Christopher Columbus | Page 3

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 a child--the Vico Dritto di Ponticello. In the wall of the house in which he is believed to have lived is placed an iron tablet containing an inscription in Latin. It tells us that "no house is more to be honored than this, in which Christopher Columbus spent his boyhood and his early youth."
More important than the exact spot of his birth would be a knowledge of the sort of childhood he passed and of the forces that molded his character. To learn this we must look into the condition