[Æt. 34; 1470]

It is at Lisbon that we are able for the first time to put our finger decisively upon Columbus. The stray glimpses which we catch of him before that time, whether at Genoa, Pavia, Naples, or Cape Carthagena, are fleeting and unsatisfactory; his trustworthy biography begins with his residence at Lisbon. He reached there, we do not know by what route, in the year 1470, having no money and no visible means of support. Instead of borrowing money and buying an organ, or calling on the leader of one of the Lisbon political “halls” and obtaining through his influence permission to set up a peanut stand, he took a far bolder course—he married. Let it not be supposed that he represented himself to be an Italian count, and thereby won the hand of an ambitious Portuguese girl. The fact that he married the daughter of a deceased Italian navigator proves that he did not resort to the commonplace devices of the modern Italian exile. Doña Felipa di Perestrello was not only an Italian, and as such could tell a real count from a Genoese sailor without the use of litmus paper or any other chemical test, but she was entirely without money and, viewed as a bride, was complicated with a mother-in-law. Thus it is evident that Columbus did not engage in matrimony as a fortune-hunter, and that he must have married Doña Felipa purely because he loved her. We may explain in the same way her acceptance of the penniless Genoese; and the fact that they lived happily together—if Fernando Columbus is to be believed—makes it clear that neither expected anything from the other, and hence neither was disappointed.

The departed navigator, Di Perestrello, had been in the service of the Portuguese king, and had accumulated a large quantity of maps and charts, which his widow inherited. She does not appear to have objected to her daughter’s marriage, but the depressed state of Columbus’s fortunes at this period is shown by the fact that he and his wife went to reside with his mother-in-law, where he doubtless learned that fortitude and dignity when exposed to violence and strong language for which he afterwards became renowned. Old Madame Perestrello did him one really good turn by presenting him with the maps, charts, and log-books of her departed husband, and this probably suggested to him the idea which he proceeded to put into practice, of making and selling maps.

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]

Perhaps Columbus really thought that he wanted to dispense the Gospel and fight the Mahometans, and that he did not care a straw about becoming a great explorer and having the State capital of Ohio named for him; but his fixed determination not to carry a particle of Gospel to the smallest possible pagan, except upon terms highly advantageous to his pocket and his schemes of personal aggrandizement, is scarcely reconcilable with his pious protestations. His own church decided, not very long ago, that his moral character did not present available materials for the manufacture of a saint, and it is only too probable that the church was right.

It is a curious illustration of the determination of his biographers to prove him an exceptionally noble man, that they dwell with much emphasis upon his stern determination not to undertake any explorations except upon his own extravagant terms. To the unprejudiced mind his conduct might seem that of a shrewd and grasping man, bent upon making a profitable speculation. The biographers, however, insist that it was the conduct of a great and noble nature, caring for nothing except geographical discovery and the conversion of unlimited heathen.

About this time Columbus is believed to have written a great many letters to various people, asking their candid opinion upon the propriety of discovering new continents or new ways to old Asiatic countries. Paulo Toscanelli, of Florence, a leading scientific person, sent him, in answer to one of his letters, a map of the Atlantic and the eastern coast of Asia, which displayed a bolder imagination than Columbus had shown in any of his own maps, and which so delighted him that he put it carefully away, to use in case his dream of exploration should be realized. Toscanelli’s map has proved to be of much more use to historians than it was to Columbus, for the letter in which it was enclosed was dated in the year 1474, and it thus gives us the earliest date at which we can feel confident Columbus was entertaining the idea of his great voyage.

[Æt. 45; 1481]

How long Columbus resided at Porto Santo we have no means of knowing; neither do we know why he left that place. It is certain, however, that he returned to Lisbon either before or very soon after the accession of King John II. to the Portuguese throne, an event which took place in 1481. Meanwhile, as we learn from one of his letters, he made a voyage in 1477 to an island which his biographers have agreed to call Iceland, although Columbus lacked inclination—or perhaps courage—to call it by that name. He says he made the voyage in February, and he does not appear to have noticed that the water was frozen. The weak point in his narrative—provided he really did visit Iceland—is his omission to mention how he warmed the Arctic ocean so as to keep it free of ice in February. Had he only given us a description of his sea-warming method, it would have been of inestimable service to the people of Iceland, since it would have rendered the island easily accessible at all times of the year, and it would also have materially lessened the difficulty which explorers find in sailing to the North Pole. It is probable that Columbus visited some warmer and easier island than Iceland—say one of the Hebrides. In those days a voyage from southern Europe to Iceland would have been a remarkable feat, and Columbus would not have failed to demand all the credit due him for so bold an exploit.

