The True Story of Christopher Columbus

E >> Elbridge S. Brooks >> The True Story of Christopher Columbus

THE TRUE STORY OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

CALLED THE GREAT ADMIRAL


By Elbridge S. {Streeter} Brooks




[This was orginally done on the 400th Anniversary of 1492 as
was the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Interesting
how our heroes have all been de-canonized in the interest of
Political Correctitude--Comments by Michael S. Hart]




PREFACE.


This "True Story of Christopher Columbus" is offered and inscribed
to the boys and girls of America as the opening volume in a series
especially designed for their reading, and to be called "Children's
Lives of Great Men." In this series the place of honor, or rather of
position, is given to Columbus the Admiral, because had it not been for
him and for his pluck and faith and perseverance there might have been
no young Americans, such as we know to-day, to read or care about the
world's great men.

Columbus led the American advance; he discovered the New World; he left
a record of persistence in spite of discouragement and of triumph over
all obstacles, that has been the inspiration and guide for Americans
ever since his day, and that has led them to work on in faith and hope
until the end they strove for was won.

"The True Story of Christopher Columbus" will be followed by the "true
story" of others who have left names for us to honor and revere, who
have made the world better because they lived, and who have helped to
make and to develop American freedom, strength and progress.

It will be the endeavor to have all these presented in the simple,
straightforward, earnest way that appeals to children, and shows how the
hero can be the man, and the man the hero. E. S. B.




THE TRUE STORY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS



CHAPTER I. BOY WITH AN IDEA.

Men who do great things are men we all like to read about. This is the
story of Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered America. He lived
four hundred years ago. When he was a little boy he lived in Genoa.
It was a beautiful city in the northwestern part of the country called
Italy. The mountains were behind it; the sea was in front of it, and
it was so beautiful a place that the people who lived there called it
"Genoa the Superb." Christopher Columbus was born in this beautiful
city of Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He was
a bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear eye and golden
hair. His father's name was Domenico Columbus; his mother's name was
Susanna. His father was a wool-comber. He cleaned and straightened out
the snarled-up wool that was cut from the sheep so as to make it ready
to be woven into cloth.

Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong enough, but he
went to school, too, and learned to read and write and to draw maps and
charts. These charts were maps of the sea, to show the sailors where
they could steer without running on the rocks and sand, and how to sail
safely from one country to another.

This world was not as big then as it is now--or, should say, people
did not know it was as big. Most of the lands that Columbus had studied
about in school, and most of the people he had heard about, were in
Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. The city of Genoa where Columbus
lived was a very busy and a very rich city. It was on the Mediterranean
Sea, and many of the people who lived there were sailors who went in
their ships on voyages to distant lands. They sailed to 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 always quarreling 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 really could sail
around it. But Prince Henry said he knew they could, and he sent out
ships to try. He died before his Portuguese sailors, Bartholomew Diaz,
in 1493, and Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did sail around it and got
as far as "the Indies."

So while Prince Henry was trying to see whether ships could sail around
Africa and reach Cathay in that way, the boy Columbus was listening to
the stories the sailors told and was wondering whether some other and
easier way to Cathay might not be found.

When he was at school he had studied about a certain man named
Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands of years before he was
born, and who had said that the earth was round "like a ball or an
orange."

As Columbus grew older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books
and listened to what other people said, he began to believe that this
man named Pythagoras might be right, and that the earth was round,
though everybody declared it was flat. If it is round, he said to
himself, "what is the use of trying to sail around Africa to get to
Cathay? Why not just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going right
around the world until you strike Cathay? I believe it could be done,"
said Columbus.

By this time Columbus was a man. He was thirty years old and was a great
sailor. He had been captain of a number of vessels; he had sailed north
and south and east; he knew all about a ship and all about the sea. But,
though he was so good a sailor, when he said that he believed the earth
was round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy. "Why,
how can the earth be round?" they cried. "The water would all spill out
if it were, and the men who live on the other side would all be standing
on their heads with their feet waving in the air." And then they laughed
all the harder.

