SCIENTIFIC TRACTS. 



NUMBER XV. 



LIFE OF COLUMBUS. 



IT is remarkable that, after all the elaborate investiga- 

 tions of many writers, the early biography of Columbus 

 is still wanting in several interesting particulars. As to 

 his birth, for example, it is only made to appear probable 

 that he was born about the year 1435 or 1436. The 

 place of his nativity, also, has been the subject of as much 

 and as warm contention as the birth-place of Homer. 

 The original and long settled opinion was in favor of 

 Genoa. But strenuous claims have also been asserted 

 by the Italian States of Placentia and Piedmont : the for- 

 mer connecting the navigator with the household of his 

 great grandfather, who owned a small property in a Pied- 

 montese town ; and the latter making him the sou of 

 Dominico Colombo, lord of the castle of Cucurro in 

 Montserrat. There has been a controversy among the 

 Genoese themselves, moreover to whom, on the whole, 

 other claimants have abandoned the field whether he 

 was born within their city, or in some one of six or 

 eight villages in other parts of their territory. In one of 

 these it seemed that his family possessed a small farm ; 

 in another, a portrait of him is preserved ; in a third, a 

 public square once bore his name. But the testimony of 

 Columbus himself may be considered decisive of this 

 question. In a will executed in 1498, he twice speaks 

 of ' being born in Genoa.' In the same instrument he 

 also commands his son to maintain always in the city 

 of Genoa a person of his lineage, ' to hold footing and 

 rank in that city as a native of it, so that he may have aid 



VOL. i. NO. xv. 32 



