believed himself divinely called to this grand enterprise.

Christopher Columbus, or Christobal Colon, as he always signed himself
after he entered the service of Spain, was born in Genoa about 1456.
Little is certainly known of his early life. His father was a humble
wool-carder. The youth possessed but a sorry education, spite of his few
months at the University of Pavia. At the age of fourteen he became a
sailor, knocking about the world in the roughest manner, half the time
practically a pirate. In an all-day's sea fight, once, his ship took
fire and he had to leap overboard; but being a strong swimmer he swam,
aided by an oar, eight leagues to land.

[1470]

From 1470 to 1484 we find him in Portugal, the country most interested
and engaged then in ocean-going and discovery. Here he must have known
Martin Behem, author of the famous globe, finished in 1492, whereon Asia
is exhibited as reaching far into the same hemisphere with Europe.
Prince Henry of Portugal earnestly patronized all schemes for
exploration and discovery, and the daughter, Philippa, of one of his
captains, Perestrello, Columbus married. With her he lived at Porto
Santo in the Madeiras, where he became familiar with Correo, her
sister's husband, also a distinguished navigator. The islanders fully
believed in the existence of lands in the western Atlantic. West winds
had brought to them strange woods curiously carved, huge cane-brakes
like those of India described by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned canoes,
and corpses with skin of a hue unknown to Europe or Africa.

[Illustration: Prince Henry of Portugal--"The Navigator." From an old
print.]

[1475-1484]

Reflecting on these things, studying Perestrello's and Correo's charts
and accounts of their voyages, corresponding with Toscanelli and other
savans, himself an adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for a time his
occupation in Lisbon, cruising here and there, once far northward to
Iceland, and talking with navigators from every Atlantic port, Columbus
became acquainted with the best geographical science of his time.

This had convinced him that India could be reached by sailing westward.
The theoretical possibility of so doing was of course admitted by all
who held the earth to be a sphere, but most regarded it practically
impossible, in the then condition of navigation, to sail the necessary
distance. Columbus considered the earth far smaller than was usually
thought, a belief which we fi