Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery | Page 8

a felucca for
purposes of trade with Alexandria and the Islands. Perhaps the young
people were married at Quinto, but if so they did not live there long,
moving soon into Genoa, where Domenico could more conveniently
work at his trade. The wool-weavers at that time lived in a quarter
outside the old city walls, between them and the outer borders of the
city, which is now occupied by the park and public gardens. Here they
had their dwellings and workshops, their schools and institutions,
receiving every protection and encouragement from the Signoria, who
recognised the importance of the wool trade and its allied industries to
Genoa. Cloth-weavers, blanket-makers, silk-weavers, and
velvet-makers all lived in this quarter, and held their houses under the
neighbouring abbey of San Stefano. There are two houses mentioned in
documents which seem to have been in the possession of Domenico at
different times. One was in the suburbs outside the Olive Gate; the
other was farther in, by St. Andrew's Gate, and quite near to the sea.
The house outside the Olive Gate has disappeared; and it was probably
here that our Christopher first saw the light, and pleased Domenico's
heart with his little cries and struggles. Neither the day nor even the
year is certainly known, but there is most reason to believe that it was
in the year 1451. They must have moved soon afterwards to the house
in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, No. 37, in which most of Christopher's
childhood was certainly passed. This is a house close to St. Andrew's
Gate, which gate still stands in a beautiful and ruinous condition.
From the new part of Genoa, and from the Via XX Settembre, you turn
into the little Piazza di Ponticello just opposite the church of San

Stefano. In a moment you are in old Genoa, which is to-day in
appearance virtually the same as the place in which Christopher and his
little brothers and sisters made the first steps of their pilgrimage
through this world. If the Italian, sun has been shining fiercely upon
you, in the great modern thoroughfare, you will turn into this quarter of
narrow streets and high houses with grateful relief. The past seems to
meet you there; and from the Piazza, gay with its little provision-shops
and fruit stalls, you walk up the slope of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello,
leaving the sunlight behind you, and entering the narrow street like a
traveller entering a mountain gorge.
It is a very curious street this; I suppose there is no street in the world
that has more character. Genoa invented sky-scrapers long before
Columbus had discovered America, or America had invented steel
frames for high building; but although many of the houses in the Vico
Dritto di Ponticello are seven and eight storeys high, the width of the
street from house-wall to house-wall does not average more than nine
feet. The street is not straight, moreover; it winds a little in its ascent to
the old city wall and St. Andrew's Gate, so that you do not even see the
sky much as you look forward and upwards. The jutting cornices of the
roofs, often beautifully decorated, come together in a medley of angles
and corners that practically roof the street over; and only here and there
do you see a triangle or a parallelogram of the vivid brilliant blue that is
the sky. Besides being seven or eight storeys high, the houses are the
narrowest in the world; I should think that their average width on the
street front is ten feet. So as you walk up this street where young
Christopher lived you must think of it in these three dimensions
towering slices of houses, ten or twelve feet in width: a street often not
more than eight and seldom more than fifteen feet in width; and the
walls of the houses themselves, painted in every colour, green and pink
and grey and white, and trellised with the inevitable green
window-shutters of the South, standing like cliffs on each side of you
seven or eight rooms high. There being so little horizontal space for the
people to live there, what little there is is most economically used; and
all across the tops of the houses, high above your head, the cliffs are
joined by wires and clothes-lines from which thousands of
brightly-dyed garments are always hanging and fluttering; higher still,

where the top storeys of the houses become merged in roof, there are
little patches of garden and greenery, where geraniums and delicious
tangling creepers uphold thus high above the ground the fertile tradition
of earth. You walk slowly up the paved street. One of its characteristics,
which it shares with the old streets of most Italian towns, is that it is
only used by