Christopher Columbus | Page 3

trade or discovery he should
be allowed to furnish one eighth of the cost and receive one eighth of
the profit.
On these conditions and no others would Christopher Columbus
undertake his perilous journey into unknown seas; and the grandees of
Spain walked indignantly away from him.
"Lord High Admiral!" murmured one. "An office second only to
royalty! This foreigner demands promotion over us who have been
fighting and draining our veins and our purses for Spain this many a
year!" "Governor-General with power to select his own deputies!"
murmured another. "Why, he would be monarch absolute! What proof

has he ever given that he knows how to govern!" "One tenth of all
goods acquired by trade or any other method," protested still another.
"What other method has he in mind?--robbery, piracy, murder, forsooth?
And then, when complaints of his 'other method' are made, he alone is
to judge the case! A sorry state of justice, indeed!"
Now, when you see this from the Spaniards' point of view, can you not
understand their indignation? Yet Columbus, too, had cause for
indignation. True, these soldiers of Spain had risked much, but on land,
and aided by powerful troops. He was offering to go with a few men on
a small ship across a vast unexplored sea; and that seemed to him a far
greater undertaking than a campaign against the Moors. His position
was much like that of the modern inventor who resents having the
greater part of the profits of his invention given to those who promote it.
Columbus's friends, the few men who had encouraged him and
believed in him ever since he came to Spain, begged him to accept less,
but he was inflexible. He was prepared to make the biggest journey
man had ever dreamed of, and not one iota less would he take for it.
But no such rewards would Talavera promise, and thus ended the
interview for which Columbus had waited nearly seven years!
And so he rode away from the lovely Moorish city, weary and dejected,
yet hoping for better treatment when he should lay his plans before the
French king. His ride took him across the fertile Vega (plain) of
Granada and into a narrow mountain pass where the bleak Elvira Range
towers three thousand feet above the road. But smiling plain and
frowning mountain were alike to the brooding traveler. He noticed
neither; nor, when he started across the ancient stone bridge of Pinos,
did he notice that horsemen were galloping after him. They were Queen
Isabella's messengers sent to bid the bold navigator return. They
overtook him in the middle of the bridge, and then and there his trip to
France ended.
The queen, they told him, would accept his terms unconditionally. And
Isabella kept her word. The next time Christopher Columbus rode forth
from Granada it was not with bowed head and heavy heart, but with his
whole soul rejoicing. We may be sure that he turned back for a last

affectionate look at the lovely mountain city; for it had given him what
historians now call "the most important paper that ever sovereign put
pen to, "--a royal order for the long-desired ships and men with which
to discover "lands in the west."
CHAPTER II
THE YOUTH OF COLUMBUS
Having seen how that great event in Spanish history, the fall of
Granada, set the date for the discovery of America, let us see how it
was that a humble Italian sailor came to be present among all those
noble Spanish soldiers and statesmen. Let us see why he had brought to
Spain the idea of a round world, when most Spaniards still believed in a
flat one; and why his round world was perfectly safe to travel over,
even to its farthest point, while their flat one was edged with monsters
so terrible that no man had ever sought their evil acquaintance.
[Illustration: From "The Story of Columbus" by Elizabeth L. Seelys,
courtesy of D. Appleton and Company. THE GENOA HOME]
The amount of really reliable information which we possess concerning
the childhood of Christopher Columbus could be written in a few lines.
We do not know accurately the date of his birth, though it was probably
1451. Sixteen Italian cities have claimed him as a native; and of these
Genoa in northern Italy offers the best proofs. Papers still exist showing
that his father owned a little house there. Men who have studied the life
of Columbus, and who have written much about him, say that he was
born in the province, not the city, of Genoa; but Columbus himself says
in his diary that he was a native of Genoa city; and present-day
Genoese have even identified the very street where he was born and
where he played as