Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
THE TRUE STORY OF
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
CALLED THE GREAT ADMIRAL
By Elbridge S. {Streeter} Brooks
[This was orginally done on the 400th Anniversary of 1492 as
was the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Interesting
how our heroes have all been de-canonized in the interest of
Political Correctitude--Comments by Michael S. Hart]
PREFACE.
This "True Story of Christopher Columbus" is offered and inscribed
to the boys and girls of America as the opening volume in a series
especially designed for their reading, and to be called "Children's
Lives of Great Men." In this series the place of honor, or rather of
position, is given to Columbus the Admiral, because had it not been for
him and for his pluck and faith and perseverance there might have been
no young Americans, such as we know to-day, to read or care about the
world's great men.
Columbus led the American advance; he discovered the New World; he left
a record of persistence in spite of discouragement and of triumph over
all obstacles, that has been the inspiration and guide for Americans
ever since his day, and that has led them to work on in faith and hope
until the end they strove for was won.
"The True Story of Christopher Columbus" will be followed by the "true
story" of others who have left names for us to honor and revere, who
have made the world better because they lived, and who have helped to
make and to develop American freedom, strength and progress.
It will be the endeavor to have all these presented in the simple,
straightforward, earnest way that appeals to children, and shows how the
hero can be the man, and the man the hero. E. S. B.
THE TRUE STORY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
CHAPTER I. BOY WITH AN IDEA.
Men who do great things are men we all like to read about. This is the
story of Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered America. He lived
four hundred years ago. When he was a little boy he lived in Genoa.
It was a beautiful city in the northwestern part of the country called
Italy. The mountains were behind it; the sea was in front of it, and
it was so beautiful a place that the people who lived there called it
"Genoa the Superb." Christopher Columbus was born in this beautiful
city of Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He was
a bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear eye and golden
hair. His father's name was Domenico Columbus; his mother's name was
Susanna. His father was a wool-comber. He cleaned and straightened out
the snarled-up wool that was cut from the sheep so as to make it ready
to be woven into cloth.
Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong enough, but he
went to school, too, and learned to read and write and to draw maps and
charts. These charts were maps of the sea, to show the sailors where
they could steer without running on the rocks and sand, and how to sail
safely from one country to another.
This world was not as big then as it is now--or, should say, people
did not know it was as big. Most of the lands that Columbus had studied
about in school, and most of the people he had heard about, were in
Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. The city of Genoa where Columbus
lived was a very busy and a very rich city. It was on the Mediterranean
Sea, and many of the people who lived there were sailors who went in
their ships on voyages to distant lands. They sailed to other places on
the Mediterranean Sea, which is a very large body of water, you know,
and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far away as the cold
northern island of Iceland. This was thought to be a great journey.
The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a time as is this in
which you live. People were always quarreling and fighting about one
thing or another, and the sailors who belonged to one country would try
to catch and steal the ships or the things that belonged to the sailors
or the storekeepers of another country. This is what we call piracy, and
a pirate, you know, is thought to be a very wicked man.
But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so very wicked to be
a sort of half-way pirate, although they did know that they would
be killed if they were caught. So almost every sailor was about half
pirate. Every boy who lived near the seashore and saw the ships and the
sailors, felt as though he would like to sail away to far-off lands and
see all the strange sights and do all the brave things that the sailors
told about. Many of them even said they would like to be pirates and
fight with other sailors, and show how strong and brave and plucky they
could be.
Columbus was one of these. He was what is called an adventurous boy. He
did not like to stay quietly at home with his father and comb out the
tangled wool. He thought it would be much nicer to sail away to sea and
be a brave captain or a rich merchant.
When he was about fourteen years old he really did go to sea. There was
a captain of a sailing vessel that sometimes came to Genoa who had the
same last name--Columbus. He was no relation, but the little Christopher
somehow got acquainted with him among the wharves of Genoa. Perhaps he
had run on errands for him, or helped him with some of the sea-charts he
knew so well how to draw. At any rate he sailed away with this Captain
Columbus as his cabin boy, and went to the wars with him and had quite
an exciting life for a boy.
Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their own adventures
or about far-off lands and countries. Columbus, listened to many of
these sea-stories, and heard many wonderful things about a very rich
land away to the East that folks called Cathay.
