The career of Columbus

Chapter I

" Here and there on sandy beaches A milky-belled amaryllis blew.

How young Columbus seemed to rove Yet present in his natal grove. Now watching high on mountain cornice, . And steering now from a purple cove."

"Christopher Columbus of famous memory," when he began to acquaint the world with his plans, "was not only derided and generally mocked, even here in England, but afterward became a laughing-stock to the Spaniards themselves." So ran the report of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, that valiant and worthy gentleman, when new discoveries were being planned ; and he added that the whole scheme of Columbus was accounted "a fantastical imagination and a drowsie dreame."

Moreover, while the admiral was attending the king and queen in Castile, in how many ways was he not put to shame. "Some scorned the wildness of his garments, some took occasion to jest at his simple looks, others asked 'if this were he that louts so low, that took upon him to bring men into a country that aboundeth with gold, pearle, and precious stones?' 'Nay!' they said, 'but if he were such a man, he would look somewhat loftier, and carry another kind of countenance.' Thus some judged him by his garments, and others by his look and countenance; but none entered into the consideration of the inward man."

A sudden turn of fortune brought wealth and honor to the poor exile who had been jeered at as one of the "vain and deceitful Ligurians," hardly endured by the cold-tempered king, a boaster tolerated only by the queen's kindness. When the cross was raised over Granada, and the King Chiquito was bewailing his fate to his Moorish ladies, the patient inventor had his share of luck with the rest. Genoa had refused his gifts, and Portugal had endeavored to rob him ; France and England were hesitating and faint in their offers. The victory of the Catholic kings disposed them to make a slight effort toward a greater success. There was a seaport in Spain which lay at the mercy of the crown for defaults in dues and services ; and many of its inhabitants were either convicted of crime or were held liable to exemplary punishment. The penalty was laid upon them of finding ships and men for the new voyage to Cathay, to sail into death and chaos, as their neighbors thought, and to expend themselves in a wicked and desperate adventure; to sail beyond the sunset, as Columbus hoped, to the great city of Cambalu and its golden mountains, to the rivers that flowed from Paradise and the riches of the land of Havilah.

Nothing could be more unjust than the attacks which had been made upon Columbus. Writing to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1501 he said, "It is now forty years that I have been sailing to all the countries at present frequented." He had conversed with scholars from all parts, "Latins, Greeks, Indians, and Moors." He had been very skillful in navigation, "knowing enough in astronomy," and well versed in geometry and mathematics. "During all this time I have seen, or endeavored to see, all books of cosmography, history, philosophy, and other sciences; so that our Lord has sensibly opened my understanding, to the end that I n:iight sail from here to the Indies, and made me most willing to put it into execution. Filled with this desire I came to your highnesses. All that heard of my undertaking rejected it with contempt and scorn. In your highnesses alone faith and constancy held their seat." He had, in fact, a strong sense of personal dignity. Pride kept him on a level with the kings who were discussing or patronizing his plans, and he would never abate a jot of the honors to which he conceived himself to be entitled. It was his natural courtesy and sweetness of temper that had been mistaken for servility.

After his great success he seems to have been reticent about his early life, though he would explain a doubt or difficulty by referring to his stores of experience. Even to his son Don Ferdinand, who afterward wrote his life, he spoke very briefly about their family affairs. "I and mine," he would say, "were always traders by sea"; and on another occasion he wrote, "I was not the first admiral in our family." "Of his voyages to the east and west," says the biographer, "and many other things about his early days, I have no perfect knowledge, because he

THE CAREER OF COLUMBUS.

died when I was confined by my filial duty, and had not the boldness to ask him to give me an account of them, or (to speak the truth), being but young, I was at that time far from being troubled with such thoughts." It happened for these reasons that the first part of the biography was somewhat blurred and indistinct ; we have to infer from a casual remark, or a formality in a legal document ; how Columbus passed his youth and early manhood, how he traded and fought and explored in the Levant, or among the Atlantic Islands ; how he came to the Torrid Zone at "St. George of the Gold Mine" in Guinea, or sailed within the Arctic Circle "a hundred leagues beyond Thule."

