FIRST PLANS OF EXPLORATION.
[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.