ready had made his home there and was drawing maps
for a living. The Portuguese were the best sailors of Europe and the
boldest explorers. Perhaps that was the reason why Columbus went to
Portugal to live. But another story, later told by his son, says that
he was attacked by pirates when in command of a vessel not far from the
Portuguese coast, and saved his life by swimming to the shore.

While Columbus was drawing maps in Lisbon, he used to go to a church
that was visited by a beautiful girl called the Lady Philippa, the
cousin to no less a person than the Archbishop of Lisbon himself.
Columbus fell in love with her and attended the church whenever he
believed that it would be possible to see her there. She, in turn,
began to look with kindness upon him and at last Columbus and the Lady
Philippa were married and the marriage proved to be a very happy one.

Philippa's grandfather had himself been a bold sailor and an
adventurous explorer and discovered the Madeira Islands, where his
granddaughter owned some property. As she did not like the idea of
having her husband work constantly making maps, the young couple went
to live on the Madeira Islands at a place called Porto Santo, where
Philippa's brother was Governor.

Porto Santo was on the edge of the Sea of Darkness and was full of the
most terrible and mysterious tales concerning it. While a few learned
men of the time began to think that the world was round, most of the
sailors and even the scholars thought that it was flat and that by
sailing westward on the Atlantic you would eventually fall off of the
rim of the world. The west was also thought to be inhabited by fearful
monsters. Sea serpents were there, of a size so great that they could
easily crush a sailing vessel in their jaws; there were dragons and
giant devil fish; in one place there was a burning belt, where the air
was like molten flame and the sea a mass of fire; in another there
lived evil spirits and demons, and a fate worse than death would befall
any sailor that ventured there. If you sailed to the south, so the
mariners believed, you would come to a land where the air was too hot
to support life, while if you sailed to the north you would arrive at a
clime so frigid that you would certainly freeze to death. The sailors
believed these things because the air grew warmer as they ventured down
the coast of Africa toward the equator, and colder when they sailed
past England and the Scandinavian pen