146 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



father, now dead, had been Governor of the island of Porto 

 Santo, one of the Madeiras. This union between the humble 

 son of a wool-comber and the daughter of an Italian gentle- 

 man is deemed, by several of the biographers of Columbus, a 

 strong proof of the nobility of his ancestry. After his marriage, 

 he left for Porto Santo, — the sterile dowry of his wife, — where 

 his first son, Diego, was born. 



We have already seen that the period was one of the greatest 

 excitement and expectancy in regard to maritime discovery. 

 Columbus had long reflected upon the existence of land in the 

 west, upon the sphericity of the earth, and upon the possibility of 

 crossing the Atlantic. He had already conceived the idea of 

 reaching Asia by following the setting sun across the immensity 

 of the waters. His mind, too, was kindled to religious enthu- 

 siasm by the allusions in the Bible to the universal diffusion of 

 the gospel, and, in his dreams of nautical discovery, the belief 

 that he was destined to be an apostle, sent to extend the domi- 

 nion of the cross, predominated over more worldly aspirations. 

 For years, while struggling with disappointment and harassed 

 by poverty, he pursued this idea with the pertinacity of a mono- 

 maniac. When forty years old, and residing at Lisbon, he pro- 

 posed to the Senate of Genoa to leave the Mediterranean by 

 the Straits of Gibraltar and to proceed to the west, in the sea 

 known as the Ocean, as far as the "lands where spices bloom," 

 and thus circumnavigate the earth. The Genoese, whose mari- 

 time knowledge was confined to the Mediterranean, and who had 

 no fancy for adventures upon the ocean, declined listening to the 

 proposition, pretexting the penury of the treasury. It would 

 also seem that overtures made by Columbus to the Council of 

 Venice were similarly rejected. For a time, therefore, he 

 abandoned all efforts to further his desires. In 1477, he made 

 a voyage to Iceland, in order to discover whether it was in- 

 habited, and even sailed one hundred leagues beyond it, — where, 

 to his astonishment, he found the sea not frozen. 



