A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 3 | Page 8

may divine what inquiry he made into those which are obscure and in which he contradicts himself, as already proved. But, laying aside this fruitless controversy, I shall only add that, in consideration of the many falsehoods in the Chronicle and Psalter of Justiniani, the senate of Genoa have imposed a penalty upon any person within their jurisdiction who shall read or keep those books, and have ordered that they shall be carefully sought after and destroyed.
To conclude this disquisition, I assert that the admiral, so far from being a person occupied with the vile employments of mechanics or handicraft trades, was a man of learning and experience, and entirely occupied in such studies and exercises as fitted him for and became the glory and renown of his most wonderful discoveries; and I shall close this chapter with an extract from a letter which he wrote to the nurse of Prince John of Castile. "I am not the first admiral of my family, let them give me what name they please. After all, that most prudent king David was first a shepherd, and was afterwards chosen king of Jerusalem; and I am a servant to the same Lord who raised him to so great dignity."
In his person the admiral was above the middle stature and well shaped, having rather a long visage, with somewhat full cheeks, yet neither fat nor lean. His complexion was very fair with delicately red cheeks, having fair hair in his youth, which became entirely grey at thirty years of age. He had a hawk nose, with fair eyes. In his eating and drinking, and in his dress, he was always temperate and modest. In his demeanour he was affable to strangers and kind and condescending to his domestics and dependents, yet with a becoming modesty and dignified gravity of manner, tempered with easy politeness. His regard for religion was so strict and sincere, even in keeping the prescribed fasts and reciting all the offices of the church, that he might have been supposed professed in one of the religious orders; and so great was his abhorrence to profane swearing that I never heard him use any other oath than by St Ferdinand; and even in the greatest passion, his only imprecation was "God take you." When about to write, his usual way of trying his pen was in these words, _Jesu cum Maria sit nobis in via_; and in so fair a character as might have sufficed to gain his bread by writing.
Passing over many particulars of his character, manners, and disposition, which will appear in the course of this history, I shall now only mention that, in his tender years he applied himself to such studies at Pavia as fitted him to understand cosmography, his favourite science; for which purpose he chiefly devoted himself to the study of geometry and astronomy, without which, it is impossible to make any proficiency in cosmography. And, because Ptolemy, in the preface to his cosmography, asserts that no person can be a good cosmographer without a thorough knowledge of drawing; he therefore learnt to draw, so as to be able to delineate not only the exact outlines of countries, but to express their cosmographical features, whether having plain surfaces or interspersed with hills and vallies.
Having laid a foundation in the before-mentioned sciences, he went to sea, and made several voyages both to the east and west[1]: But of these, and many other circumstances respecting his early years I have no perfect knowledge. I was so young at his death, that owing to filial respect, I had not the boldness to ask an account from him of the incidents of his youth, and besides I was not then interested in such inquiries. But some account of these things may be gleaned from his letters to their Catholic majesties, to whom he would not dare to write any thing but the truth. In one of these letters, written in the year 1501, he says,
"Most Serene Princes! I went to sea when very young, and have continued to the present day; and this art of navigation inclines those who follow it to be desirous of discovering the secrets of this world. It is now forty years[2] that I have been sailing to all those parts of the world which are frequented at present; and I have conversed with many wise and learned men, both clergy and laity, Latins, Greeks, Indians and Moors, and of many other sects and nations. God has been favourable to my inclination, and has given me the spirit of understanding, so that I have become very skilful in navigation, with a competent knowledge in arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, and both genius and skill to draw maps and charts of this world, with its cities, rivers, islands, and