by the ancients, or discovered by the moderns, relative to geography. His own voyages enabled him to correct many of their errors, and appreciate many of their theories. His genius having thus taken its decided bent, it is interesting to notice from what a mass of acknowledged facts, rational hypotheses, fanciful narrations, and popular rumors, his grand project of discovery was wrought out by the strong workings of his vigorous mind.

CHAPTER V.

GROUNDS ON WHICH COLUMBUS FOUNDED HIS BELIEF OF THE EXISTENCE OF UNDISCOVERED LANDS IN THE WEST.

IT

has been attempted, in the preceding chapters, to show how Columbus was gradually kindled up to his grand design by the spirit and events of the times in which he lived. His son Fernando, however, undertakes to furnish the precise data on which his father's plan of discovery was founded.* "He does this," he observes, "to show from what slender argument so great a scheme was fabricated and brought to light; and for the purpose of satisfying those who may desire to know distinctly the circumstances and motives which led his father to undertake this enterprise."

As this statement was formed from notes and documents found among his father's papers, it is too curious and interesting, not to deserve particular mention. In this memorandum he arranged the foundation of his father's theory under three heads: 1. The nature of things. 2. The authorit" of learned writers. 3. The reports of navigators.

* Hist. del Almirante, cap. 6, 7, 8.

Under the first head, he set down as a fundamental principle, that the earth was a terraqueous sphere or globe, which might be traveled round from east to west, and that men stood foot to foot, when on opposite points. The circumference from east to west, at the equator, Columbus divided, according to Ptolemy, into twenty-four hours of fifteen degrees each, making three hundred and sixty degrees. Of these he imag ined, comparing the globe of Ptolemy with the earlier map of Marinus of Tyre, that fifteen hours had been known to the ancients, extending from the Straits of Gibraltar, or rather from the Canary Islands, to the city of Thinæ in Asia, a place set down as at the eastern limits of the known world. The Portuguese had advanced the western frontier one hour more by the discovery of the Azores and Cape de Verde Islands. There remained, then, according to the estimation of Columbus, eight hours, or one-third of the circumference of the earth, unknown and unexplored. This space might, in a great measure, be filled up by the eastern regions of Asia, which might extend so far as nearly to surround the globe, and to approach the western shores of Europe and Africa. The tract of ocean, intervening between these countries, he observes, would be. less than might at first be supposed, if the opinion of Alfraganus, the Arabian, were admitted, who, by diminishing the size of the degrees, gave to the earth a smaller circumference than did other cosmographers; a theory to which Columbus seems at times to have given faith. Granting these premises, it was manifest, that, by pursuing a direct course from eastto west, a navigator would arrive at the extremity of Asia, and discover any intervening land.

Under the second head, are named the authors whose

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writings had weight in convincing him that the intervening ocean could be but of moderate expanse, and easy to be traversed. Among these, he cites the opinion of Aristotle, Seneca, and Pliny, that one might pass from Cadiz to the Indies in a few days; of Strabo, also, who observes, that the ocean surrounds the earth, bathing on the east the shores of India; on the west, the coasts of Spain and Mauritania; so that it is easy to navigate from one to the other on the same parallel.*

In corroboration of the idea, that Asia, or, as he always terms it, India, stretched far to the east, so as to occupy the greater part of the unexplored space, the narratives are cited of Marco Polo and John Mandeville. These travellers had visited, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the remote parts of Asia, far beyond the regions laid down by Ptolemy; and their accounts of the extent of that continent to the eastward, had a great effect in convincing Columbus that a voyage to the west, of no long duration, would bring him to its shores, or to the extensive and wealthy islands which lie adjacent. The information concerning Marco Polo, is probably derived from Paulo Toscanelli, a celebrated doctor of Florence, already mentioned, with whom Columbus corresponded in 1474, and who transmitted to him a copy of a letter which he had previously written to Fernando Martinez, a learned canon of Lisbon. This letter maintains the facility of arriving at India by a western course, asserting the distance to be but four thousand miles, in a direct line from Lisbon to the province of Mangi, near Cathay, since determined to be the north

Strab. Cos. lib. i. ii.

ern coast of China. Of this country he gives a magnificent description, drawn from the work of Marco Polo. He adds, that in the route lay the islands of Antilla and Cipango, distant froin each other only two hundred and twenty-five leagues, abounding in riches, and offering convenient places for ships to touch at and obtain supplies on the voyage.

Under the third head, are enumerated various indications of land in the west, which had floated to the shores of the known world. It is curious to observe, how, when once the mind of Columbus had beome heated in the inquiry, it attracted to it every corroborating circumstance, however vague and trivial. He appears to have been particularly attentive to the gleams of information derived from veteran mariners, who had been employed in the recent voyages to the African coasts, and also from the inhabitants of lately discov ered islands, placed, in a manner, on the frontier posts of geographical knowledge. All these are carefully noted down among his memorandums, to be collocated with the facts and opinions already stored up in his mind.

Such, for instance, is the circumstance related to him by Martin Vicenti, a pilot in the service of the king of Portugal; that, after sailing four hundred and fifty leagues to the west of Cape St. Vincent, he had taken from the water a piece of carved wood, which evidently had not been labored with an iron instrument. As the winds had drifted it from the west, it might have come from some unknown land in that direction.

Pedro Correa, brother-in-law of Columbus, is likewise cited, as having seen, on the island of Porto Santo, a similar piece of wood, which had drifted from the same quarter.

He