brought by westerly
winds to the shores of Europe; it was not till long afterwards, when the
currents of the Atlantic came to be studied, that the presence of such
flotsam came to be attributed to the ocean currents, deflected by the
Cape of Good Hope and gathered in the Gulf of Mexico, which are sprayed
out across the Atlantic.

The idea once fixed in his mind that there was land at a not impossible
distance to the west, and perhaps a sea-road to the shores of Asia
itself, the next thing to be done, was to go and discover it. Rather a
formidable task for a man without money, a foreigner in a strange
land, among people who looked down upon him because of his obscure birth,
and with no equipment except a knowledge of the sea, a great mastery of
the art and craft of seamanship, a fearless spirit of adventure, and an
inner light! Some one else would have to be convinced before anything
could be done; somebody who would provide ships and men and money and
provisions. Altogether rather a large order; for it was not an unusual
thing in those days for master mariners, tired of the shore, to suggest
to some grandee or other the desirability of fitting out a ship or two to
go in search of the isle of St. Brandon, or to look up Antilia, or the
island of the Seven Cities. It was very hard to get an audience even for
such a reasonable scheme as that; but to suggest taking a flotilla
straight out to the west and into the Sea of Darkness, down that curving
hill of the sea which it might be easy enough to slide down, but up which
it was known that no ship could ever climb again, was a thing that hardly
any serious or well-informed person would listen to. A young man from
Genoa, without a knowledge either of the classics or of the Fathers, and
with no other argument except his own fixed belief and some vague talk
about bits of wood and shipwrecked mariners, was not the person to
inspire the capitalists of Portugal. Yet the thing had to be done.
Obviously it could not be done at Porto Santo, where there were no ships
and no money. Influence must be used; and Columbus knew that his
proposals, if they were to have even a chance of being listened to, must
be presented in some high-flown and elaborate form, giving reasons and
offering inducements and quoting authorities. He would have to get some
one to help him in that; he would have to get up some scientific facts;
his brother Bartholomew could help him, and some of those disagreea