Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery | Page 7

have a belief, supported by no historical fact or document, that
between the families of Domenico and Antonio there was a mild
cousinly feud. I believe they did not like each other. Domenico, as we
shall see presently, was sanguine and venturesome, a great buyer and
seller, a maker of bargains in which he generally came off second best.
Antonio, who settled in Terra-Rossa, the paternal property, doubtless
looked askance at these enterprises from his vantage-ground of a settled
income; doubtless also, on the occasion of visits exchanged between
the two families, he would comment upon the unfortunate enterprises
of his brother; and as the children of both brothers grew up, they would
inherit and exaggerate, as children will, this settled difference between
their respective parents. This, of course, may be entirely untrue, but I
think it possible, and even likely; for Columbus in after life displayed a
very tender regard for members of his family, but never to our
knowledge makes any reference to these cousins of his, till they send
emissaries to him in his hour of triumph. At any rate, among the
influences that surrounded him at Genoa we may reckon this uncle and
aunt and their children--dim ghosts to us, but to him real people, who
walked and spoke, and blinked their eyes and moved their limbs, like
the men and women of our own time. Less of a ghost to us, though still

a very shadowy and doubtful figure, is Domenico himself,
Christopher's father. He at least is a man in whom we can feel a warm
interest, as the one who actually begat and reared the man of our story.
We shall see him later, and chiefly in difficulties; executing deeds and
leases, and striking a great variety of legal attitudes, to the witnessing
of which various members of his family were called in. Little enough
good did they to him at the time, poor Domenico; but he was a
benefactor to posterity without knowing it, and in these grave notarial
documents preserved almost the only evidence that we have as to the
early days of his illustrious son. A kind, sanguine man, this Domenico,
who, if he failed to make a good deal of money in his various
enterprises, at least had some enjoyment of them, as the man who buys
and sells and strikes legal attitudes in every age desires and has. He was
a wool-carder by trade, but that was not enough for him; he must buy
little bits of estates here and there; must even keep a tavern, where he
and his wife could entertain the foreign sailors and hear the news of the
world; where also, although perhaps they did not guess it, a sharp pair
of ears were also listening, and a pair of round eyes gazing, and an
inquisitive face set in astonishment at the strange tales that went about.
There is one fragment of fact about this Domenico that greatly enlarges
our knowledge of him. He was a wool-weaver, as we know; he also
kept a tavern, and no doubt justified the adventure on the plea that it
would bring him customers for his woollen cloth; for your buyer and
seller never lacks a reason either for his selling or buying. Presently he
is buying again; this time, still with striking of legal attitudes, calling
together of relations, and accompaniments of crabbed Latin notarial
documents, a piece of ground in the suburbs of Genoa, consisting of
scrub and undergrowth, which cannot have been of any earthly use to
him. But also, according to the documents, there went some old
wine-vats with the land. Domenico, taking a walk after Mass on some
feast-day, sees the land and the wine-vats; thinks dimly but hopefully
how old wine-vats, if of no use to any other human creature, should at
least be of use to a tavern-keeper; hurries back, overpowers the
perfunctory objections of his complaisant wife, and on the morrow of
the feast is off to the notary's office. We may be sure the wine-vats lay
and rotted there, and furnished no monetary profit to the wool-weaving

tavern-keeper; but doubtless they furnished him a rich profit of another
kind when he walked about his newly-acquired property, and explained
what he was going to do with the wine-vats.
And besides the weaving of wool and pouring of wine and buying and
selling of land, there were more human occupations, which Domenico
was not the man to neglect. He had married, about the year 1450, one
Susanna, a daughter of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver who
lived in the hamlet near to Terra-Rossa. Domenico's father was of the
more consequence of the two, for he had, as well as his home in the
valley, a house at Quinto, where he probably kept