It was of importance at one time to discover the exact place of his birth and the social standing of his family, although his son very sensibly remarked that he was personally indifferent whether the admiral's father was a merchant, or a man of quality that kept his hawks and hounds; "and certainly there have been a thousand such in all parts, whose memory has been utterly lost in a very short time among their neighbors and kindred." He thought, however, that his father's merits should have saved him from being classed among mechanics. It must have been generally known that the admiral's father was a tradesman, a Genoese weaver; at one time, perhaps, the owner of a trading vessel, at another keeping an inn at Savona. But when Giustiniani said that Columbus was of a "poor and humble stock," in his note upon the nineteenth Psalm, Don Ferdinand was ready at once with a fierce contradiction. The facts might be true, he argued, but the implication was false. The admiral belonged to no humble tribe or class of handicraftsmen. One ought to say rather that the Columbi were of the best blood, a caste of soldiers and statesmen, reduced, no doubt, in the civil wars and by the peevishness of fortune into somewhat humble circumstances. How indelicatie was the style of this base scribe, quite unacquainted, evidently, with the courtesies of literature. He might have said, as authors generally do in such cases, that the admiral's relations were poor and his surroundings lowly, without bringing in such blunt and injurious phrases. It is not easy to follow all the arguments which were adduced to support the admiral's dignity. One can understand the minute patriotism which seeks to connect a particular town with the life of the discoverer of America, but it is strange that a man's reputation should have fallen or risen according to the merits of his birthplace. Yet we are assured that those were most respected who were born in places of importance, and this as a matter of genuine sentiment, and not merely because it is useful to be "the citizen of no mean city."

"It happens," said Don Ferdinand, "that some who wish to cast a cloud on his fame will say, 'He was of Nervi,' and others, 'He was of Cogoletto,' or 'of Bogliasco,' which are all little places near Genoa, and upon the adjoining coast. Others again say, by way of exalting him, 'He was of Savona,' or 'a citizen of Genoa.' Some have soared higher still, and have made him out to belong to Piacenza, where there are indeed some honorable persons of his family, and tombs with the arms and inscriptions of the Columbi." So again we read in the Eulogies of Paolo Giovio, with reference to the Como portrait: "How one must wonder that a man of such fine presence and such commanding intellect should have been born in a rude hamlet like Albisola!" If it is asked whether the true birthplace is known, or whether all these places are like the cities which strove in vain for Homer, the answer must be that Columbus probably knew the facts, and that he claimed to have been born in Genoa. Twice in his last will he makes the assertion ; he calls himself "nacido in Genova," and charged his estate with the maintenance in that city of some member of his family, to represent his memory there, and to take footing and root as a native, "because thence I came and there was I born." Columbus was born in 1445, or in the following year. His parents had a residence about that time in Quinto, but there is reason to believe that they had a house in Genoa, which they visited from time to time before they took up their permanent abode, about the year 145 1, in the weavers' quarter near St. Andrew's Gate.

Modern inquiry has cleared up the controversies about the original home of the family. A vast inheritance and splendid dignities lay vacant when the admiral's direct male issue came to an end in the fourth generation, A host of competitors, of course, appeared before the Spanish tribunals, provided for the most part with false pedigrees and sham traditions, desiring to prove heirship by showing that they came from places where the family had been established. The pleadings in the great lawsuit, which are still preserved, show that several of the claimants went so far as to trace their titles to persons with the same name as the admiral's father ; alleged, moreover, in each case to have had sons with names exactly answering to those of the admiral and his brothers. The mere similarity of a family surname would not have carried them far. The name "Colombo," with slight local variations, was common in Fra.nce and Italy. It occurred in Spain and in Corsica, and was not unknown in England. It may easily have been derived independently in different places from some common word like "Colonus."

