THE BEGINNERS

Nearly five hundred years ago, there lived, in the beautiful old Italian
city of Genoa, a poor wool-comber named Dominico Colombo, and about
1446, a son was born to him and to his wife, Susanna, and in due time
christened Christoforo.

The world into which the child was born was very different to the one in
which we live. Europe was known, and northern Africa, and western Asia;
but to the east stretched the fabulous country of the Grand Khan,
Cathay, Cipango, and farthest Ind; while to the west rolled the Sea of
Darkness, peopled with unimaginable terrors.

Of the youth of Christopher Columbus, as we call him, little is known.
No doubt it was much like other boyhoods, and one likes to picture him,
in such hours of leisure as he had, strolling about the streets of
Genoa, listening to the talk, staring in at the shop-windows, or
watching the busy life in the harbor. That the latter had a strong
attraction for him there can be no doubt, for though he followed his
father's trade till early manhood, he finally found his real vocation as
a seaman. It was on the ocean that true romance dwelt, for it led to
strange lands and peoples, and no one knew what wonders and mysteries
lay behind each horizon. It was there, too, high courage was developed
and endurance, for it was there that men did battle hand to hand with
nature's mightiest forces. It was the one career of the age which called
to the bold and adventurous spirit. What training Columbus received or
what voyages he made we know not; but when, at about the age of thirty,
he steps into the light of history, it is as a man with a wide and
thorough knowledge of both the theory and practice of seamanship; a man,
too, of keen mind and indomitable will, and with a mighty purpose
brooding in his heart.

It was natural enough that his eyes should turn to Portugal, for
Portugal was the greatest sea-faring nation of the age. Her sailors had
discovered the Madeira Islands, and crept little by little down the
coast of Africa, rounding this headland and that, searching always for a
passage to India, which they knew lay somewhere to the east, until, at
last, they had sailed triumphantly around the Cape of Good Hope. It is
worth remarking that Columbus's brother, Bartholomew, of whom we hear so
little, but who did so much for his brother's fame, was a member of that
expedition, and Columbus himself must have gathered no little
inspiration from it.

So to Lisbon Co