If you look in your geographies you will not find any such place on the
map as Cathay, but you will find China, and that was what men in the
time of Columbus called Cathay. They told very big stories about this
far-off Eastern land. They said its kings lived in golden houses, that
they were covered with pearls and diamonds, and that everybody there was
so rich that money was as plentiful as the stones in the street.
This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who were part
pirate, very anxious to go to Cathay and get some of the gold and jewels
and spices and splendor for themselves. But Cathay was miles and miles
away from Italy and Spain and France and England. It was away across the
deserts and mountains and seas and rivers, and they had to give it up
because they could not sail there.
At last a man whose name was Marco Polo, and who was a very brave and
famous traveler, really did go there, in spite of all the trouble it
took. And when he got back his stories were so very surprising that men
were all the more anxious to find a way to sail in their ships to Cathay
and see it for themselves.
But of course they could not sail over the deserts and mountains, and
they were very much troubled because they had to give up the idea, until
the son of the king of Portugal, named Prince Henry, said he believed
that ships could sail around Africa and so get to India or "the Indies"
as they called that land, and finally to Cathay.
Just look at your map again and see what a long, long voyage it would
be to sail from Spain and around Africa to India, China and Japan. It is
such a long sail that, as you know, the Suez Canal was dug some twenty
years ago so that ships could sail through the Mediterranean Sea and out
into the Indian Ocean, and not have to go away around Africa.
But when Columbus was a boy it was even worse than now, for no one
really knew how long Africa was, or whether ships really could sail
around it. But Prince Henry said he knew they could, and he sent out
ships to try. He died before his Portuguese sailors, Bartholomew Diaz,
in 1493, and Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did sail around it and got
as far as "the Indies."
So while Prince Henry was trying to see whether ships could sail around
Africa and reach Cathay in that way, the boy Columbus was listening to
the stories the sailors told and was wondering whether some other and
easier way to Cathay might not be found.
When he was at school he had studied about a certain man named
Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands of years before he was
born, and who had said that the earth was round "like a ball or an
orange."
As Columbus grew older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books
and listened to what other people said, he began to believe that this
man named Pythagoras might be right, and that the earth was round,
though everybody declared it was flat. If it is round, he said to
himself, "what is the use of trying to sail around Africa to get to
Cathay? Why not just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going right
around the world until you strike Cathay? I believe it could be done,"
said Columbus.
By this time Columbus was a man. He was thirty years old and was a great
sailor. He had been captain of a number of vessels; he had sailed north
and south and east; he knew all about a ship and all about the sea. But,
though he was so good a sailor, when he said that he believed the earth
was round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy. "Why,
how can the earth be round?" they cried. "The water would all spill out
if it were, and the men who live on the other side would all be standing
on their heads with their feet waving in the air." And then they laughed
all the harder.
But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh at. He believed it
so strongly, and felt so sure that he was right, that he set to work to
find some king or prince or great lord to let him have ships and sailors
and money enough to try to find a way to Cathay by sailing out into the
West and across the Atlantic Ocean.
Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which break upon our
rocks and beaches, was thought in Columbus's day to be a dreadful place.
People called it the Sea of Darkness, because they did not know what was
on the other side of it, or what dangers lay beyond that distant blue
rim where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we call the horizon.
They thought the ocean stretched to the end of a flat world, straight
away to a sort of "jumping-off place," and that in this horrible
jumping-off place were giants and goblins and dragons and monsters and
all sorts of terrible things that would catch the ships and destroy them
and the sailors.
So when Columbus said that he wanted to sail away toward this dreadful
jumping-off place, the people said that he was worse than crazy. They
said he was a wicked man and ought to be punished.
But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on trying. He went from
place to place trying to get the ships and sailors he wanted and was
bound to have. As you will see in the next chapter, he tried to get
help wherever he thought it could be had. He asked the people of his own
home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and played when a boy; he
asked the people of the beautiful city that is built in the sea--Venice;
he tried the king of Portugal, the king of England, the king of France
the king and queen of Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listen
to such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan--to go to Cathay by the
way of the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place. You would never
get there alive, they said.
And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white while he waited, though
he was not yet an old man. He had thought and worked and hoped so much
that he began to look like an old man when he was forty years old. But
still he would never say that perhaps he was wrong, after all. He said
he knew he was right, and that some day he should find the Indies and
sail to Cathay.