[Æt. 45–46; 1482–84]

We have two accounts of the interview between Columbus and the King—one written by Fernando Columbus, and the other by Juan de Barros, an eminent geographer. Fernando says that the King listened with great delight to the project of Columbus, and only refrained from instantly giving him the command of an expedition because he did not feel ready to consent to Columbus’s conditions. De Barros says that King John finally professed that he approved of Columbus’s views merely to get rid of that persistent mariner.

However this may be, the King referred the whole matter to a committee, with power to send for maps and things. The committee consisted of two geographers—who of course hated Columbus with true scientific hatred—and the King’s confessor, the Bishop of Ceuta. It did not take very long for the committee to decide that Columbus was a preposterous person, and that his project was impracticable. The King then referred the matter to his council, where it was hotly debated. The Bishop of Ceuta took the broad, general ground that exploration was an idle and frivolous occupation; that no men of sense wanted any new countries; and that if the King must have amusement, the best thing he could do would be to make war upon the Moors.

Don Pedro de Meneses replied with much vigor, hurling back the Bishop’s accusations against exploration, and nailing his reverence’s misstatements as boldly as if the two were rival Congressmen. As for himself, Don Pedro said, he liked new continents, and believed that Portugal could not have too many of them. He considered Columbus a great man, and felt that it would be a precious privilege for other people to aid in the proposed transatlantic scheme.

Nevertheless, the council decided against it, much, we are told, to the King’s disappointment.

The Bishop of Ceuta, in spite of his remarks at the meeting of the committee, evidently thought there might be something in Columbus’s plan after all. He therefore proposed to the King that Columbus should be induced to furnish written proposals and specifications for the discovery of transatlantic countries, and that with the help of the information thus furnished the King should secretly send a vessel to test the practicability of the scheme. This was done, but the vessel returned after a few days, having discovered nothing but water.

[Æt. 46–48; 1484]

As soon as Columbus heard of this trick he became excessively angry, and resolved that King John should never have a square foot of new territory, nor a solitary heathen soul to convert, if he could help it. Accordingly, he broke off his acquaintance with the King, and proposed to leave Lisbon, in the mean time sending his brother Bartholomew to England to ask if the English King would like to order a supply of new islands or a transatlantic continent. His wife had already succumbed to her husband’s unremitting conversation concerning explorations, and died, doubtless with much resignation. Madame Perestrello, Pedro Correo, and Mrs. Columbus were probably only a few of the many unhappy Portuguese who suffered from the fatal conversational powers of Columbus, and Portugal may have become rather an unsafe place for him. This would account for the stealthy way in which he left that kingdom, and is at least as probable as the more common theory that he ran away to escape his creditors.

It was in the year 1484 that Columbus, accompanied by his son Diego, shook the dust of Portugal from his feet and climbed over the back-fence into Spain, in the dead of night, instead of openly taking the regular mail-coach. The King of England had refused to listen to Bartholomew’s proposals, and King John had been guilty of conduct unbecoming a monarch and a gentleman. This may have given Columbus a prejudice against kings, for he made his next applications to the Dukes of Medina Sidonia and Medina Celi—two noblemen residing in the south of Spain.

[Æt. 48; 1484–87]

Medina Sidonia listened to Columbus with much interest, and evidently regarded him as an entertaining kind of lunatic; but after a time he became seriously alarmed at the Italian’s inexhaustible capacity for talk, and courteously got rid of him before sustaining any permanent injury. The Duke of Medina Celi was a braver man, and not only invited Columbus to come and stay at his house, but actually spoke of lending him ships and money. He changed his mind, however, and told Columbus that he really could not take the liberty of fitting out an expedition which ought to be fitted out by a king. Columbus then remarked that he would step over to France and speak to the French King about it; whereupon the Duke hastily wrote to Queen Isabella, of Castile and Aragon, mentioning that he had a mariner of great merit in his house, whom she really ought to see. The Queen graciously wrote, requesting the Duke to forward his ancient mariner to the royal palace at Cordova, which he accordingly did, furnishing Columbus at the same time with a letter of introduction to Her Majesty.

