The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals | Page 7

and in later authors, with
regard to a land beyond Asia. Perhaps the most famous of them is that
of Seneca, "In the later years there shall come days in which Ocean
shall loose his chains, and a great land shall appear . . . and Thule shall
not be the last of the worlds."
In a letter which Toscanelli wrote to Columbus in 1474, he inclosed a
copy of a letter which he had already sent to an officer of Alphonso V,
the King of Portugal. In writing to Columbus, he says, "I see that you
have a great and noble desire to go into that country (of the East) where
the spices come from, and in reply to your letter I send you a copy of
that which I addressed some years ago to my attached friend in the
service of the most serene King of Portugal. He had an order from his
Highness to write me on this subject. . . . If I had a globe in my hand, I
could show you what is needed. But I prefer to mark out the route on a
chart like a marine chart, which will be an assistance to your

intelligence and enterprise. On this chart I have myself drawn the
whole extremity of our western shore from Ireland as far down as the
coast of Guinea toward the South, with all the islands which are to be
found on this route. Opposite this [that is, the shores of Ireland and
Africa] I have placed directly at the West the beginning of the Indies
with the islands and places where you will land. You will see for
yourself how many miles you must keep from the arctic pole toward
the equator, and at what distance you will arrive at these regions so
fertile and productive of spices and precious stones." In Toscanelli's
letter, he not only indicates Japan, but, in the middle of the ocean, he
places the island of Antilia. This old name afterwards gave the name by
which the French still call the West Indies, Les Antilles. Toscanelli
gives the exact distance which Columbus will have to sail: "From
Lisbon to the famous city of Quisay [Hang-tcheou-fou, then the capital
of China] if you take the direct route toward the West, the distance will
be thirty-nine hundred miles. And from Antilia to Japan it will be two
hundred and twenty-five leagues." Toscanelli says again, "You see that
the voyage that you wish to attempt is much legs difficult than would
be thought. You would be sure of this if you met as many people as I
do who have been in the country of spices."
While there were so many suggestions made that it would be possible
to cross the Atlantic, there was one man who determined to do this.
This man was Christopher Columbus. But he knew well that he could
not do it alone. He must have money enough for an expedition, he must
have authority to enlist crews for that expedition, and he must have
power to govern those crews when they should arrive in the Indies. In
our times such adventures have been conducted by mercantile
corporations, but in those times no one thought of doing any such thing
without the direct assistance and support of some monarch.
It is easy now to see and to say that Columbus himself was singularly
well fitted to take the charge of the expedition of discovery. He was an
excellent sailor and at the same time he was a learned geographer and a
good mathematician. He was living in Portugal, the kings of which
country had, for many years, fostered the exploration of the coast of
Africa, and were pushing expeditions farther and farther South.

In doing this, they were, in a fashion, making new discoveries. For
Europe was wholly ignorant of the western coast of Africa, beyond the
Canaries, when their expeditions began. But all men of learning knew
that, five hundred years before the Christian era, Hanno, a Carthaginian,
had sailed round Africa under the direction of the senate of Carthage.
The efforts of the King of Portugal were to repeat the voyage made by
Hanno. In 1441, Gonzales and Tristam sailed as far as Sierra Leone.
They brought back some blacks as slaves, and this was the beginning of
the slave trade.
In 1446 the Portuguese took possession of the Azores, the most western
points of the Old World. Step by step they advanced southward, and
became familiar with the African coast. Bold navigators were eager to
find the East, and at last success came. Under the king's orders, in
August, 1477, three caravels sailed from the Tagus, under Bartolomeo
Diaz, for southern discovery. Diaz was himself brave enough to be
willing to go