CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS. 381 



ceased from that time to be the subject of his thoughts, 

 and the great object of his life. To digest and to sub- 

 stantiate it, even to his own satisfaction, must have cost 

 him both reflection and research enough to be exclusive- 

 ly the employment of any man. The evidences of the 

 former, furnished by his theory itself, and by the manner 

 in which he sustained it, need not be enlarged upon. 

 But it will be found, too, that situated as he now was and 

 ever had been, with the necessity, especially, of earn- 

 ing his daily bread by his daily labor, he had carefully 

 examined the best of the extant literature of his age 

 upon the subject. He delved into the old and volumi- 

 nous productions of Aristotle, Seneca, Pliny and Strabo, 

 to prove that the ' ocean surrounds the earth,' or that 

 ' one might pass from Cadiz to the Indies in a few days.' 

 He corresponded with a learned doctor in Italy, and 

 from him obtained a knowledge of the narratives of Man- 

 deville and Marco Polo ; all to corroborate the idea that 

 Asia, or as he always termed it, India, stretched so far 

 to the east as to occupy a greater part of the unexplored 

 space, and to leave therefore but a comparatively narrow 

 breadth of ocean to traverse on his way to the westward. 

 Thus, step by step, year by year, was his theory estab- 

 lished. And meanwhile he was personally deriving in- 

 formation from mariners, pilots, adventurers, even from 

 the ignorant inhabitants of Porto Santfc among whom, 

 no doubt, daily 



-The wonder grew, 



That one small head could carry all he knew. 



He ascertained from one individual, that at the distance 

 of 450 leagues to the west of Cape St Vincent, he had 

 picked up a piece of carved wood, evidently not wrought 

 with an iron instrument. Facts of the same nature were 

 communicated to him by his brother-in-law, a navigator 

 of some note. He had heard from the king of Portugal, 

 that immense reeds had floated to some of the islands 

 from the west ; in the description of which he was pre- 

 pared to recognise the large reeds described by Ptolemy 

 as growing in India. He heard also of the trunks of 

 huge pine trees, and of the bodies of two dead men cast 



\OL. i. NO. xvi. 34* 



