important still, toward the end of 1492 he made the first globe, and indicated on it how one might sail west and reach Asiatic India. This is the first record of that idea which was later attributed to Columbus, but which Columbus himself, until his return from his first voyage of discovery, never even mentioned. Whether he and Martin Behaim talked together about the route to India we shall never know. Probably they did not; for when Christopher importuned later for ships, it was only for the purpose of discovering "lands in the west" and not for finding a short route to India. Columbus, though he knew how to draw maps and design spheres, really possessed but little scientific knowledge. Intuition, plus tenacity, always did more for him than science; and so it is likely that he talked more with sailors than with scientists. While he may have known the learned Behaim, certain it is that, from his earliest days in Lisbon, he sought the society of men who had been out to the Azores or to Madeira; men who told him the legends, plentiful enough on these islands, of lands still farther out toward the setting sun, that no one had yet ventured to visit.
CHAPTER IV
THE SOJOURN IN MADEIRA
Columbus had not been very long in Lisbon when he met, at church, a girl named Felipa Monez Perestrello. Felipa was of noble birth; Christopher was not; but he was handsome—tall, fair-haired, dignified—and full of earnestness in his views of life. Felipa consented to marry him.
Felipa must have been a most interesting companion for a man who loved voyaging, for she had been born in the Madeiras. Her father, now dead, had been appointed governor, by Prince Henry, of a little island called Porto Santo, and Felipa and her mother (with whom the young couple went to live) had many a tale to tell about that far outpost of the Atlantic. This is probably what set Christopher yearning for the sea; and so, about 1479, he and his wife and her mother, Senora Perestrello, all sailed off for Porto Santo. The Senora must have liked her new son-in- law's enthusiasm for the sea, for she gave him the charts and instruments that had belonged to her husband; but as Governor Perestrello had never been a navigator, these could not have been either very numerous or very helpful.
From Porto Santo, Columbus made a voyage to Guinea and back; and after that he and his family went to live on the larger island of Madeira. There, according to many men who knew Columbus well, the following event happened.
One day a storm-tossed little caravel, holding four sick, battered, Portuguese sailors and a Spanish pilot, all of them little more than living skeletons, was blown on the Madeira shore near where Christopher dwelt. Their tale was a harrowing one. They had started, they said, months before from the Canaries for the Madeiras, but had been blown far, far, far, to the west; and then, when the wind quieted down so that they could try to get back, their ship became disabled and their food gave out. Starvation and exposure had nearly finished them; four, in fact, died within a day or two; but the Spanish pilot, the one who had kept his strength long enough to steer toward Madeira, lived longer. The kind-hearted Christopher, who was devoured with curiosity, had had the poor fellow carried to his own home. He and Felipa did all they could for him, but their nursing could not restore him. The pilot, seeing that he would never be able to make another voyage, added a last detail to the story he first told; namely, that his ship had actually visited a new land hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic Ocean! A proof of Christopher's own suspicions! Can you not see him, the evening after his talk with the pilot, standing at sunset on some high point of Madeira, and looking wistfully out over the western water, saying, "I must sail out there and find those lands. I know I can do it!" So he went back to Lisbon to try.
Certain it is that Columbus's absorbing interest in the unknown, mysterious west dates from his returning to Lisbon to live. Not only did he talk earnestly with men who had interests in the Atlantic isles, he studied all the available geographical works. Before the time came to leave for Spain he had read the wonderful "Relation" (or Narrative) of Marco Polo; the "Imago Mundi" (Image of the World) by Cardinal d'Ailly; the "Historia Rerum" (History of Things) by Pope Pius II.; and he had studied Ptolemy's "Geography." From this small library came all the scientific knowledge, true and false, that Christopher ever had. From these he built up whatever theories of the universe he may have laid before the sovereigns of Spain.
Marco Polo, the Venetian, had traveled, as every one knows, across Asia to Cathay (China) in the thirteenth century and had visited the Great Khan or Emperor. On his return he wrote the "Relation," a most exaggerated but fascinating account of the wealth of that remote land and of Cipango (Japan) also, which the Chinese had told him about. The "Imago Mundi" was certainly better reading for him, because less exaggerated; whatever myths and fables it contained, it was not the sort of book to turn a young man's thoughts toward amassing wealth. Instead, its author had gathered together all that was known or seriously argued concerning this world. On this curious old volume Christopher pinned his entire faith. It became his bedside companion; and his copy of it, full of notes in his own handwriting and in that of his brother Bartholomew as well, may be seen to-day in the Columbian Library in Sevilla.
For centuries it has been asserted by men who have written about Columbus that the most important event during his Lisbon days was his correspondence with a learned astronomer named Paolo Toscanelli. Columbus, they argue, having formed the plan of sailing west to discover a route to the Indies (which Columbus never thought of doing at that early day), wrote to ask Toscanelli's advice, and the wise Florentine approved most heartily. It appears from the astronomer's letter that he never dreamed, any more than did Columbus, that a whole continent lay far off in the unexplored western ocean. He supposed the world to be much smaller than it really is, with the ocean occupying only a seventh of it; and that if one sailed three or four thousand miles west, he would surely come to the islands of Cipango (pronounced in Italian Tchi- pango), or Japan, lying off the mainland of Cathay or China. Toscanelli, like Columbus, had read all about the Far East in Marco Polo's book, and was convinced that if the Venetian had reached it by going east overland, some one else might reach it by going west oversea. Accordingly he encouraged the aspiring young explorer. He told Columbus, furthermore, that he had talked with an ambassador from the Far East who came to the court of Pope Eugenius IV. "I was often in the Ambassador's company," he wrote, "and he told me of the immense rivers in his country, and of two hundred cities with marble bridges upon the banks of a single river." Of Cipango he wrote, "This island contains such an abundance of precious stones and metals that the temples and royal palaces are covered with plates of gold!"
The Toscanelli letter is dated 1474, and begins: "To Christopher Columbus, Paul the Physician, health: I see thy noble and great desire to go there where grow the spices." But the strange thing is that Columbus never made use of it in pleading before kings, nor did he even mention Toscanelli and the route to India. Neither in all his writings can the name of Toscanelli be found; and it was not till after Columbus's death (and Toscanelli's), when others began to write history, that the document was made public. Most Columbian scholars therefore doubt its genuineness, and think it was not written by Toscanelli in 1474, but by some one in Lisbon long after Columbus had actually made his discovery.
In any case, the pilot's story was a far more likely factor in sending Christopher west. Nor is it to his discredit that he was willing to risk his life on a dying sailor's wild, improbable tale, rather than on an astronomer's carefully worked out theory. Whether our navigator had theories or not is of little consequence compared to the fact that he had boldness, tenacity, and the spirit of adventure.
"The King of Portugal refused with blindness to second me in my projects of maritime discovery."
So Christopher declares in his Journal; but in spite of his way of putting it, King John did not blindly refuse to listen to him. Let us see what, according to two Portuguese historians, really happened when, on his return from Madeira about 1483, he solicited aid.
Columbus