The claim of Cugureo, now called Cogoletto, to be the true home of the family was long accepted as genuine. This, no doubt, was owing to the local traditions about an old house in the village, shown as one of the numerous residences ascribed to Columbus. The evidence in reality goes all the other way. Don Ferdinand tells us that he visited the place in the hope of getting information about his father, "As I passed through Cugureo I tried to learn something from two brothers there who were of the family of the Colombi ; they were among the richest people in lo THE CAREER OF COLUMBUS.

those parts, and were said to be related to the admiral, but the younger of the two was over a hundred years old, and so they could give me no account of the matter." While the lawsuit was pending, in 1583, a poor peasant named Bernardo Colombo came from Cogoletto to put in a claim to the title. His title rested upon a supposed relationship to a certain Domenico Colombo of that town, alleged to have been the admiral's father; but, though he was strongly supported by the republic of Genoa, his claim was rejected for want of proof. Baldassare Colombo, of Cuccaro, claimed through another Domenico, lord of a castle at that place, who was also set up as "the father of Christopher Columbus." But, though the names in his pedigree were correct, it came out that this ancestor had died in 1456, nearly thirty years before the admiral's father, Domenico Colombo the weaver, was known to have died. The rejection of these claims disposed of the assertions that the family had come to Cogoletto or Cuccaro from Piacenza, or had moved down in more ancient times from Montferrat. There was, however, another title set up for the Columbi of Piacenza. Some of t;hem had been established iri Genoa as early a?

THE CAREER OF COLUMBUS II

the thirteenth century; and it was said that an important document, dated in 1481, distinctly stated that Domenico Colombo of Piacenza had two sons, Christopher and Bartholomew, who had migrated to Genoa about ten years before that time, and had sailed away afterward "to islands unknown." This document was never produced, and the claim was rejected for that reason. It was also observed that the arms on the houses and tombs of the Colombi at Piacenza were different to those which were used by Columbus himself. It had been suggested that the admiral could have inherited no coat-of-arms, because his relations were merely craftsmen ; and it is quite true that his family had not, and perhaps could not legally have had, any place on the roll of the nobles of Genoa. But, after all, we must attach impo-rtance to the assertions of the admiral about his own affairs. The weaver's son may have been entitled to a heraldic coat which he put away while he tended the loom, as the noble in the story takes his sword from under the counter and untucks it when he has made his fortune. The arms of the family at Piacenza were of the emblematic or "speaking" kind, the surname being symbolized by three doves. When Colum-^ bus returned from his first voyage he was told to meet the Spanish kings-at-arms, that they might prepare the proper augmentations for the arms which he usually bore. The well known shield was blazoned under his personal direction, with the royal quarterings of the Lion of Leon, and the Tower of Castile, the symbolical anchors, and the islands and continent of the Indies; but he took care to retain his ancestral bearings, which duly appear as "a shield or, with a band azure, and the okv&l gules .''

Don Ferdinand was sometimes rebuked for not making out a better pedigree. Friends asked why his father should not have been shown to come straight from "Junius Colonus" (or "Junius Cilo" as they should have said), who conquered the kingdom of Pontus, and brought Mithridates in bonds to Rome? Why not, again, prove a connection with "the two illustrious Coloni, his predecessors, who gained a mighty victory over the Venetians"? This refers, of course, to the sea fight off Cape St. Vincent in 1485, more fully mentioned in a later chapter.

