Christopher Columbus (1440-1506) the first American citizen (by adoption)

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ALDEN, WILLIAM L. Christopher Columbus (1440-1506). The First American Citizen (By Adoption). By William L. Alden. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1881. i6mo, pp. 287. (Lives of American Worthies).

Chapter I

pHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS was

\j born at more places and to a greater extent than any other eminent man known to history. He was born at frequent intervals from 1436 to 1446, and at Cogoletto, Genoa, Finale, Oneglia, Savona, Padrello, and Boggiasco. Learned historians have conclusively shown that he was born at each one of the places, and each historian has had him born at a different date from that fixed upon by a rival historian. To doubt their demonstrations would be to treat history and historians with gross irreverence, and would evince a singular lack of business tact on the part of one proposing to add another to the various histories of Columbus.

Perhaps the majority of people believe that Columbus was born exclusively at

2 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. [^Et. o

Cogoletto ; but no one retains that belief after having once visited Cogoletto, and drank the painfully sour wine produced at that wretched little village. It is true that Mr. Tennyson, who remarks that he once

" Stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto, And drank, and loyally drank, to him,"

still believes that it was the birthplace of the great Admiral. But this fact simply shows that Mr. Tennyson drank out of his own flask. Few people who visit Cogoletto take this wise precaution, and the result is that, after drinking to the memory of Columbus, they go on their way firmly convinced that wherever else he was born, he certainly was not born at Cogeletto.

It was the opinion of the late Washington Irving that Genoa was the real birthplace of Columbus. This opinion was what might have been expected from a man of such unfailing good taste.

The production of infants is to this day one of the leading industries of Genoa, and as it is a large and beautiful city, we cannot do better than to adopt Mr. Irving's opinion that it was Columbus's favorite birthplace. At the same time we might as well select the year 1436 as the year of his birth, with the determination of adhering to it, for it adds much to the symmetry of a biography if the subject thereof is given a definite and fixed birthday.

At his birth Christopher Columbus was simply Cristoforo Colombo, and it was not until he arrived at manhood that he was translated into Latin, in which tongue he has been handed down to the present generation. At a still later period he translated himself into Spanish, becoming thereby Christoval Colon. We can not be too thankful that he was never translated into German, for we could scarcely take pride in a country discovered by one Hol0mp0.

The father of Columbus was Domenico Colombo, a wool-comber by occupation. Whose wool he combed, and why he combed it, and whether wool-combing is preferable to wool-gathering as an intellec-

4 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. [.Et. i

tual pursuit, are questions that have never been satisfactorily decided.

Of Mrs. Colombo we simply know that her Christian name was Fontanarossa, or Red Fountain, a name more suitable to a Sioux Indian than a Christian woman, though perhaps, poor creature ! it was not her fault.

Young Christopher was at an early age thoughtfully provided with two younger brothers — who were afterwards very useful to him — and a younger sister. The former were Giacomo, afterward known as Diego, and Bartolommeo, who has been translated into English as Bartholomew. The sister does not appear to have had any name, though her mother might have spared three or four syllables of her own name without feeling the loss of them. This anonymous sister married one Giacomo Bavarello, and promptly vanished into an obscurity that history cannot penetrate.

From his earliest years Christopher was an unusual and remarkable boy. One day when he was about six years of age he was sent by his mother, early in the morning, to the store to purchase a pound of '* blueing" for washing purposes. The morning grew to noon, and the afternoon waned until evening — processes which are not peculiar to the climate of Genoa — but the boy did not return, and his mother was unable to wash the family clothes. The truant had forgotten all about the "bluemg," and was spending the entire day in company with the McGinnis boys, watching a base-ball match in the City Hall Park between the Genoese Nine and the Red-legs of Turin. At dusk he returned, and his broken-hearted mother handed him over to his stern father, who invited him into the woodshed. As Christopher was removing his coat and loosening his other garments so as to satisfy his father that he had no shingles or school-atlases concealed about his person, he said :

'' Father, I stayed to witness that base-ball match, not because of a childish curiosity, nor yet because I had any money on the game, but solely in order to study the flight of the ball, hoping thereby to obtain some hints as to the law of projectiles that would enable me to improve the science of gunnery, which is now by no means in an advanced state. If, in view of these circumstances, you still think me worthy of punishment, I will submit with all the fortitude I can summon."

The father, deeply moved at this frank confession, wore out two apple-tree switches in connection with his son, and informed him that if he ever went with those McGinnis boys again he would ** let him know."

