V.2 Copyright, 1886, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. All rights reserved. rside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A, HISTORY OF AMERICA. CHAPTER I. COLUMBUS AND HIS DISCOVERIES. BY JUSTIN WINSOR, The Editor. MOND his birth, of poor and respectable parents, we know nothing positively about the earliest years of Columbus. His father was bly a wool-comber. The boy had the ordinary schooling of his nd a touch of university life during a few months passed at Pavia; at fourteen he chose to become a sailor. A seaman's career in pays implied adventures more or less of a piratical kind. There are mions, however, that in the intervals of this exciting life he followed there humanizing occupation of selling books in Genoa, and perhaps ne employment in the making of charts, for he had a deft hand at 's Life of Columbus, app. no. vii. nd Columbus tried to make his e that his father was of some kincorsair. The story of Columbus oar from a naval fight off Cape And entering Portugal by floating to does not agree with known facts in his alleged date. (Harrisse, Les Colombo, II.-I. p. 36.) Allegri Allegretti, in his Ephemerides Columbus spent the years 1470-1484 in Portugal. It was a time. when the air was filled with tales of discovery. The captains of Prince Henry of Portugal had been gradually pushing their ships down the AfriBan coast, and in some of these voyages Columbus was a participant. To one of his navigators Prince Henry had given the governorship of the Island of Porto Santo, of the Madeira group. To the daughter of this man, Perestrello,1 Columbus was married; and with his widow Columbus lived, and derived what advantage he could from the papers and charts of the old navigator. There was a tie between his own and his wife's family in the fact that Perestrello was an Italian, and seems to have been of good family, but to have left little or no inheritance for his daughter beyond some property in Porto Santo, which Columbus went to enjoy. On this island Columbus' son Diego was born in 1474. It was in this same year (1474) that he had some correspondence with the Italian savant, Toscanelli, regarding the discovery of land westward. A belief in such discovery was a natural corollary of the object which Prince Henry had had in view, — by circumnavigating Africa to find a way to the countries of which Marco Polo had given golden accounts. It was to substitute for the tedious indirection of the African route a direct western passage, a belief in the practicability of which was drawn from a confidence in the sphericity of the earth. Meanwhile, gathering what hope he could by reading the ancients, by conferring with wise men, and by questioning mariners returned from voyages which had borne them more or less westerly on the great ocean, Columbus suffered the thought to germinate as it would in his mind for several years. Even on the voyages which he made hither and thither for gain, - once far north, to Iceland even, or perhaps only to the Faroe Islands, as is inferred, and in active participation in various warlike and marauding expeditions, like the attack on the Venetian galleys near Cape St. Vincent in 1485,2 he constantly came in contact with those who could give him hints affecting his theory. Through all these years, however, we know not certainly what were the vicissitudes which fell to his lot.3 It seems possible, if not probable, that Columbus went to Genoa and Venice, and in the first instance presented his scheme of western exploration to the authorities of those cities.4 He may, on the other hand, have tried earlier to get the approval of the King of Portugal. In this case the visit to Italy may have occurred in the year following his dearture from Portugal, which is nearly a blank in the record of his life. De Lorgues 1 This name is sometimes given Palestrello. 2 Rawdon Brown's Calendar of State Papers in the Archives of Venice, vol. i. (1864). 8 Prescott (Ferdinand and Isabella, ed. 1873, vol. ii. p. 123) says: "The discrepancies among the earliest authorities are such as to render hopeless any attempt to settle with precision the chronology of Columbus's movements previous to his first voyage." 4 It cannot but be remarked how Italy, in Columbus, Cabot, and Vespucius, not to name others, led in opening the way to a nev v stage in the world's progress, which by ma king the Atlantic the highway of a commerce that had mainly nurtured Italy on the Mediterranean, conduced to start her republics on that decline which the Turk, sweeping through that in land sea, confirmed and accelerated. believes in the anterior Italian visit, when both Genoa and Venice rejected his plans; and then makes him live with his father at Savone, gaining a living by constructing charts, and by selling maps and books in Genoa. It would appear that in 1484 Columbus had urged his views upon the Portuguese King, but with no further success than to induce the sovereign to despatch, on other pretences, a vessel to undertake the passage westerly in secrecy. Its return without accomplishing any discovery opened the eyes of Columbus to the deceit which that monarch would have put upon him, and he departed from the Portuguese dominions in not a little disgust.1 The death of his wife had severed another tie with Portugal; and taking with him his boy