148 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



and an ardent practitioner of the exact sciences. He was at 

 once an astronomer, a devotee, and a poet. During the hours ■ 

 of slumber, he often ascended to the summit of the abbey, and, 

 looking out upon the ocean, — known as the Sea of Darkness, — 

 would ask himself if beyond this expanse of waters there was 

 no land yet unclaimed by Christianity. He rejected as fabulous 

 the current idea that a vessel might sail three years to the west 

 without reaching a hospitable shore. The ocean, formidable to 

 others and intelligible to few, was to him the abode of secrets 

 which man was invited to unfold. 



One day a traveller rang at the gate and asked for refresh- 

 ment for himself and his son. Being interrogated as to the ob- 

 ject of his journey, he replied that he was on his way to the 

 court of Spain to communicate an important matter to the king 

 and queen. The traveller was Christopher Columbus. How he 

 came to pass by this obscure monastery — which lay altogether off 

 his route — has never been explained. A providential guidance 

 had brought him into the presence of the man the best calculated 

 to comprehend his purpose, in a country where he was totally 

 without friends and with whose language he was completely un- 

 acquainted. A common sympathy drew them together; and 

 Oolumbus, accepting for a period the hospitality of Marchena, 

 made him the confidant of his views. Thus, while the colleges 

 and universities of Christendom still held the childish theory that 

 the earth was flat, and that the sea was the path to utter and 

 outer darkness, Columbus and Marchena, filled with a sponta- 

 neous and implicit faith, intuitively believed in the sphericity of 

 the globe and the existence of a nameless continent beyond the 

 ocean. In theory they had solved the great question whether 

 the ship which should depart by the west would come back by 

 the east. 



Marchena gave Columbus a letter of recommendation to the 

 queen's confessor, and, during his absence, promised to educate 

 and maintain his son Diego. Thus tranquillized in his affections, 