At another time, when Christopher was about eight years old, his father sent him to a news company's office to get the last number of the Wool-Combers Trade Review ; but, as before, the boy failed to return, and after a prolonged search was given up as lost, and his parents decided that he had been run over by the horsecars. Late in the evening Christopher was detected in the act of trying to sneak into the house through the kitchen windows, and was warmly received by his father, who stood him up in the middle of the kitchen, and without releasing his ear, demanded to know what he had to say for himself

Christopher, with a saddened expression of face, replied :

'' Father, I find it a matter of extreme difficulty to depart from the truth, even at this trying moment. Candor compels me to admit that I have spent the day in company with Michael and Patrick Mc- Ginnis, in studying the meteorological laws which affect the flight of kites. With the aid of the last number of the Wool- Combers Trade Review and a few sticks, I made a beautiful kite, and I can confidently say that — "

Here the old gentleman, exclaiming, ''That will do! Your explanation is worse than your other crime," applied a. rattan cane to the future explorer, and afterwards sent him to bed supperless.

There is not a word of truth in these

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two anecdotes, but they are introduced in order to afford the reader a shght gHmpse of the boyhood of Columbus. They probably compare favorably, in point of veracity, with the average anecdotes of the boyhood of great men, and they show us that even while Columbus was only six and eight years old he was interested in scientific pursuits, and already gave promise of great tediousness. Still, it would be unwise for any one to believe them, and we will pass on to the more prosaic but truthful facts of Columbus's life.

Young Christopher early conceived a prejudice against wool-combing, although it was his father's earnest desire that he should adopt that profession. Fernando Columbus, the son of the admiral, evidently felt ashamed of his noble father's early wool-combing exploits, and says that Domenico Colombo, so far from desiring his son to comb wool, sent him at the age of thirteen to the University of Pavia to study navigation, with a view of ultimately sending him to sea. Now, although the

United States Government does undertake to teach seamanship with the aid of textbooks to young men at the Annapohs Naval Academy, the idea that a young man could become a sailor without going to sea had never occurred to the Genoese, and old Domenico never could have been stupid enough to send his son to the Pavia University with the expectation that he would graduate with the marine degree of ^'A. B." Undoubtedly Christopher went to Pavia, but it is conceded that he remained there a very short time. If we suppose that, instead of studying his Livy, his Anabasis, and his Loomis's Algebra, he spent his time in reading Marryat's sea stories, and dime novels illustrative of piracy, we can understand why his university course came to a sudden end, and why Domenico remarked to his friends that Christopher studied navigation while at Pavia.

We are told that from his earliest years Christopher desired to be a sailor. We also know that at that period the Mediter-

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ranean swarmed with pirates. From these two facts any modern boy with sufficient reasoning powers to be able to put a dog, a string, and a tin can together, will deduce the conclusion that Christopher Columbus must have wanted to be a pirate. As to this there can be but little doubt. When he left Pavia and returned home to comb the paternal wool, he was doubtless fully determined to run away at the earliest opportunity, and become a Red Revenger of the seas.

With this clue, we can readily find in the conduct of the astute Domenico a wise determination to effect a compromise with his adventurous son. He did not want to be the father of a Red Revenger, but he knew that he could not compel his son to comb wool. He therefore induced him to consent to go to sea as a scourge and enemy of pirates ; and accordingly in his fourteenth year young Christopher went to sea on board a vessel commanded by a distant relative, who was at one time an admiral in the Genoese service. In what

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capacity he shipped, whether as a first-class or a second-class boy, or as an acting third assistant cook, or an ordinary cabinboy, we do not know. Fernando Columbus preserves a discreet silence as to this matter, and as to the first voyage of his father generally. Of course this silence means something, and perhaps Christopher had good reasons for never speaking of the voyage even to his son. Probably he was deathly sea-sick, and in that condition was severely kicked for not being able to lay his hand at a moment's warning upon the starboard main-top-gallant-studding-sail tripping-line, or other abstruse rope. At all events, he always abstained from telling stories beginning, '' I reck'lect on my first ^'yg^ ;" and we may be sure that he would never have put such an unseamanlike constraint upon his tongue unless he knew that the less he said about that voyage the better.

He had been a sailor for some years when he joined a vessel forming part of an expedition fitted out in Genoa in 1459 ^7 a certain Duke of Calabria named John of Anjou, who wanted to steal the kingdom of Naples in order to give it to his father, Ren^ Count of Provence. So pious •a son naturally commanded universal respect, and Genoa provided him with ships and lent him money. The expedition was very large, and the old Admiral Colombo, with whom Christopher sailed, probably commanded the Genoese contingent. The fleet cruised along the Neapolitan coast, and sailed in and out the Bay of Naples any number of times, but owing to a fear of the extortions of the Neapolitan hackdrivers and valets-de-place, there seems to have been no attempt made to land at Naples. For four years John of Anjou persevered in trying to conquer Naples, but in vain ; and at the end of that time he must have had a tremendous bill to pay for his Genoese ships.

