THE UNCERTAINTIES OF THE EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS.
The condition of knowledge respecting Columbus's early life was such,
when Prescott wrote, that few would dispute his conclusion that it is
hopeless to unravel the entanglement of events, associated with the
opening of his career. The critical discernment of Harrisse and other
recent investigators has since then done something to make the confusion
even more apparent by unsettling convictions too hastily assumed. A
bunch of bewildering statements, in despite of all that present
scholarship can do, is left to such experts as may be possessed in the
future of more determinate knowledge. It may well be doubted if absolute
clarification of the record is ever to be possible.
[Sidenote: His education.]
[Illustration: DRAWING ASCRIBED TO COLUMBUS.]
The student naturally inquires of the contemporaries of Columbus as to
the quality and extent of his early education, and he derives most from
Las Casas and the _Historie_ of 1571. It has of late been ascertained
that the woolcombers of Genoa established local schools for the
education of their children, and the young Christopher may have had his
share of their instruction, in addition to whatever he picked up at his
trade, which continued, as long as he remained in Italy, that of his
father. We know from the manuscripts which have come down to us that
Columbus acquired the manual dexterity of a good penman; and if some
existing drawings are not apocryphal, he had a deft hand, too, in making
a spirited sketch with a few strokes. His drawing of maps, which we are
also told about, implies that he had fulfilled Ptolemy's definition of
that art of the cosmographer which could represent the cartographic
outlines of countries with supposable correctness. He could do it with
such skill that he practiced it at one time, as is said, for the gaining
of a livelihood. We know, trusting the _Historie_, that he was for a
brief period at the University of Pavia, perhaps not far from 1460,
where he sought to understand the mysteries of cosmography, astrology,
and geometry.
[Sidenote: At Pavia.]
Bossi has enumerated the professors in these departments at that time,
from whose teaching Columbus may possibly have profited. Harrisse with
his accustomed distrust, throws great doubt on the whole narrative of
his university experiences, and thinks Pavia at this time offered no
peculiar advantages for an aspiring seaman, to be compared with the
practical instruction which Genoa in its commercial eminence could at
the same time have offered to any sea-smitten boy. It was at Genoa at
this very time (1461), that Benincasa was producing his famous
sea-charts.
[Illustration: ANDREAS BENINCASA, 1476.
[From St. Martin's _Atlas_.]]
[Sidenote: Goes to sea.]
After his possible, if not probable, sojourn at Pavia, made transient,
it has been suggested but not proved, by the failing fortunes of his
father, Christopher returned to Genoa, and then after an uncertain
interval entered on his seafaring career. If what passes for his own
statement be taken he was at this turn of his life not more than
fourteen years old. The attractions of the sea at that period of the
fifteenth century were great for adventurous youths. There was a spice
of piracy in even the soberest ventures of commerce. The ships of one
Christian state preyed on another. Private ventures were buccaneerish,
and the hand of the Catalonian and of the Moslem were turned against
all. The news which sped from one end of the Mediterranean to the other
was of fight and plunder, here and everywhere. Occasionally it was mixed
with rumors of the voyages beyond the Straits of Hercules, which told of
the Portuguese and their hazards on the African coast towards the
equator.
[Sidenote: Prince Henry, the Navigator.]
Not far from the time when our vigorous young Genoese wool-comber may be
supposed to have embarked on some of these venturesome exploits of the
great inland sea, there might have come jumping from port to port,
westerly along the Mediterranean shores, the story of the death of that
great maritime spirit of Portugal, Prince Henry, the Navigator, and of
the latest feats of his captains in the great ocean of the west.
[Illustration: SHIP, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
[From the _Isolario_, 1547.]]
[Sidenote: Anjou's expedition.]
It has been usual to associate the earliest maritime career of our
dashing Genoese with an expedition fitted out in Genoa by John of Anjou,
Duke of Calabria, to recover possession of the kingdom of Naples for his
father, Duke René, Count of Provence. This is known to have been
undertaken in 1459-61. The pride of Genoa encouraged the service of the
attacking fleet, and many a citizen cast in his lot with that naval
armament, and embarked with his own subsidiary command. There is mention
of a certain doughty captain, Colombo by name, as leading one part of
this expeditionary force. He was very likely one of those French
corsairs of that name, already mentioned, and likely to have been a man
of importance in the Franco-Genoese train. He has, indeed, been
sometimes made a kinsman of the wool-comber's son. There is little
likelihood of his having been our Christopher himself, then, as we may
easily picture him, a red-haired youth, or in life's early prime, with a
ruddy complexion,--a type of the Italian which one to-day is not without
the chance of encountering in the north of Italy, preserving, it may be,
some of that northern blood which had produced the Vikings.
The _Historie_ of 1571 gives what purports to be a letter of Columbus
describing some of the events of this campaign. It was addressed to the
Spanish monarchs in 1495. If Anjou was connected with any service in
which Columbus took part, it is easy to make it manifest that it could
not have happened later than 1461, because the reverses of that year
drove the unfortunate René into permanent retirement. The rebuttal of
this testimony depends largely upon the date of Columbus's birth; and if
that is placed in 1446, as seems well established, Columbus, the Genoese
mariner, could hardly have commanded a galley in it at fourteen; and it
is still more improbable if, as D'Avezac says, Columbus was in the
expedition when it set out in 1459, since the boy Christopher was then
but twelve. As Harrisse puts it, the letter of Columbus quoted in the
_Historie_ is apocryphal, or the correct date of Columbus's birth is not
1446.
It is, however, not to be forgotten that Columbus himself testifies to
the tender age at which he began his sea-service, when, in 1501, he
recalled some of his early experiences; but, unfortunately, Columbus was
chronically given to looseness of statement, and the testimony of his
contemporaries is often the better authority. In 1501, his mind,
moreover, was verging on irresponsibility. He had a talent for deceit,
and sometimes boasted of it, or at least counted it a merit.
Much investigation has wonderfully confirmed the accuracy of that
earliest sketch of his career contained in the Giustiniani Psalter in
1516; and it is learned from that narrative that Columbus had
attained an adult age when he first went to sea,--and this was one of
the statements which the _Historie_ of 1571 sought to discredit. If the
notarial records of Savona are correct in calling Columbus a wool-comber
in 1472, and he was of the Savona family, and born in 1446, he was then
twenty-six years old, and of the adult age that is claimed by the
Psalter and by other early writers, who either knew or mentioned him,
when he began his seafaring life. In that case he could have had no part
in the Anjou-René expedition, whose whole story, even with the
expositions of Harrisse and Max Büdinger, is shrouded in uncertainties
of time and place. That after 1473 he disappears from every notarial
record that can be found in Genoa shows, in Harrisse's opinion, that it
was not till then that he took to the sea as a profession.
We cannot say that the information which we have of this early seafaring
life of Columbus, whenever beginning, is deserving of much credit, and
it is difficult to place whatever it includes in chronological order.
We may infer from one of his statements that he had, at some time, been
at Scio observing the making of mastic. Certain reports which most
likely concern his namesakes, the French corsairs, are sometimes
associated with him as leading an attack on Spanish galleys somewhere in
the service of Louis XI., or as cruising near Cyprus.
So everything is misty about these early days; but the imagination of
some of his biographers gives us abundant precision for the daily life
of the school-boy, apprentice, cabin boy, mariner, and corsair, even to
the receiving of a wound which we know troubled him in his later years.
Such a story of details is the filling up of a scant outline with the
colors of an unfaithful limner.