Life of Columbus From His Own Letters and Journals and Other Documents of His Time , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. This book contains a life of Columbus, written with the hope of interesting all classes of readers.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819932697
Langue	English

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PREFACE.
This book contains a life of Columbus, written withthe hope of interesting all classes of readers.
His life has often been written, and it hassometimes been well written. The great book of our countryman,Washington Irving, is a noble model of diligent work given to avery difficult subject. And I think every person who has dealt withthe life of Columbus since Irving's time, has expressed hisgratitude and respect for the author.
According to the custom of biographers, in that timeand since, he includes in those volumes the whole history of theWest India islands, for the period after Columbus discovered themtill his death. He also thinks it his duty to include much of thehistory of Spain and of the Spanish court. I do not myself believethat it is wise to attempt, in a book of biography, so considerablea study of the history of the time. Whether it be wise or not, Ihave not attempted it in this book. I have rather attempted tofollow closely the personal fortunes of Christopher Columbus, and,to the history around him, I have given only such space as seemedabsolutely necessary for the illustration of those fortunes.
I have followed on the lines of his own personalnarrative wherever we have it. And where this is lost I have usedthe absolutely contemporary authorities. I have also consulted thelater writers, those of the next generation and the generationwhich followed it. But the more one studies the life of Columbusthe more one feels sure that, after the greatness of his discoverywas really known, the accounts of the time were overlaid by whatmodern criticism calls myths, which had grown up in the enthusiasmof those who honored him, and which form no part of real history.If then the reader fails to find some stories with which he isquite familiar in the history, he must not suppose that they areomitted by accident, but must give to the author of the book thecredit of having used some discretion in the choice of hisauthorities.
When I visited Spain in 1882, I was favored by theofficers of the Spanish government with every facility for carryingmy inquiry as far as a short visit would permit. Since that timeMr. Harrisse has published his invaluable volumes on the life ofColumbus. It certainly seems as if every document now existing,which bears upon the history, had been collated by him. The readerwill see that I have made full use of this treasure-house.
The Congress of Americanistas, which meets everyyear, brings forward many curious studies on the history of thecontinent, but it can scarcely be said to have done much to advanceour knowledge of the personal life of Columbus.
The determination of the people of the United Statesto celebrate fitly the great discovery which has advancedcivilization and changed the face of the world, makes it certainthat a new interest has arisen in the life of the great man towhom, in the providence of God, that discovery was due. The authorand publishers of this book offer it as their contribution in thegreat celebration, with the hope that it may be of use, especiallyin the direction of the studies of the young.
EDWARD E. HALE. ROXBURY, MASS. , June 1st, 1891.
CHAPTER I. — EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS.
HIS BIRTH AND BIRTH-PLACE— HIS EARLY EDUCATION— HISEXPERIENCE AT SEA— HIS MARRIAGE AND RESIDENCE IN LISBON— HIS PLANSFOR THE DISCOVERY OF A WESTWARD PASSAGE TO THE INDIES.
Christopher Columbus was born in the Republic ofGenoa. The honor of his birth-place has been claimed by manyvillages in that Republic, and the house in which he was borncannot be now pointed out with certainty. But the best authoritiesagree that the children and the grown people of the world havenever been mistaken when they have said: “America was discovered in1492 by Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa. ”
His name, and that of his family, is always writtenColombo, in the Italian papers which refer to them, for more thanone hundred years before his time. In Spain it was always writtenColon; in France it is written as Colomb; while in England it hasalways kept its Latin form, Columbus. It has frequently been saidthat he himself assumed this form, because Columba is the Latinword for “Dove, ” with a fanciful feeling that, in carryingChristian light to the West, he had taken the mission of the dove.Thus, he had first found land where men thought there was ocean,and he was the messenger of the Holy Spirit to those who sat indarkness. It has also been assumed that he took the name ofChristopher, “the Christ-bearer, ” for similar reasons. But thereis no doubt that he was baptized “Christopher, ” and that thefamily name had long been Columbo. The coincidences of name are buttwo more in a calendar in which poetry delights, and of whichhistory is full.
