The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals | Page 5

and
Suzanna Fontanarossa. This name means Red-fountain. He bad two
brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, whom we shall meet again. Diego is
the Spanish way of writing the name which we call James.
It seems probable that Christopher was born in the year 1436, though
some writers have said that he was older than this, and some that he
was younger. The record of his birth and that of his baptism have not
been found.
His father was not a rich man, but he was able to send Christopher, as a
boy, to the University of Pavia, and here he studied grammar, geometry,
geography and navigation, astronomy and the Latin language. But this
was as a boy studies, for in his fourteenth year he left the university and
entered, in hard work, on "the larger college of the world." If the date
given above, of his birth, is correct, this was in the year 1450, a few
years before the Turks took Constantinople, and, in their invasion of
Europe, affected the daily life of everyone, young or old, who lived in

the Mediterranean countries. From this time, for fifteen years, it is hard
to trace along the life of Columbus. It was the life of an intelligent
young seaman, going wherever there was a voyage for him. He says
himself, "I passed twenty-three years on the sea. I have seen all the
Levant, all the western coasts, and the North. I have seen England; I
have often made the voyage from Lisbon to the Guinea coast." This he
wrote in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella. Again he says, "I went to sea
from the most tender age and have continued in a sea life to this day.
Whoever gives himself up to this art wants to know the secrets of
Nature here below. It is more than forty years that I have been thus
engaged. Wherever any one has sailed, there I have sailed."
Whoever goes into the detail of the history of that century will come
upon the names of two relatives of his--Colon el Mozo (the Boy, or the
Younger) and his uncle, Francesco Colon, both celebrated sailors. The
latter of the two was a captain in the fleets of Louis XI of France, and
imaginative students may represent him as meeting Quentin Durward at
court. Christopher Columbus seems to have made several voyages
under the command of the younger of these relatives. He commanded
the Genoese galleys near Cyprus in a war which the Genoese had with
the Venetians. Between the years 1461 and 1463 the Genoese were
acting as allies with King John of Calabria, and Columbus had a
command as captain in their navy at that time.
"In 1477," he says, in one of his letters, "in the month of February, I
sailed more than a hundred leagues beyond Tile." By this he means
Thule, or Iceland. "Of this island the southern part is seventy-three
degrees from the equator, not sixty-three degrees, as some geographers
pretend." But here he was wrong. The Southern part of Iceland is in the
latitude of sixty-three and a half degrees. "The English, chiefly those of
Bristol, carry their merchandise, to this island, which is as large as
England. When I was there the sea was not frozen, but the tides there
are so strong that they rise and fall twenty-six cubits."
The order of his life, after his visit to Iceland, is better known. He was
no longer an adventurous sailor-boy, glad of any voyage which offered;
he was a man thirty years of age or more. He married in the city of

Lisbon and settled himself there. His wife was named Philippa. She
was the daughter of an Italian gentleman named Bartolomeo Muniz de
Perestrello, who was, like Columbus, a sailor, and was alive to all the
new interests which geography then presented to all inquiring minds.
This was in the year 1477, and the King of Portugal was pressing the
expeditions which, before the end of the century, resulted in the
discovery of the route to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope.
The young couple had to live. Neither the bride nor her husband had
any fortune, and Columbus occupied himself as a draftsman,
illustrating books, making terrestrial globes, which must have been
curiously inaccurate, since they had no Cape of Good Hope and no
American Continent, drawing charts for sale, and collecting, where he
could, the material for such study. Such charts and maps were
beginning to assume new importance in those days of geographical
discovery. The value attached to them may be judged from the
statement that Vespucius paid one hundred and thirty ducats for one
map. This sum would be more than five hundred dollars of our time.
Columbus did not give up his