Notable Voyagers

Voyagers, by W.H.G. Kingston
and Henry Frith

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Title: Notable Voyagers From Columbus to Nordenskiold
Author: W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
Release Date: November 15, 2007 [EBook #23494]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTABLE
VOYAGERS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

From Columbus to Nordenskiold.
CHAPTER ONE.
INTRODUCTION--A.D. 1486.

Columbus before the conclave of Professors at Seville--His parentage
and early history--Battle with Venetian galleys--Residence in
Portugal-- Marries widow of a navigator--Grounds on which he
founded his theory-- Offers his services to the King of Portugal--His
offer declined--Sends his brother Bartholomew to Henry the Seventh of
England--Don John sends out a squadron to forestall him--Sets off for
Spain--Introduced by the Duke of Medina Celi to Queen Isabella--She
encourages him--Plan for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre--His long
detention at Court while Ferdinand and Isabella are engaged in the war
against the Moors of Granada--A hearing at length afforded him--His
demands refused--Leaves the Court in poverty and visits Palos on his
way to France--Met by Juan Perez, Prior of the Rabida convent--The
Prior listens to his plans-- Introduces him to the Pinzons, and informs
the Queen of his intended departure--Sent for back at Court--All his
demands agreed to--Authority given him to fit out a squadron.
In the year 1486 a council of learned professors of geography,
mathematics, and all branches of science, erudite friars, accomplished
bishops, and other dignitaries of the Church, were seated in the vast
arched hall of the old Dominican convent of Saint Stephen in
Salamanca, then the great seat of learning in Spain. They had met to
hear a simple mariner, then standing in their midst, propound and
defend certain conclusions at which he had arrived regarding the form
and geography of the earth, and the possibility, nay, the certainty, that
by sailing west, the unknown shores of Eastern India could be reached.
Some of his hearers declared it to be grossly presumptuous in an
ordinary man to suppose, after so many profound philosophers and
mathematicians had been studying the world, and so many able
navigators had been sailing about it for years past, that there remained
so vast a discovery for him to make. Some cited the books of the Old
Testament to prove that he was wrong, others the explanations of
various reverend commentators. Doctrinal points were mixed up with
philosophical discussions, and a mathematical demonstration was
allowed no weight if it appeared to clash with a text of Scripture or
comment of one of the fathers.
Although Pliny and the wisest of the ancients had maintained the

possibility of an antipodes in the southern hemisphere, these learned
gentlemen made out that it was altogether a novel theory.
Others declared that to assert there were inhabited lands on the opposite
side of the globe would be to maintain that there were nations not
descended from Adam, as it would have been impossible for them to
have passed the intervening ocean, and therefore discredit would be
thrown on the Bible.
Again, some of the council more versed in science, though admitting
the globular form of the earth, and the possibility of an opposite
habitable hemisphere, maintained that it would be impossible to arrive
there on account of the insupportable heat of the torrid zone; besides
which, if the circumference of the earth was as great as they supposed,
it would require three years to make the voyage.
Several, with still greater absurdity, advanced as an objection that
should a ship succeed in reaching the extremity of India, she could
never get back again, as the rotundity of the globe would present a kind
of mountain up which it would be impossible for her to sail even with
the most favourable wind.
The mariner replied in answer to the scriptural objection that the
inspired writers were not speaking technically as cosmographers, but
figuratively, in language addressed to all comprehensions, and that the
commentaries of the fathers were not to be considered as philosophical
propoundings, which it was necessary either to admit or refute.
In regard to the impossibility of passing the torrid zone, he himself
stated that he had voyaged as far as Guinea under the equinoxial line,
and had found that region not only traversable, but abounding in
population, fruits, and pasturage.
Who was this simple mariner who could thus dare to differ from so
many learned sages? His person was commanding; his demeanour
elevated; his eye kindling; his manner that of one