But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh at. He believed it
so strongly, and felt so sure that he was right, that he set to work to
find some king or prince or great lord to let him have ships and sailors
and money enough to try to find a way to Cathay by sailing out into the
West and across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which break upon our
rocks and beaches, was thought in Columbus's day to be a dreadful place.
People called it the Sea of Darkness, because they did not know what was
on the other side of it, or what dangers lay beyond that distant blue
rim where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we call the horizon.
They thought the ocean stretched to the end of a flat world, straight
away to a sort of "jumping-off place," and that in this horrible
jumping-off place were giants and goblins and dragons and monsters and
all sorts of terrible things that would catch the ships and destroy them
and the sailors.

So when Columbus said that he wanted to sail away toward this dreadful
jumping-off place, the people said that he was worse than crazy. They
said he was a wicked man and ought to be punished.

But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on trying. He went from
place to place trying to get the ships and sailors he wanted and was
bound to have. As you will see in the next chapter, he tried to get
help wherever he thought it could be had. He asked the people of his own
home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and played when a boy; he
asked the people of the beautiful city that is built in the sea--Venice;
he tried the king of Portugal, the king of England, the king of France
the king and queen of Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listen
to such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan--to go to Cathay by the
way of the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place. You would never
get there alive, they said.

And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white while he waited, though
he was not yet an old man. He had thought and worked and hoped so much
that he began to look like an old man when he was forty years old. But
still he would never say that perhaps he was wrong, after all. He said
he knew he was right, and that some day he should find the Indies and
sail to Cathay.



CHAPTER II. WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA.

I do not wish you to think that Columbus was the first man to say that
the earth was round, or the first to sail to the West over the Atlantic
Ocean. He was not. Other men had said that they believed the earth was
round; other men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor
who believed the earth was round had ever yet tried to prove that it was
by crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus was really the first man
to say, I believe the earth is round and I will show you that it is by
sailing to the lands that are on the other side of the earth.

He even figured out how far it was around the world. Your geography,
you know, tells you now that what is called the circumference of
the earth--that is, a straight line drawn right around it--is nearly
twenty-five thousand miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty carefully
and he thought it was about twenty thousand miles. If I could start from
Genoa, he said, and walk straight ahead until I got back to Genoa again,
I should walk about twenty thousand miles. Cathay, he thought, would
take up so much land on the other side of the world that, if he went
west instead of east, he would only need to sail about twenty-five
hundred or three thousand miles.

If you have studied your geography carefully you will see what a mistake
he made.

It is really about twelve thousand miles from Spain to China (or Cathay
as he called it). But America is just about three thousand miles from
Spain, and if you read all this story you will see how Columbus's
mistake really helped him to discover America.

I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do something great from
the time when, as a little boy, he had hung around the wharves in
Genoa and looked at the ships sailing east and west and talked with the
sailors and wished that he could go to sea. Perhaps what he had learned
at school--how some men said that the earth was round--and what he had
heard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set him to thinking
and to dreaming that it might be possible for a ship to sail around the
world without falling off. At any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming
and longing until, at last, he began doing.

Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portugal, of whom I have
told you, in their trying to sail around Africa discovered two groups
of islands out in the Atlantic that they called the Azores, or Isles of
Hawks, and the Canaries, or Isles of Dogs. When Columbus was in Portugal
in 1470 he became acquainted with a young woman whose name was Philippa
Perestrelo. In 1473 he married her.

Now Philippa's father, before his death, had been governor of Porto
Santo, one of the Azores, and Columbus and his wife went off there to
live. In the governor's house Columbus found a lot of charts and maps
that told him about parts of the ocean that he had never before seen,
and made him feel certain that he was right in saying that if he sailed
away to the West he should find Cathay.

At that time there was an old man who lived in Florence, a city of
Italy. His name was Toscanelli. He was a great scholar and studied the
stars and made maps, and was a very wise man. Columbus knew what a wise
old scholar Toscanelli was, for Florence is not very far from Genoa. So
while he was living in the Azores he wrote to this old scholar asking
him what he thought about his idea that a man could sail around the
world until he reached the land called the Indies and at last found
Cathay.

Toscanelli wrote to Columbus saying that he believed his idea was the
right one, and he said it would be a grand thing to do, if Columbus
dared to try it. Perhaps, he said, you can find all those splendid
things that I know are in Cathay--the great cities with marble bridges,
the houses of marble covered with gold, the jewels and the spices and
the precious stones, and all the other wonderful and magnificent things.
I do not wonder you wish to try, he said, for if you find Cathay it will
be a wonderful thing for you and for Portugal.

