COLUMBUS 



1500 



COLUMBUS 



OLUMBUS, CHRISTOPHER 

 (probably 1451-1506), the discoverer 

 of America, the first man to sail west 

 in a determined effort to reach the East. 

 Slighted during his years of preparation and 

 scorned as a half-insane fanatic; neglected 

 and abused even after his wonderful discov- 

 eries, he has in the centuries since his death 

 been shown such honor as falls to the lot of 

 few men. In the western hemisphere, which 

 he first brought to the knowledge of men, 

 countries, rivers, states and cities have been 

 named for him almost to the number of four 

 score, and the favorite poetic name for the 

 United States is "Columbia." All the honor 

 shown him he richly deserved, for his were not 

 chance voyages during which he happened 

 upon new shores, but carefully-planned expedi- 

 tions carried out by a clear-thinking man of 

 large faith, in the face of opposition that would 

 have daunted anyone less iron-willed. 



Early Life. The name as usually printed 

 to-day is not quite as Columbus used it, for 

 he was an Italian, and the correct spelling of 

 his name was CRISTOFORO COLOMBO. He was 

 bora in Genoa, but as to the exact year of his 

 birth there has been much uncertainty, some 

 authorities holding that it was 1446, others 

 that it was 1451, as given above. His father 

 was a wool-comber, but Columbus had a love 

 of the sea from his youth up; trustworthy 

 records declare that in 1470 he shipped as 

 a sailor and for some years spent part of 

 his time on the sea. Uncertain accounts of his 

 voyages have survived accounts of a voyage 

 to Chios, of an attempted one to England, 

 which was prevented by the attacks of a pri- 

 vateer, and, most interesting of all, of one to 

 Iceland. Did Columbus really reach that 

 northern island and perhaps hear from the 

 Norsemen there of the land beyond the west- 

 ern seas which their ancestors had reached 

 a land later called America? Legend-loving 

 people have delighted to think so, but there 

 seems little if any foundation for the tradition. 

 By 1477 Columbus settled in Lisbon, for 

 Portugal was in those days the country most 

 favorable to navigators; and there, in 1478 or 



1479, he married a lady of good family, 

 by whom he had one son, Diego. Cer- 

 tain members of his wife's family 

 were navigators, and Columbus came into pos- 

 session of their charts, which further increased 

 his interest in geography. He himself was an 

 expert map-maker. In the works of Marco 

 Polo he read much that inflamed his imagina- 

 tion tales of the wonders and riches of Far 

 Cathay (China), of gorgeous cities, golden- 

 roofed palaces; of Cipango (Japan), with its 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 



From the bust of the discoverer, now in the 

 Capitoline Museum, Rome. 



golden streets and its jewels; and he became 

 more and more determined to find a direct 

 route to those countries. 



The Great Idea. It must be borne in mind 

 that Columbus did not originate the theory 

 that the earth was round. Aristotle, before the 

 beginning of the Christian Era, had preached 



