The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals | Page 6

maritime enterprises. He made voyages
to the coast of Guinea and in other directions.
It is said that he was in command of one of the vessels of his relative
Colon el Mozo, when, in the Portuguese seas, this admiral, with his
squadron, engaged four Venetian galleys returning from Flanders. A
bloody battle followed. The ship which Christopher Columbus
commanded was engaged with a Venetian vessel, to which it set fire.
There was danger of an explosion, and Columbus himself, seeing this
danger, flung himself into the sea, seized a floating oar, and thus gained
the shore. He was not far from Lisbon, and from this time made Lisbon
his home for many years.[*]
[*] The critics challenge these dates, but there seems to be good
foundation for the story.
It seems. clear that, from the time when he arrived in Lisbon, for more
than twenty years, he was at work trying to interest people in his "great
design," of western discovery. He says himself, "I was constantly

corresponding with learned men, some ecclesiastics and some laymen,
some Latin and some Greek, some Jews and some Moors." The
astronomer Toscanelli was one of these correspondents.
We must not suppose that the idea of the roundness of the earth was
invented by Columbus. Although there were other theories about its
shape, many intelligent men well understood that the earth was a globe,
and that the Indies, though they were always reached from Europe by
going to the East, must be on the west of Europe also. There is a very
funny story in the travels of Mandeville, in which a traveler is
represented as having gone, mostly on foot, through all the countries of
Asia, but finally determines to return to Norway, his home. In his
farthest eastern investigation, he hears some people calling their cattle
by a peculiar cry, which he had never heard before. After he returned
home, it was necessary for him to take a day's journey westward to look
after some cattle he had lost. Finding these cattle, he also heard the
same cry of people calling cattle, which he had heard in the extreme
East, and now learned, for the first time, that he had gone round the
world on foot, to turn and come back by the same route, when he was
only a day's journey from home, Columbus was acquainted with such
stories as this, and also had the astronomical knowledge which almost
made him know that the world was round, "and, like a ball, goes
spinning in the air." The difficulty was to persuade other people that,
because of this roundness, it would be possible to attain Asia by sailing
to the West.
Now all the geographers of repute supposed that there was not nearly
so large a distance as there proved to be, in truth, between Europe and
Asia. Thus, in the geography of Ptolemy, which was the standard book
at that time, one hundred and thirty-five degrees, a little more than
one-third of the earth's circumference, is given to the space between the
extreme eastern part of the Indies and the Canary Islands. In fact, as we
now know, the distance is one hundred and eighty degrees, half the
world's circumference. Had Columbus believed there was any such
immense distance, he would never have undertaken his voyage.
Almost all the detailed knowledge of the Indies which the people of his

time had, was given by the explorations of Marco Polo, a Venetian
traveler of the thirteenth century, whose book had long been in the
possession of European readers. It is a very entertaining book now, and
may well be recommended to young people who like stories of
adventure. Marco Polo had visited the court of the Great Khan of
Tartary at Pekin, the prince who brought the Chinese Empire into very
much the condition in which it now is. He had, also, given accounts of
Japan or Cipango, which he had himself never visited. Columbus knew,
therefore, that, well east of the Indies, was the island of Cipango, and
he aimed at that island, because he supposed that that was the nearest
point to Europe, as in fact it is. And when finally he arrived at Cuba, as
the reader will see, he thought he was in Japan.
Columbus's father-in-law had himself been the Portuguese governor of
the island of Porto Santo, where he had founded a colony. He, therefore,
was interested in western explorations, and probably from him
Columbus collected some of the statements which are known to have
influenced him, with regard to floating matters from the West, which
are constantly borne upon that island by the great currents of the sea.
The historians are fond of bringing together all the intimations which
are given in the Greek and Latin classics,