That settled it with Columbus. If this wise old scholar said he was
right, he must be right. So he left his home in the Azores and went to
Portugal. This was 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, and to whom he had a
letter of introduction, Columbus found a chance to talk over his plans
with a number of priests and scholars in the city of Salamanca where
there was a famous college and many learned men.

Columbus told his story. He said what he wished to do, and asked these
learned men to say a good word for him to, Ferdinand and Isabella so
that he could have the ships and sailors to sail to Cathay. But it was
of no use.

What! sail away around the world? those wise men cried in horror. Why,
you are crazy. The world is not round; it is flat. Your ships would
tumble off the edge of the world and all the king's money and all the
king's men would be lost. No, no; go away; you must not trouble the
queen or even mention such a ridiculous thing again.

So the most of them said. But one or two thought it might be worth
trying. Cathay was a very rich country, and if this foolish fellow were
willing to run the risk and did succeed, it would be a good thing for
Spain, as the king and queen would need a great deal of money after the
war with the Moors was over. At any rate, it was a chance worth thinking
about.

And so, although Columbus was dreadfully disappointed, he thought that
if he had only a few friends at Court who were ready to say a good word
for him he must not give up, but must try, try again. And so he staid in
Spain.



CHAPTER III. HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND.

When you wish very much to do a certain thing it is dreadfully hard to
be patient; it is harder still to have to wait. Columbus had to do both.
The wars against the Moors were of much greater interest to the king and
queen of Spain than was the finding of a new and very uncertain way to
get to Cathay. If it had not been for the patience and what we call the
persistence of Columbus, America would never have been discovered--at
least not in his time.

He staid in Spain. He grew poorer and, poorer. He was almost friendless.
It seemed as if his great enterprise must be given up. But he never lost
hope. He never stopped trying. Even when he failed he kept on hoping and
kept on trying. He felt certain that sometime he should succeed.

As we have seen, he tried to interest the rulers of different countries,
but with no success. He tried to get help from his old home-town of
Genoa and failed; he tried Portugal and failed; he tried the Republic of
Venice and failed; he tried the king and queen of Spain and failed; he
tried some of the richest and most powerful of the nobles of Spain
and failed; he tried the king of England (whom he got his brother,
Bartholomew Columbus, to go and see) and failed. There was still left
the king of France. He would make one last attempt to win the king and
queen of Spain to his side and if he failed with them he would try the
last of the rulers of Western Europe, the king of France.

He followed the king and queen of Spain as they went from place to place
fighting the Moors. He hoped that some day, when they wished to think
of something besides fighting, they might think of him and the gold and
jewels and spices of Cathay.

The days grew into months, the months to years, and still the war
against the Moors kept on; and still Columbus waited for the chance that
did not come. People grew to know him as "the crazy explorer" as they
met him in the streets or on the church steps of Seville or Cordova, and
even ragged little boys of the town, sharp-eyed and shrill-voiced as all
such ragged little urchins are, would run after this big man with
the streaming white hair and the tattered cloak, calling him names or
tapping their brown little foreheads with their dirty fingers to show
that even they knew that he was "as crazy as a loon."

At last he decided to make one more attempt before giving it up in
Spain. His money was gone; his friends were few; but he remembered his
acquaintances at Palos and so he journeyed back to see once more his
good friend Friar Juan Perez at the Convent of Rabida on the hill that
looked out upon the Atlantic he was so anxious to cross.

It was in the month of November, 1491, that he went back to the
Convent of Rabida. If he could not get any encouragement there, he was
determined to stay in Spain no longer but to go away and try the king of
France.

Once more he talked over the finding of Cathay with the priests and the
sailors of Palos. They saw how patient he was; how persistent he was;
how he would never give up his ideas until he had tried them. They were
moved by his determination. They began to believe in him more and more.
They resolved to help him. One of the principal sea captains of Palos
was named Martin Alonso Pinzon. He became so interested that he offered
to lend Columbus money enough to make one last appeal to the king and
queen of Spain, and if Columbus should succeed with them, this Captain
Pinzon said that he would go into partnership with Columbus and help him
out when it came to getting ready to sail to Cathay.