CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 195 



terrors of the Sargasso Sea, and learned to lay their courses 

 homeward despite the trade-winds and the currents. 



Such was the first great work of the magnet. Henry 

 died in 1473, with the object of his ambition the opening 

 of the water-route to India unfulfilled. Yet all Europe 

 knew of his achievements, and the Italians better than all 

 others, for their commercial existence was at stake. In 

 Genoa, the interest was extreme, for she saw the oppor- 

 tunity, through her mariners, not only of surpassing the 

 hardy Portuguese, but of avenging the crushing humilia- 

 tion which she had received at the hands of Venice. But, 

 in the long and wordy discussions which ensued among her 

 learned men, in their wanderings amid the labyrinths of 

 what Aristotle said, or Cosmos Indicopleustes asserted, or 

 Augustine and Lactantius thought, the golden hour passed 

 by, and from the little .harbor of Palos, in Spain, and not 

 from the great port of Geneva la Superba, sailed the ships 

 which carried forth the visionary son of the wool-comber 

 and brought back the Admiral of the Indies. 



Columbus, as is well known, went to Lisbon in 1470, 

 where he supported himself by chart-making in the inter- 

 vals of voyages to the Guinea coast. He was well aware 

 of the advances in navigation which Prince Henry's mar- 

 iners had made, and, in fact, had married the daughter of 

 one of the ablest of the Portuguese sailors. From the 

 Imago Mundi of Cardinal Pedro d'Aliaco, written in 1410 

 and published in 1490, he culled the opinions of Aristotle, 

 Strabo and Seneca, on the possibility of reaching India 

 by sailing to the westward. D'Aliaco's scientific knowl- 

 edge came chiefly from the Etymologies of St. Isidore, but 

 the particular part of his work which, as the annotations 

 in Columbus' own hand on the copy now in Seville show, 

 seemingly most influenced the discoverer, was plagiarized 

 from the Opus Majus of Roger Bacon. 1 



1 Major, R. H., F. S. A.: Select Letters of Columbus. Hakluyt Soc., 

 London, 1870. Introduct., p. xlvii. Humboldt: Ex. Critique. Vol. i., 

 pp. 64, 70. 



