144 * '^^^ Atlantic 



So much has been written about the life of Columbus and about 

 his four voyages that it is all but impossible to deal adequately with 

 these subjects in a book of the present scope. Despite all the writing 

 and the research, Columbus was and remains today a figure of mys- 

 tery and this is part of the strong hold he exercises both over the 

 technical historians and the popular imagination. 



One of our sources of information about Columbus' early activities 

 was the life of him written by his son, Fernando, yet the historians 

 believe that this record is full of inaccuracies. We do know that he 

 had traveled widely and that he had access to many sources of in- 

 formation including the information that Portuguese navigators and 

 travelers had amassed. We believe he was in England in 1477. In 1478 

 he was in the Madeiras and in 1480 he married the daughter of the 

 hereditary captain of Porto Santo of those islands. We know that he 

 had read Marco Polo and that he had marked a copy that was in 

 his possession with many notes. We know that he believed in a globu- 

 lar world and that he announced his intention of reaching China and 

 the Orient by sailing to the westward. 



His son has asserted that he had visited Iceland and sailed in the 

 sea beyond that point. What motive his son would have for falsely 

 asserting that Columbus had made a voyage to Iceland is not clear 

 but if he made the voyage to Iceland, it seems more than Ukely that 

 he would have heard of the Norse voyages to Greenland, Markland 

 and Vineland. Whether he expected to find lands to the westward 

 before reaching Asia in the latitudes in which he sailed is open to 

 doubt and conjecture. 



On his first voyage, Columbus, leaving the Portuguese coast, sailed 

 southwest to the Canary Islands. Leaving the Canaries, he sailed west 

 on the 30th parallel and then dropped south again until he encoun- 

 tered the Bahama Islands. All of his other voyages proceeded in a 

 southwesterly direction. If we accept the statement of his son that 

 Columbus had been in Iceland and if we assume, as seems most likely 

 then, that he would have heard of the Norse voyages to Greenland, 

 Labrador and other parts of the American coast, we are furnished 

 with a reasonable explanation of the courses that Columbus selected. 

 That is, if Columbus knew even a small part of what was common 

 knowledge in Iceland and Denmark, and what was possibly known to 

 many people in Portugal, then he was following a logical course in 

 sailing well to the southwest from Spain. 



His purpose was not to discover land in the west but to avoid land. 

 The shores that the Norsemen describe in their accounts of Greenland, 