The immediate predecessor of King John—King Alfonso—preferred war to exploration, and as he was occupied during the latter part of his reign in a very interesting war with Spain, it is improbable that Columbus wasted time in asking him to fit out a transatlantic expedition. There is a rumor that, prior to the accession of King John II., Columbus applied to Genoa for assistance in his scheme of exploration, but the rumor rests upon no evidence worth heeding.

Genoa, as every one knows, was then a republic. It needed all its money to pay the expenses of the administration party at elections, to improve its inland harbors and subterranean rivers, and to defray the cost of postal routes in inaccessible parts of the country. Had Columbus asked for an appropriation, the Genoese politicians would have denounced the folly and wickedness of squandering the people’s money on scientific junketing expeditions, and would have maintained that a free and enlightened republic ought not to concern itself with the effete and monarchical countries of Asia, to which Columbus was anxious to open a new route.

Moreover, Columbus had been absent from Genoa for several years. He had no claims upon any of the Genoese statesmen, and was without influence enough to carry his own ward. An application of any sort coming from such a man would have been treated with deserved contempt; and we may be very sure that, however much Columbus may have loved the old Genoese flag and desired an appropriation, he had far too much good sense to dream of asking any favors from his fellow-countrymen. Undoubtedly he was as anxious to start in search of America while he lived at Porto Santo as he was at a later period, but he knew that only a king would feel at liberty to use public funds in what the public would consider a wild and profitless expedition; and as there was no king whom he could hope to interest in his scheme, he naturally waited until a suitable king should appear.

The death of Alfonso provided him with what he imagined would prove to be a king after his own heart, for King John was no sooner seated on the throne than he betrayed an abnormal longing for new countries by sending explorers in search of Prester John.

[Æt. 45; 1481–82]

This Prester John was believed to be a Presbyterian deacon who ruled over a civilized and Christian kingdom which he kept concealed either about his person or in some out-of-the-way part of the world. The wonderful credulity of the age is shown by this belief in a Presbyterian king whom no European had ever seen, and in a kingdom of which no man knew the situation. It ought to have occurred to the Portuguese king that, even if he could find this mythical monarch, he would not take any real pleasure in his society, unless he were to burn him. King John II. was a pious Roman Catholic, and, next to a Methodist, a Presbyterian king would have been about the most uncongenial acquaintance he could have made. Nevertheless, this Presbyterian myth was indirectly of great service to Columbus.

King John, in order to facilitate his search for Prester John, asked a scientific commission to invent some improvements in navigation, the result of which was the invention of the astrolabe, a sort of rudimentary quadrant, by means of which a navigator could occasionally find his latitude. This invention was hardly inferior in value to that of the compass, and it is generally said to have provided Columbus with the means of finding his way across the Atlantic and back to Europe.

[Æt. 45–46; 1482–84]

Next to the discovery of Prester John, the Portuguese king desired to discover a route by sea to India. He believed with his deceased grand-uncle, Prince Henry, that Africa could be circumnavigated—provided the circumnavigators could avoid being boiled alive south of Cape Bojador—and that a road to India could thus be found. It was manifest that he was just the sort of monarch for Columbus’s purposes. He was so anxious to make discoveries that he would have been delighted even to find a Presbyterian. He was particularly bent upon finding a route to India, and he was only twenty-five years old. He was the very man to listen to a solemn and oppressive mariner with his pockets full of maps and his mind full of the project for a transatlantic route to India. Columbus was now about forty-six years old, and his beard was already white. He had dwelt so long upon the plan of crossing the Atlantic that he resembled the Ancient Mariner in his readiness to button-hole all sorts of people and compel them to listen to his project. Mrs. Perestrello appears to have been safely dead at this time, and Pedro Correo had probably been talked to death by his relentless brother-in-law. Still, Columbus was as anxious to carry out his plan as ever. He marked young King John as his prey, and finally obtained an audience with him.