yed at Lisbon in adapting the
astrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in these
labours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weighty
influence on the career of Columbus--Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,
physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.
There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim did
not know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he had
been despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sun
in Guinea.

Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can be
no doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mind
he made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving his
meagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be set
forth in a plausible form. In other words, he got up the subject. The
whole of his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to this
time had been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others--whose works he
quoted from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name,
if at all. Behaim, however, could tell him a good deal about the
supposed circumference of the earth, the extent of the Asiatic continent,
and so on. Every new fact that Columbus heard he seized and pressed into
the service of his Idea; where there was a choice of facts, or a
difference of opinion between scientists, he chose the facts that were
most convenient, and the opinions that fitted best with his own beliefs.
The very word "Indies" was synonymous with unbounded wealth; there
certainly would be riches to tempt the King with; and Columbus, being a
religious man, hit also on the happy idea of setting forth the spiritual
glory of carrying the light of faith across the Sea of Darkness, and
making of the heathen a heritage for the Christian Church. So that, what
with one thing and another, he soon had his proposals formally arranged.

Imagine him, then, actually at Court, and having an audience of the King,
who could scarcely believe his ears. Here was a man, of whom he knew
nothing but that his conduct of a caravel had been well spoken of in the
recent expedition to Guinea, actually proposing to sail out west into the
Atlantic and to cross the unknown part of the world. Certainly his
proposals seemed plausible, but still--. The earth was round, said
Columbus, and therefore there was a way from East to West and from W