While engaged in this expedition, Christopher was sent in command of a vessel to Tunis, where he was expected to capture a hostile galley. Carefully reading up his

"■ Midshipman Easy" and his "• Blunt's Coast Pilot," he set sail; but on reachinsr the island of San Pedro, which can easily be found on any map where it is mentioned by name, he learned that there were also in the harbor of Tunis two ships and a carrick ; whereupon his crew remarked that they did not propose to attack an unlimited quantity of vessels, but that if Columbus would put into Marseilles and lay in a few more ships to accompany them, they would gladly cut out all the vessels at Tunis. Columbus was determined not to go to Marseilles, — though he does not definitely say that he owed money to the keeper of a sailor boarding-house there, — but he was unable to shake the resolution of his crew. He therefore pretended to yield to their wishes and set sail again, ostensibly for Marseilles. The next morning, when the crew came on deck, they found themselves near the Cape of Carthagena, and perceived that their wily commander had deceived them.

This story is told by Columbus himself, and it awakens in the mind of the intelhgent reader some Httle doubt of the narrator's veracity. In the first place, he admits that he deceived his sailors, and hence we have no certainty that he was not trying to deceive the public when telling the story of the alleged deception. In the second place, it is scarcely probable that all the crew promptly ''turned in" at sunset, leaving Columbus himself at the wheel ; but unless this was done, the compass or the stars must have told them that the ship was not laying the proper course for Marseilles. Finally, Columbus, in his exultation at having deceived his crew, does not so much as mention Tunis, or the hostile vessels which it was his duty to attack, nor does he tell us what business he had at the Cape of Carthagena. We are thus justified in assuming that the story is not entirely credible. Years afterward, on his first transatlantic voyage, Columbus deceived his men concerning the number of leagues they had sailed, and this exploit was so warmly commended by his admirers

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that he may have been tempted to remark that he always made a point of deceiving sailors, and may thereupon have invented this earher instance as a case in point. Still, let us not lightly impugn his veracity. Perhaps he really did tell the truth and deceive his sailors ; but whether he did or not, we should still remember that many of us are merely human, and that had we been in the place of Columbus we might have said and done a variety of different things.

What became of Columbus during several subsequent years, we have no trustworthy account. In all probability he continued to follow the sea, and perhaps caught up with it now^ and then. We know, however, that at one time he commanded a galley belonging to a squadron under the command of Colombo the Younger, a son of the Colombo with whom Christopher sailed in the Neapolitan expedition. This squadron, falling in with a Venetian fleet somewhere off the Portuguese coast, immediately attacked it.

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Venice and Genoa being at that time at war. In the course of the battle the galley of Columbus was set on fire, and as he had no available small-boats — a fact which must forever reflect disgrace upon the Genoese Navy Department — he was compelled to jump overboard with all his crew. He seems to have lost all interest in the battle after the loss of his galley, and he therefore decided to go ashore. He was six miles from land, but with the help of an oar which he put under his breast he swam ashore without difficulty, and when we consider that he was dressed in a complete suit of armor, it is evident that he must have been a very fine swimmer.

It should be mentioned that, although this story is told by Fernando Columbus, certain carping critics have refused to believe it, on the paltry pretext that, inasmuch as the naval fight in question took place several years after Columbus is known to have taken up his residence in Portugal, he could not have landed in that

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country for the first time immediately after the battle. This is mere trifling. If Columbus could swim six miles in a suit of heavy armor, and, in all probability, with his sword in one hand and his speakingtrumpet in the other, he could easily have performed the simpler feat of residing in Portugal several years before he reached that country. The truth is, that historians are perpetually casting doubt upon all legends of any real merit or interest. They have totally exploded the story of Washington and the cherry-tree, and they could not be expected to concede that Fernando Columbus knew more about his father than persons living and writing four hundred years later could know. As to Columbus's great swimming feat, they have agreed to disbelieve the whole story, and of course the public agrees with them.

