290 ROBERTSON. 



and contemplation, to form the adventurous and novel 

 opinion that the East Indies was to be reached by 

 steering a westerly course from Europe across the At- 

 lantic. His difficulties in obtaining the assent of his 

 contemporaries to so strange a doctrine are then de- 

 scribed, and our interest in his theory is increased. 

 But the successive obstacles which he had to encounter 

 in his efforts to obtain the assistance of various sove- 

 reigns, that he might be enabled to test his theory by 

 navigating the unknown and pathless ocean, wind up 

 our anxiety to the highest pitch. We follow him to 

 the Genoese senate, to the court of Portugal, to Eng- 

 land, whither he had dispatched his brother, whose 

 strange adventures among pirates and his utter indi- 

 gence in London so as to make it necessary he should 

 subsist by selling maps till he could scrape together 

 enough to' purchase decent clothes wherein he might 

 appear before Henry VII^., form a striking episode in 

 the narrative. Finally, we have his own arrival in Spain, 

 and his constant repulses for twelve long years in all his 

 attempts to make that country the richest and most 

 glorious on the face of the earth. All these wander- 

 ings and disappointments for so vast a portion of this 

 great man's life create a breathless impatience for his 

 success, when our wishes are at length crowned by the 

 warm support of his steady patroness Isabella ; and he 

 finally sets sail on the 3rd of August, 1 492. Such is 

 the man whose fortunes we are to follow, now far past 

 the middle age, for he was in his fifty-sixth year, of 

 which above twenty had been spent in preparing for 

 his magnificent enterprise ; but full of the vigour of 

 youth, in the height of his powerful faculties, and in- 