Diego, Columbus left, to go we scarcely know whither, so obscure is the record of his life for the next year. Muñoz claims for this period that he went to Italy. Sharon Turner has conjectured that he went to England; but there seems no ground to believe that he had any relations with the English Court except by deputy, for his brother Bartholomew was despatched to lay his schemes before Henry VII.2 Whatever may have been the result of this application, no answer seems to have reached Columbus until he was committed to the service of Spain. It was in 1485 or 1486- for authorities differ 3 that a proposal was laid by Columbus before Ferdinand and Isabella; but the steps were slow by which he made even this progress. We know how, in the popular story, he presented himself at the Franciscan Convent of Santa María de la Rábida, asking for bread for himself and his boy. This convent stood on a steep promontory about half a league from Palos, and was then in charge of the Father Superior Juan Perez de Marchena. The appearance of the stranger first, and his talk next, interested the Prior; and it was undef his advice and support after a while when Martin Alonzo Pinzon, of the neighboring town of Palos, had espoused the new theory- that Columbus was passed on to Cordova, with such claims to recognition as the Prior of Rabida could bestow upon him. It was perhaps while success did not seem likely here, in the midst of the preparations for a campaign against the Moorish kings, that his brother Bartholomew made his trip to England. It was also in November, 1486, it 1 Notwithstanding this disappointment of Columbus, it is claimed that Alfonso V., in 1474, had consulted Toscanelli as to such a western passage "to the land where the spices grow." 2 There is great uncertainty about this English venture. Benzoni says Columbus's ideas were ridiculed; Bacon (Life of Henry VII) says the acceptance of them was delayed by accident; Purchas says they were accepted too late. F. Cradock, in the Dedication of his Wealth Discovered, London, 1661, regrets the loss of honor which Henry VII. incurred in not listening to the project. (Sabin, v. 55.) There is much confusion of statement in the early writers. Cf. Las Casas, lib. i. cap. 29; Barcia, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 10; Herrera, dec. i. lib. 2; Oviedo, lib. i. cap. 4; Gomara, cap. 15; Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vet., p. 4. 3 As, for instance, Oviedo and Bossi. 4 The same whom Isabella advised Columbus to take "as an astrologer" on one of his later voyages. Cf. P. Augustin d'Osimo's Christophe Colomb et le Père Juan Perez de Marchena ; ou, de la co-opération des franciscains à la découverte de l'Amérique, 1861, and P. Marcellino da Civezza's Histoire générale des missions franciscaines, 1863. 5 Cf. Schanz on "Die Stellung der beiden ersten Tudors zu den Entdeckungen," in his Englische Handelspolitik. would seem, that Columbus formed his connection with Beatrix Enriquez, while he was waiting in Cordova for the attention of the monarch to be disengaged from this Moorish campaign. Among those at this time attached to the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella was Alexander Geraldinus, then about thirty years old. He was a traveller, a man of letters, and a mathematician; and it was afterward the boast of his kinsman, who edited his Itinerarium ad regiones sub æquinoctiali plaga constitutas1 (Rome, 1631), that Geraldinus, in one way and another, aided Columbus in pressing his views upon their Majesties. It was through Geraldinus' influence, or through that of others who had become impressed with his views, that Columbus finally got the ear of Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza, Archbishop of Toledo. The way was now surer. The King heeded the Archbishop's advice, and a council of learned men. was convened, by royal orders, at Salamanca, to judge Columbus and his theories. Here he was met by all that prejudice, content, and ignorance (as now understood, but wisdom then) could bring to bear, in the shape of Scriptural contradictions of his views, and the pseudo-scientific distrust of what were thought mere visionary aims. He met all to his own satisfaction, but not quite so successfully to the comprehension of his judges. He told them that he should find Asia that way; and that if he did not, there must be other lands westerly quite as desirable to discover. No conclusion had been reached when, in the spring of 1487, the Court departed from Cordova, and Columbus found himself left behind without encouragement, save in the support of a few whom he had convinced, notably Diego de Deza, a friar destined to some ecclesiastical distinction as Archbishop of Seville. COLUMBUS' ARMOR.2 1 Stevens, Historical Collection, vol. i. no. 1,418; Leclerc, no. 235 (120 francs); CarterBrown, vol. ii. no. 376; Sabin, vol. vii. no. 27,116; Murphy, no. 1,046. This book, which in 1832 Rich priced at £1 10s., has recently been quoted by Quaritch at £5 5s. Harrisse calls the book mendacious (Notes on Columbus, p. 37). The book was written in 1522; its author was born in 1465, and died in 1525 as bishop of Santo Domingo. 2 This follows a cut in Ruge's Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 245. The armor is in the Collection in the Royal Palace at Madrid. |