Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery | Page 6

on the lagoons, Ligurians on
the busy trading wharves of Genoa, were discussing the great subject;
and as the tide rose and spread, it floated one ship of life after another
that was destined for the great business of adventure. Some it inspired
to dream and speculate, and to do no more than that; many a heart also
to brave efforts and determinations that were doomed to come to
nothing and to end only in failure. And among others who felt the force
and was swayed and lifted by the prevailing influence, there lived,
some four and a half centuries ago, a little boy playing about the
wharves of Genoa, well known to his companions as Christoforo, son
of Domenico the wool-weaver, who lived in the Vico Dritto di
Ponticello.
CHAPTER II
THE HOME IN GENOA
It is often hard to know how far back we should go in the ancestry of a
man whose life and character we are trying to reconstruct. The life that
is in him is not his own, but is mysteriously transmitted through the life
of his parents; to the common stock of his family, flesh of their flesh,
bone of their bone, character of their character, he has but added his
own personality. However far back we go in his ancestry, there is

something of him to be traced, could we but trace it; and although it
soon becomes so widely scattered that no separate fraction of it seems
to be recognisable, we know that, generations back, we may come upon
some sympathetic fact, some reservoir of the essence that was him, in
which we can find the source of many of his actions, and the clue,
perhaps, to his character.
In the case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma. The past is
reticent enough about the man himself; and about his ancestors it is
almost silent. We know that he had a father and grandfather, as all
grandsons of Adam have had; but we can be certain of very little more
than that. He came of a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting the Apennine
valleys; and in the vale of Fontanabuona, that runs up into the hills
behind Genoa, the two streams of family from which he sprang were
united. His father from one hamlet, his mother from another; the
towering hills behind, the Mediterranean shining in front; love and
marriage in the valley; and a little boy to come of it whose doings were
to shake the world.
His family tree begins for us with his grandfather, Giovanni Colombo
of Terra-Rossa, one of the hamlets in the valley--concerning whom
many human facts may be inferred, but only three are certainly known;
that he lived, begot children, and died. Lived, first at Terra Rossa, and
afterwards upon the sea-shore at Quinto; begot children in number
three--Antonio, Battestina, and Domenico, the father of our Christopher;
and died, because one of the two facts in his history is that in the year
1444 he was not alive, being referred to in a legal document as
quondam, or, as we should say, "the late." Of his wife, Christopher's
grandmother, since she never bought or sold or witnessed anything
requiring the record of legal document, history speaks no word;
although doubtless some pleasant and picturesque old lady, or lady
other than pleasant and picturesque, had place in the experience or
imagination of young Christopher. Of the pair, old Quondam Giovanni
alone survives the obliterating drift of generations, which the shores
and brown slopes of Quinto al Mare, where he sat in the sun and looked
about him, have also survived. Doubtless old Quondam could have told
us many things about Domenico, and his over-sanguine buyings and

sellings; have perhaps told us something about Christopher's
environment, and cleared up our doubts concerning his first home; but
he does not. He will sit in the sun there at Quinto, and sip his wine, and
say his Hail Marys, and watch the sails of the feluccas leaning over the
blue floor of the Mediterranean as long as you please; but of
information about son or family, not a word. He is content to have
survived, and triumphantly twinkles his two dates at us across the night
of time. 1440, alive; 1444, not alive any longer: and so hail and
farewell, Grandfather John.
Of Antonio and Battestina, the uncle and aunt of Columbus, we know
next to nothing. Uncle Antonio inherited the estate of Terra-Rossa,
Aunt Battestina was married in the valley; and so no more of either of
them; except that Antonio, who also married, had sons, cousins of
Columbus, who in after years, when he became famous, made
themselves unpleasant, as poor relations will, by recalling themselves
to his remembrance and suggesting that something might be done for
them. I