Chapter II. First Plans Of Exploration

TT is at Lisbon that we are able for the ■*- first time to put our finger decisively upon Columbus. The stray glimpses which we catch of him before that time, whether at Genoa, Pavia, Naples, or Cape Carthagena, are fleeting and unsatisfactory ; his trustworthy biography begins with his residence at Lisbon. He reached there, we do not know by what route, in the year 1470, having no money and no visible means of support. Instead of borrowing money and buying an organ, or calling on the leader of one of the Lisbon political ''halls" and obtaining through his influence permission to set up a peanut stand, he took a far bolder course — he married. Let it not be supposed that he represented himself to be an ItaHan count, and thereby won the hand of an ambitious

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Portuguese girl. The fact that he married the daughter of a deceased Italian navigator proves that he did not resort to the commonplace devices of the modern Italian exile. Dona Felipa di Perestrello was not only an Italian, and as such could tell a real count from a Genoese sailor without the use of litmus paper or any other chemical test, but she was entirely without money and, viewed as a bride, was complicated with a mother-in-law. Thus it is evident that Columbus did not engage in matrimony as a fortune-hunter, and that he must have married Dona Felipa purely because he loved her. We may explain in the same way her acceptance of the penniless Genoese ; and the fact that they lived happily together — if Fernando Columbus is to be believed — makes it clear that neither expected anything from the other, and hence neither was disappointed.

The departed navigator, Di Perestrello, had been in the service of the Portuguese king, and had accumulated a large quantity of maps and charts, which his widow inherited. She does not appear to have objected to her daughter's marriage, but the depressed state of Columbus's fortunes at this period is shown by the fact that he and his wife went to reside with his mother-in-law, where he doubtless learned that fortitude and dignity when exposed to violence and strong language for which he afterwards became renowned. Old Madame Perestrello did him one really good turn by presenting him with the maps, charts, and log-books of her departed husband, and this probably suggested to him the idea w^hich he proceeded to put into practice, of making and selling maps.

Map-making at that time offered a fine field to an imaginative man, and Columbus was not slow to cultivate it. He made beautiful charts of the Atlantic Ocean, putting Japan, India, and other desirable Asiatic countries on its western shore, and placing quantities of useful islands where he considered that they would do the most good. These maps may possibly have been somewhat inferior in breadth of imagination to i47o] FIRST PLANS OF EXPLORATION, 2l

an average Herald map, but they were far superior in beauty ; and the array of novel animals with which the various continents and large islands were sprinkled made them extremely attractive. The man who bought one of Columbus's maps received his full money's worth, and what with map-selling, and occasional sea voyages to and from Guinea at times when Madame Perestrello became rather too free in the use of the stove-lid, Columbus managed to make a tolerably comfortable living.

The island of Porto Santo, then recently discovered, lay in the track of vessels sailing between Portugal and Guinea, and must have attracted the attention of Columbus while engaged in the several voyages which he made early in his married life.

It so happened that Dona Felipa came into possession, by inheritance, of a small property in Porto Santo, and Columbus thereupon abandoned Lisbon and with his family took up his residence on that island. Here he met one Pedro Correo, a bold

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sailor and a former governor of Porto Santo, who was married to Dona Felipa's sister. Columbus and Correo soon became warm friends, and would sit up together half the night, talking about the progress of geographical discovery and the advantages of finding some nice continent full of gold and at a great distance from the widow Perestrello.

At that time there were certain unprincipled mariners who professed to have discovered meritorious islands a few hundred miles west of Portugal ; and though we know that these imaginative men told what was not true, Columbus may have supposed that their stories were not entirely without a basis of truth. King Henry of Portugal, who died three years after Columbus arrived at Lisbon, had a passion for new countries, and the fashion which he set of fitting out exploring expeditions continued to prevail after his death.

There is no doubt that there was a general feeling, at the period when Columbus and Correo lived at Porto Santo, that the i47oJ FIRST FLANS OF EXPLORA TION. 23

discovery of either a continent on the western shore of the Atlantic, or a new route to China, would meet a great popular want. Although the Portuguese had sailed as far south as Cape Bojador, they believed that no vessel could sail any further in that direction without meeting with a temperature so great as to raise the water of the ocean to the boiling-point, audit was thus assumed that all future navigators desirous of new islands and continents must search for them in the west. The more Columbus thought of the matter, the more firmly he became convinced that he could either discover valuable islands by sailing due west, or that at all events he could reach the coast of Japan, China, or India ; and that it was clearly the duty of somebody to supply him with ships and money and put him in command of an exploring expedition. With this view Correo fully coincided, and Columbus made up his mind that he would call on a few respectable kings and ask them to fit out such an expedition.