Spain was then merely a geographical expression. Ferdinand, King of Aragon, had recently married Isabella, Queen of Castile, and their joint property was called the Kingdom of Castile and Aragon; for, inasmuch as the Moors still ruled over the southern part of the peninsula, it would have been indelicate for Ferdinand and his queen to pretend that they were the monarchs of all Spain.

When Columbus reached Cordova he found that their majesties were on the point of marching against the Moors, and had no time to listen to any plans of exploration. Before starting, however, the Queen deposited Columbus with Alonzo de Quintanilla, the treasurer of Castile, and, we may presume, took a receipt for him. Quintanilla, an affable old gentleman, was much pleased with Columbus, and soon became a warm advocate of his theories. He introduced the navigator to several influential friends, and Columbus passed the summer and winter very pleasantly.

At Cordova he also met a young person named Beatrix Enriquez, to whom he became much attached, and who was afterward the mother of his son Fernando. She probably had her good qualities; but as Columbus was so much preoccupied with his transatlantic projects he forgot to marry her, and hence she is scarcely the sort of young person to be introduced into a virtuous biography.

[Æt. 48–51; 1484–87]

During the same winter the King and Queen held their court at Salamanca, after having made a very brilliant foray into the Moorish territory, and having also suppressed a rebellion in their own dominions. Columbus went to Salamanca, where he made the acquaintance of Pedro Gonsalvez de Mendoza, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, who was decidedly the most influential man in the kingdom. When Columbus first mentioned his project, the Cardinal told him the Scriptures asserted that the earth was flat, and that it would be impious for him to prove it was round; but Columbus soon convinced him that the Church would be greatly benefited by the discovery of gold-mines all ready to be worked, and of heathen clamoring to be converted, and thus successfully reconciled science and religion. The Cardinal heartily entered into his scheme, and soon obtained for him an audience with the King.

Columbus says that on this occasion he spoke with an eloquence and zeal that he had never before displayed. The King listened with great fortitude, and when Columbus temporarily paused in his oration had still strength enough left to dismiss him with a promise to refer the matter to a scientific council. In pursuance of this promise he directed Fernando de Talavera, the Queen’s confessor, to summon the most learned men of the kingdom to examine Columbus thoroughly and decide upon the feasibility of his plan. As for the Queen, she does not appear to have been present at the audience given to Columbus, either because her royal husband considered the female mind incapable of wrestling with geography, or because he did not think her strong enough to endure Columbus’s conversation.

The scientific Congress met at Salamanca without any unnecessary delay, and as few people except priests had any learning whatever at that period, the Congress consisted chiefly of different kinds of priests. They courteously gave Columbus his innings, and listened heroically to his interminable speech, after which they proceeded to demonstrate to him that he was little better than a combined heretic and madman. They quoted the Bible and the opinions of the Fathers of the church in support of the theory that the earth was flat instead of round.

When Columbus in his turn proved that the Bible and the Fathers must be understood in a figurative sense, the priests then took the ground that if the world was round, Columbus could not carry enough provisions with him to enable him to sail around it, and that he could not sail back from his alleged western continent unless his vessels could sail up-hill.

Gradually the more sensible members of the congress came to the conclusion that it would be better to agree to everything Columbus might propose, rather than listen day after day to his appalling eloquence. Still, the majority were men of ascetic lives and great physical endurance, and they showed no disposition to yield to argument or exhaustion. The sessions of the Congress were thus prolonged from day to day, and Columbus was kept in a painful state of suspense. Little did he imagine that in the land which he was destined to discover, another Congress would meet, not quite four hundred years later, and would even surpass the Congress of Salamanca in the tediousness and uselessness of its debates.