It is enough to say here that the description of the battle cited by Don Ferdinand is wrong in several particulars, "There was," he says, "a famous man called Columbus, of the admiral's name and family, renowned upon the sea on account of the fleet which he commanded against the Infidels, as well as for the country to which he belonged, insomuch that they used his name to frighten the children in their cradles." He was known as "Columbus the younger," to distinguish him from another who was a great sailor before him. The last words refer to Guillaume Coulon, who created the French navy under Louis the Eleventh. This man had a famous son, well known as "the pirate Columbus," under whom the admiral served for several years. This "younger Columbus" of the biography seems to have been a Genoese subject ; and from this some have taken him to be the same person as "Colombo of Oneglia," who was hanged at Genoa in 1492 for acts of piracy against the French. We shall deal with their adventures later on. At present it is only necessary to observe that Don Ferdinand made many excuses about the alleged relationship. He gloried indeed in the victory over Venice, which he ascribed to a Genoese corsair. But the admiral, he said, wanted no connection with courts and great men ; he was, on the contrary, like the sailors and fishermen who had been chosen as apostles. He ought to be blamed or praised on his own merits. The "Admiral of the Ocean" required no shield or emblematic doves; he was himself the "Columbus" or messenger of hope, the "Christophorus" who bore the banner of the faith. By his own wish, moreover, he was known as "Colon," rather than as one of the family of the "Colombi"; and it might be for some good reason that he had thus severed his direct line from those collateral branches.

CHAPTER II. "Often I think of the beautiful town

That is seated by the sea, Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town.

And my youth comes back to me.

" I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tide tossing free, And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships.

And the magic of the sea."

The father of Columbus was Domenico of Terra-Rossa, a weaver by trade, who lived in the suburbs of Genoa, or in one of the neighboring towns, as his business from time to time required. His mother was Susanna, daughter of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver working in the same neighborhood. They were married about 1445, either at Domenico's place up in the hills, or at Quinto, where his father had a house by the seaside, and a felucca, as we suppose, for his trading ventures to Alexandria or the Islands. Both families had been] long established in the valleys of the Apennines. Terra-Rossa is a hamlet in the

IS

Vale of Fontanabuona, lying above the Lavagna River, a few miles inland from Porto Fino. Fontana-Rossa is a village in the same large valley, set at the very foot of the mountain behind Chiavari. Both families had been drawn closer and closer to Genoa by the attractions of its busy commerce. The weaving trade offered a comfortable subsistence without any need to live within the crowded walls ; the spice trade gave a free outlet to all the young men who were ready for adventures at sea. Columbus was born in iz[45, or about the beginning of 1446, and at that time his mother's family were settled at Quezzi, a beautiful hamlet in the immediate neighborhood of the city. His own parents lived in the new suburb just outside one of the ancient gates; or, if they changed their abode now and then, went no farther than the seaside at Quinto.

If anyone wishes to see a picture in his mind, showing the places where Columbus spent his youth, he must endeavor to recall the great view from the heights behind Genoa. The gulf curves between the horns of Porto Fino and the "olivehoary cape" on the Western Riviera. Below the Ligurian Alps are the places connected in truth or by tradition with his memory. At Cogoletto,

"in a narrow street and dim," they show the old house where he may have lived, and a picture revered as his portrait. Albisola has grown from a rough hamlet into an expanse of villas and flower gardens. Savona lies beyond, with its port under St. George's Rock, once nearly destroyed by the Genoese, but very flourishing when Columbus sailed in from time to time. Here was the shop where his father made and sold "good cloth of Savona," and the tavern where Susanna looked after the sailor customers; and close to the town lay Valcalda in Legino, where two vineyards were purchased, which involved the whole family in a dreary lawsuit. Looking seaward, the mountains of Corsica recall the fancy that Columbus was a native of the island. Toward the west the view is blocked by the great cape. At San Remo another Columbus, supposed to have been the admiral's kinsman, was born, and made his home ; and just behind the promontory is the creek of Oneglia, where the freebooter rested in his lair and divided the spoil with Doria.

We must turn back to Genoa, where Columbus was born and passed a great part of his youth. His parents lived mostly at Quinto until he was four years old ; and here his sister Biancinetta and his brothers Giovanni-Pelegrino and Bartholomew were born. The family then came back to live near St. Andrew's Gate, and here was born Giacomo, who was afterward known as "Don Diego."

The course of the old walls, the gate by which Columbus lived, the street on which the shop faced, and its long green lawn in the city moat, are marked by the line of the modern boulevards and public gardens.

