The True Story of Christopher Columbus Called The Great Admiral | Page 7

in 1475, and from that time on, for seventeen long
years he was trying to get some king or prince to help him sail to the
West to find Cathay.
But not one of the people who could have helped him, if they had really
wished to, believed in Columbus. As I told you, they said that he was
crazy. The king of Portugal, whose name was John, did a very unkind
thing--I am sure you would call it a mean trick. Columbus had gone to
him with his story and asked for ships and sailors. The king and his
chief men refused to help him; but King John said to himself, perhaps
there is something in this worth looking after and, if so, perhaps I can
have my own people find Cathay and save the money that Columbus
will want to keep for himself as his share of what he finds. So one day
he copied off the sailing directions that Columbus had left with him,
and gave them to one of his own captains without letting Columbus
know anything about it, The Portuguese captain sailed away to the

West in the direction Columbus had marked down, but a great storm
came up and so frightened the sailors that they turned around in a hurry.
Then they hunted up Columbus and began to abuse him for getting
them into such a scrape. You might as well expect to find land in the
sky, they said, as in those terrible waters.
And when, in this way, Columbus found out that King John had tried to
use his ideas without letting him know anything about it, he was very
angry. His wife had died in the midst of this mean trick of the
Portuguese king, and so, taking with him his little five-year-old son,
Diego, he left Portugal secretly and went over into Spain.
Near the little town of Palos, in western Spain, is a green hill looking
out toward the Atlantic. Upon this hill stands an old building that, four
hundred years ago, was used as a a convent or home for priests. It was
called the Convent of Rabida, and the priest at the head of it was named
the Friar Juan Perez. One autumn day, in the year 1484, Friar Juan
Perez saw a dusty traveler with a little boy talking with the gate-keeper
of the convent. The stranger was so tall and fine-looking, and seemed
such an interesting man, that Friar Juan went out and began to talk with
him. This man was Columbus.
As they talked, the priest grew more and more interested in what
Columbus said. He invited him into the convent to stay for a few days,
and he asked some other people--the doctor of Palos and some of the
sea captains and sailors of the town--to come and talk with this stranger
who had such a singular idea about sailing across the Atlantic.
It ended in Columbus's staying some months in Palos, waiting for a
chance to go and see the king and queen. At last, in 1485, he set out for
the Spanish court with a letter to a priest who was a friend of Friar
Juan's, and who could help him to see the king and queen.
At that time the king and queen of Spain were fighting to drive out of
Spain the people called the Moors. These people came from Africa, but
they had lived in Spain for many years and had once been a very rich
and powerful nation. They were not Spaniards; they were not
Christians. So all Spaniards and all Christians hated them and tried to
drive them out of Europe.
The king and queen of Spain who were fighting the Moors were named
Ferdinand and Isabella. They were pretty good people as kings and
queens went in those days, but they did a great many very cruel and

very mean things, just as the kings and queens of those days were apt to
do. I am afraid we should not think they were very nice people
nowadays. We certainly should not wish our American boys and girls
to look up to them as good and true and noble.
When Columbus first came to them, they were with the army in the
camp near the city of Cordova. The king and queen had no time to
listen to what they thought were crazy plans, and poor Columbus could
get no one to talk with him who could be of any help. So he was
obliged to go back to drawing maps and selling books to make enough
money to support himself and his little Diego.
But at last, through the friend of good Friar Juan Perez of Rabida, who
was a priest at the court, and named Talavera,