Christopher Columbus was the oldest son of DominicoColombo and Suzanna Fontanarossa. This name means Red-fountain. Hebad two brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, whom we shall meet again.Diego is the Spanish way of writing the name which we callJames.
It seems probable that Christopher was born in theyear 1436, though some writers have said that he was older thanthis, and some that he was younger. The record of his birth andthat of his baptism have not been found.
His father was not a rich man, but he was able tosend Christopher, as a boy, to the University of Pavia, and here hestudied grammar, geometry, geography and navigation, astronomy andthe Latin language. But this was as a boy studies, for in hisfourteenth year he left the university and entered, in hard work,on “the larger college of the world. ” If the date given above, ofhis birth, is correct, this was in the year 1450, a few yearsbefore the Turks took Constantinople, and, in their invasion ofEurope, affected the daily life of everyone, young or old, wholived in the Mediterranean countries. From this time, for fifteenyears, it is hard to trace along the life of Columbus. It was thelife of an intelligent young seaman, going wherever there was avoyage for him. He says himself, “I passed twenty-three years onthe sea. I have seen all the Levant, all the western coasts, andthe North. I have seen England; I have often made the voyage fromLisbon to the Guinea coast. ” This he wrote in a letter toFerdinand and Isabella. Again he says, “I went to sea from the mosttender age and have continued in a sea life to this day. Whoevergives himself up to this art wants to know the secrets of Naturehere below. It is more than forty years that I have been thusengaged. Wherever any one has sailed, there I have sailed. ”
Whoever goes into the detail of the history of thatcentury will come upon the names of two relatives of his— Colon elMozo (the Boy, or the Younger) and his uncle, Francesco Colon, bothcelebrated sailors. The latter of the two was a captain in thefleets of Louis XI of France, and imaginative students mayrepresent him as meeting Quentin Durward at court. ChristopherColumbus seems to have made several voyages under the command ofthe younger of these relatives. He commanded the Genoese galleysnear Cyprus in a war which the Genoese had with the Venetians.Between the years 1461 and 1463 the Genoese were acting as allieswith King John of Calabria, and Columbus had a command as captainin their navy at that time.
“In 1477, ” he says, in one of his letters, “in themonth of February, I sailed more than a hundred leagues beyondTile. ” By this he means Thule, or Iceland. “Of this island thesouthern part is seventy-three degrees from the equator, notsixty-three degrees, as some geographers pretend. ” But here he waswrong. The Southern part of Iceland is in the latitude ofsixty-three and a half degrees. “The English, chiefly those ofBristol, carry their merchandise, to this island, which is as largeas England. When I was there the sea was not frozen, but the tidesthere 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, gladof any voyage which offered; he was a man thirty years of age ormore. He married in the city of Lisbon and settled himself there.His wife was named Philippa. She was the daughter of an Italiangentleman named Bartolomeo Muniz de Perestrello, who was, likeColumbus, a sailor, and was alive to all the new interests whichgeography then presented to all inquiring minds. This was in theyear 1477, and the King of Portugal was pressing the expeditionswhich, before the end of the century, resulted in the discovery ofthe route to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope.
The young couple had to live. Neither the bride norher husband had any fortune, and Columbus occupied himself as adraftsman, illustrating books, making terrestrial globes, whichmust have been curiously inaccurate, since they had no Cape of GoodHope and no American Continent, drawing charts for sale, andcollecting, where he could, the material for such study. Suchcharts and maps were beginning to assume new importance in thosedays of geographical discovery. The value attached to them may bejudged from the statement that Vespucius paid one hundred andthirty ducats for one map. This sum would be more than five hundreddollars of our time.
Columbus did not give up his 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 thevessels of his relative Colon el Mozo, when, in the Portugueseseas, this admiral, with his squadron, engaged four Venetiangalleys returning from Flanders. A bloody battle followed. The shipwhich Christopher Columbus commanded was engaged with a Venetianvessel, to which it set fire. There was danger of an explosion, andColumbus himself, seeing this danger, flung himself into the sea,seized a floating oar, and thus gained the shore. He was not farfrom Lisbon, and from this time made Lisbon his home for manyyears. (*)
(*) The critics challenge these dates, but thereseems to be
good foundation for the story.
It seems clear