We may think of him as visiting the Duomo and the Doria's church, the porch of San Stefano, where the weavers held meetings, and their craft hall in the neighborhood of the Abbey. Down in the port, where he talked with the sailors on the wharves, on one side is the old Mole, where the magistrates hanged Columbus the Rover on a tower, with his friend Bernardo of Sestri ; and close to it stands the Bank of St. George, the "Dogana" of our days, with its tiers of statues,

White and cold, Those niched shapes of noble mold, A princely people's awful princes. The grave, severe, Genovese of old.

From the old Mole stretched away the port, filled with ships of all kinds. There were galleys, armed with petronels, three-masters with huge square sails, crowded with a rabble of galley slaves and cross-bowmen to keep them down. One might see galleons arriving from the Levant, or making ready for the Flanders voyage; and long, raking caraccas, better suited for corsair's work than for voyages of commerce and business; and nimble "caravels" from Spain and Portugal, English barks, and pinnacles and trading boats of all kinds. The port was like the harbor of Tyre in the ancient days, and not very different in its actual merchandise.

The principal change was in the places where the commodities were produced. The blocks and bars of tin, the lead and vessels of pewter, came from galleys trading with Southampton, and no longer in the ships of Tarshish. The lawns and camlets of Cyprus had replaced the fine linen and embroideries of Syria. There were raw and spun cottons from Malta as well as from Egypt and India. But the strong wine of Tyre, "the wine of Helbon," was still imported from Palestine in the ships that brought the choice Malmseys from Candia. The "white wools of Damascus" still remained to compete with the "Prankish wools" from London and

20 THE CAREER OE COLUMBUS.

Norwich, and the raw wool from the warehouses at Calais ; but the best classes of stuffs came from England, such as "Suffolks" and "village medleys," kerseys of all colors, friezes white and unshorn, or "of a looser texture for night wear," and fustians and cloth from Essex and Guildford. The spice trade was a staple industry at Genoa. Her shipmen, like the merchants of Tyre, dealt in myrrh and cassia, the true aloes from Socotra, galbanum and the sweet storax, the scented calamus and the Eastern cinnamon. Here, as in ancient times, one might see the Caspian merchants, who had come with Indian silks, and rhubarb and spices from Persia, up the broad river to Tiflis, and down the gorge to Poti and the waves beating on the sandy bar. Here were "Indians, Moors, and Greeks," like those with whom Columbus held discourse, and the merchants of the East and West, from the "Levante," as they called the parts below Corfu, and from the "Ponente," which included Sicily and all the lands beyond.

Genoa runs out on the southeast as far as the Bisagno Torrent. In the lifetime of Columbus the ancient city walls were still standing, and formed an interior zone of fortifications alone the line now occupied in part by the park and the public gardens. The space intervening between the old walls and the newer ambit of the city was occupied by the Borgo di San Stefano, still known as the "Weavers' Quarter." The weavers were protected and encouraged in every way by the Signoria, whose chief aim, as at Venice, was "to provide that all the poor might live and maintain themselves," and to help the wool trade in particular, "because when this manufacture fails the supply of food fails also." In this quarter the cloth weavers and blanket makers, combers and carders, silk throwers and velvet men, lived in a town of comfortable houses and gardens held on ground rents under the Abbey of San Stefano. In a street outside the Olive Gate was the house where Domenico was working, with an apprentice under him, as early as 1439, ^"^^ here it is believed that his son Christopher was born. St. Andrew's Gate lay nearer to the sea. A street ran from it, turning upward to Porticello, leaving a considerable space between the roadway and the city wall. Here was the house where Columbus passed most of his boyhood. The place is described in the documents collected by Mr. Harrisse. The shop was in front, a yard with a well behind, and the long garden reached back to the foot of the old wall. Something is added about the neighbors. The next house on the left belonged to the weaver Bondi, and afterward to a shoemaker named Tomaso Carbone ; beyond him lived another shoemaker, Antonio Pelegro of Plazio, for whom Domenico Colombo on one occasion witnessed a deed ; on the right hand, or south side, was "La Pallavania," so called from its owner's name. A little farther off, toward the Piazza di Porticello, was the shop of the cheesemonger Bavarello, whose son afterward married the sister of Columbus.

