself firmly convinced that the earth was a sphere or globe, which might be travelled round from east to west, and that men stood foot to foot when on its opposite points.
Strabo had already expressed his opinion (following the judgments of Homer and of Poseidonius) that an ocean surrounded the earth;[731] and Marco Polo,[732] and perhaps also Sir John Maundeville, had in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries visited parts of Asia far beyond the regions laid down by Ptolemy: from the narratives of these travellers, Columbus judged that it would not be difficult to sail from Spain to India on the same parallel, and that a voyage to the West of no long duration would bring him to that far-famed but mysterious land. The most eastern part of Asia known to the ancients, he thought, could not be separated from the Azores by more than a third of the circumference of the globe, the intervening space being in all probability filled up by the unknown residue of Asia.[733]
“It is singular,” remarks Washington Irving in his interesting history of the Life and Correspondence of Columbus,[734] “how much the success of this great undertaking depended upon two happy errors, the imaginary extent of Asia to the East, and the supposed smallness of the earth, both errors of the most learned and profound philosophers, but without which Columbus would hardly have ventured upon his enterprise. As to the idea of finding land by sailing directly to the West, it is at present so familiar to our minds, as in some measure to diminish the merits of the first conception, and the hardihood of the first attempt; but in those days, as has been well observed, the circumference of the earth was yet unknown; no one could tell whether the ocean was not of immense extent, impossible to be traversed; nor were the laws of specific gravity, and of central gravitation, ascertained, by which, granting the rotundity of the earth, the possibility of making the tour of it would be manifest.”
Several years, however, elapsed before Columbus could make any progress towards carrying into effect his favourite project. He was himself too poor to render any pecuniary assistance towards the fitting out of the requisite expedition; and the government of Portugal was then too much engrossed in a war with Spain to engage the services of a foreigner in any peaceful enterprise of an expensive nature. The public mind, also, though elated by the discoveries which had already been made, was not then prepared for so doubtful and perilous an undertaking, while the sailors, who had rarely ventured far out of sight of land, considered the project of a voyage directly westward into a boundless waste of ocean as dangerous as it was extravagant and visionary. But when John II., who had imbibed the passion for discovery from his grand-uncle, Prince Henry, ascended the throne, a fresh impetus was given to voyages of discovery. These, as we have seen, were prosecuted with increased vigour to the south of the Equator and along the shores of Africa, and soon afterwards preparations were made for extending these voyages round the Cape of Good Hope, till at last India was reached by Vasco de Gama, whose celebrated expedition we shall hereafter attempt to describe.
His formal proposal in 1480 to the crown of Portugal is referred to a learned junto, who ridicule his idea.