The True Story of Christopher Columbus Called The Great Admiral | Page 4

other places on the Mediterranean Sea, which is a very large body of
water, you know, and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far
away as the cold northern island of Iceland. This was thought to be a
great journey.
The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a time as is this in
which you live. People were alwaysquarreling and fighting about one
thing or another, and the sailors who belonged to one country would try
to catch and steal the ships or the things that belonged to the sailors or
the storekeepers of another country. This is what we call piracy, and a
pirate, you know, is thought to be a very wicked man.
But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so very wicked to
be a sort of half-way pirate, although they did know that they would be
killed if they were caught. So almost every sailor was about half pirate.
Every boy who lived near the seashore and saw the ships and the sailors,
felt as though he would like to sail away to far-off lands and see all the
strange sights and do all the brave things that the sailors told about.
Many of them even said they would like to be pirates and fight with
other sailors, and show how strong and brave and plucky they could be.
Columbus was one of these. He was what is called an adventurous boy.
He did not like to stay quietly at home with his father and comb out the
tangled wool. He thought it would be much nicer to sail away to sea
and be a brave captain or a rich merchant.
When he was about fourteen years old he really did go to sea. There
was a captain of a sailing vessel that sometimes came to Genoa who

had the same last name--Columbus. He was no relation, but the little
Christopher somehow got acquainted with him among the wharves of
Genoa. Perhaps he had run on errands for him, or helped him with
some of the sea-charts he knew so well how to draw. At any rate he
sailed away with this Captain Columbus as his cabin boy, and went to
the wars with him and had quite an exciting life for a boy.
Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their own adventures
or about far-off lands and countries. Columbus, listened to many of
these sea-stories, and heard many wonderful things about a very rich
land away to the East that folks called Cathay.
If you look in your geographies you will not find any such place on the
map as Cathay, but you will find China, and that was what men in the
time of Columbus called Cathay. They told very big stories about this
far-off Eastern land. They said its kings lived in golden houses, that
they were covered with pearls and diamonds, and that everybody there
was so rich that money was as plentiful as the stones in the street.
This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who were part pirate,
very anxious to go to Cathay and get some of the gold and jewels and
spices and splendor for themselves. But Cathay was miles and miles
away from Italy and Spain and France and England. It was away across
the deserts and mountains and seas and rivers, and they had to give it
up because they could not sail there.
At last a man whose name was Marco Polo, and who was a very brave
and famous traveler, really did go there, in spite of all the trouble it
took. And when he got back his stories were so very surprising that
men were all the more anxious to find a way to sail in their ships to
Cathay and see it for themselves.
But of course they could not sail over the deserts and mountains, and
they were very much troubled because they had to give up the idea,
until the son of the king of Portugal, named Prince Henry, said he
believed that ships could sail around Africa and so get to India or "the
Indies" as they called that land, and finally to Cathay.
Just look at your map again and see what a long, long voyage it would
be to sail from Spain and around Africa to India, China and Japan. It is
such a long sail that, as you know, the Suez Canal was dug some
twenty years ago so that ships could sail through the Mediterranean Sea
and out into the Indian Ocean, and not have to go away around Africa.

But when Columbus was a boy it was even worse than now, for no one
really knew how long Africa was, or whether ships