Beyond the stream of Bisagno we cross the ridge of a hill and look down on the seaside towns. Quarto and Quinto, the sites of stations on the Roman road, and Nervi, and the village of Bogliasco beyond. On one side of the ridge, farther inland, lived the family of Fontana-Rossa at Quezzi ; on the other lies Ginestreto, where Domenico Colombo had a little estate. The hill is covered with vineyards and villas, with groves of fruit trees. Four centuries ago the place was already like a garden, but was clothed in most parts with a different vegetation. Lemons and oranges were still unknown; no mulberry trees were required where there was no manufactory of the native silk ; but there were already vineyards and olive orchards, and much of the land was covered with a growth of chestnuts and fig trees. Assiduous industry and experiment, aided by a change of weather as the forests disappeared, have converted a rough Alpine district into a fertile region of the South. We see that this must be so when we look back at the oldest descriptions of Liguria. The natives under the early Empire drank beer because the little wine produced in their country "was harsh and tasted of pitch." They were always at work in the fofest getting timber for ship building; some of theftrees, we are told, were of a vast height, and ^much as eight feet in diameter, and the wood i was often well-veined, and "as good as cedar for cabinet work." They seem to have grown no olive trees, for we learn that they brought their timber to the mart of Genoa, with honey and ox hides and the various produce of their flocks and herds, "in order to get in exchange the oil and wines of Italy." It seems that the weaving trade flourished even in those early times, for we are told that there was a ready market in Italy for "the Ligurian cloaks and tunics."

The history of the family of Columbus appears in a series of documents preserved among the archives of Genoa and Savona, which were for the most part collected before 1586 by Giovanni Battista Ferreri of Savona, and published in 1602 by Giulio Salineri in his "Annotations upon Tacitus." After long disputes and investigations the authenticity of all these documents has been established, the originals of those which had been for a long time missing having been recovered through the labors of Mr. Harrisse. Old Giovanni of Terra-Rossa, the admiral's grandfather, was living at Quinto about the year 1445, and he appears to have died there, before 1448, leaving two sons, Domenico and Antonio, and a daughter Battestina. Giovanni seems to have owned a considerable amount of property. The estate at Terra-Rossa may have gone to his son Antonio, but Domenico used the territorial surname while living at Quinto ; his son Christopher often signed his name as "Columbus de Terra-rubea," and Bartholomew signed in the same way on the map which he presented to Henry the Seventh. There was also property at Quinto and Ginestreto, besides the two houses at Genoa. We hear also of ground rents at Pradello, near

Piacenza, which fell to the share of Domenico, and were inherited from him by his sons Christopher and Bartholomew.

Among the documents preserved at Genoa is a settlement made in 1448 on the marriage of Battestina, then living with her brothers at Quinto, with Giovanni di Fritalo, of the same place. The brothers bind themselves to pay her dowry of sixty gold lire by twelve installments, and each of them further agrees to hand over to her trustee within three years three silver spoons of due weight, "according to the custom of the town of Quinto."

Domenico was evidently of an eager and sanguine temperament, often buying and selling, and too ready to secure a tempting property by mortgaging his future work. In 1445 he sold certain lands at "le Fassiole" in Quinto, described as lying between the two highways, and as being partly in grass, and partly planted with chestnuts and underwood. Six years later he bought some land at Quarto, in a place called "le Toppore," planted with figs and other trees, at the price of fifty gold lire, mostly to be paid in cloth of "Genoese medley." Domenico was by this time living in Genoa, and the purchase was effected at the shop of Master Andrea di Clavaro the barber, in the street by St. Andrew's Gate.