Fernando Columbus informs us that his father based his conviction that land could be found by sailing in a westerly direction, upon a variety of reasons. Although many learned men believed that the earth was round, the circumference of the globe was then unknown ; and as every one had therefore a right to call it what he chose, Columbus assumed that it was comparatively small, and that the distance from the Cape Verde Islands eastward to the western part of Asia was fully two thirds of the entire circumference. He also assumed that the remainino; third consisted in ^reat part of the eastern portion of Asia, and that hence the distance across the Atlantic, from Portugal to Asia, was by no means great. In support of this theory he recalled the alleged fact that various strange trees and bits of wood, hewn after a fashion unknown in Europe, had from time to time been cast on the European shores, and must have come out of the unknown west.

This theory, founded as it was upon

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gratuitous assumptions, and supported by driftwood of uncertain origin and doubtful veracity, was regarded by Columbus as at least the equal of the binomial theorem in credibility, and he felt confident that the moment he should bring it to the attention of an enterprising king, that monarch would instantly present him with a fleet and make him Governor-General of all lands which he might discover.

It was the invariable custom of Columbus to declare that his chief reason for desiring to discover new countries was, that he might carry the Gospel to the pagan inhabitants thereof, and also find gold enough to fit out a new crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. Whether old Pedro Correo winked when Columbus spoke in this pious strain, or whether Dona Felipa, with the charming frankness of her sex, remarked '' fiddlesticks ! " we shall never know.

Perhaps Columbus really thought that he wanted to dispense the Gospel and fight the Mahometans, and that he did not care a straw about becoming a great explorer and having the State capital of Ohio named for him ; but his fixed determination not to carry a particle of Gospel to the smallest possible pagan, except upon terms highly advantageous to his pocket and his schemes of personal aggrandizement, is scarcely reconcilable with his pious protestations. His own church decided, not very long ago, that his moral character did not present available materials for the manufacture of a saint, and it is only too probable that the church was right.

It is a curious illustration of the determination of his biographers to prove him an exceptionally noble man, that they dwell with much emphasis upon his stern determination not to undertake any explorations except upon his own extravagant terms. To the unprejudiced mind his conduct might seem that of a shrewd and grasping man, bent upon making a profitable speculation. The biographers, however, insist that it was the conduct of a great and noble nature, caring for nothing except geo-

1474] FIRST PLANS OF EXPLORATION. 2'J

graphical discovery and the conversion of unhmited heathen.

About this time Columbus is believed to have written a great many letters to various people, asking their candid opinion upon the propriety of discovering new continents or new ways to old Asiatic countries. Paulo Toscanelli, of Florence, a leading scientific person, sent him, in answer to one of his letters, a map of the Atlantic and the eastern coast of Asia, which displayed a bolder imagination than Columbus had shown in any of his own maps, and which so delighted him that he put it carefully away, to use in case his dream of exploration should be realized. Toscanelli's map has proved to be of much more use to historians than it was to Columbus, for the letter in which it was enclosed was dated in the year 1474, and it thus gives us the earliest date at which we can feel confident Columbus was entertaining the idea of his great voyage.

How long Columbus resided at Porto Santo we have no means of knowing ;

neither do we know why he left that place. It is certain, however, that he returned to Lisbon either before or very soon after the accession of King John II. to the Portuguese throne, an event which took place in 1 48 1. Meanwhile, as we learn from one of his letters, he made a voyage in 1477 to an island which his biographers have agreed to call Iceland, although Columbus lacked inclination — or perhaps courage — to call it by that name. He says he made the voyage in February, and he does not appear to have noticed that the water was frozen. The weak point in his narrative — provided he really did visit Iceland — is his omission to mention how he warmed the Arctic ocean so as to keep it free of ice in February. Had he only given us a description of his sea-warming method, it would have been of inestimable service to the people of Iceland, since it would have rendered the island easily accessible at all times of the year, and it would also have materially lessened the difficulty which explorers find in sailing to the North Pole.

148 1] FIRST PLANS OF EXPLORATION. 29

It is probable that Columbus visited some warmer and easier island than Iceland — say one of the Hebrides. In those days a voyage from southern Europe to Iceland would have been a remarkable feat, and Columbus would not have failed to demand all the credit due him for so bold an exploit.

The immediate predecessor of King John — King Alfonso — preferred war to exploration, and as he was occupied during the latter part of his reign in a very interesting war with Spain, it is improbable that Columbus wasted time in asking him to fit out a transatlantic expedition. There is a rumor that, prior to the accession of King John II., Columbus applied to Genoa for assistance in his scheme of exploration, but the rumor rests upon no evidence worth heeding.