orn), though authorities, authors, and
even poets differ. Some, like Tennyson, having

Stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto
And drank, and loyally drank, to him.

His father was a wool-comber, of some small means, who was living two
years after the discovery of the West Indies, and who removed his
business from Genoa to Savona in 1469. Christopher, the eldest son, was
sent to the University of Pavia, where he devoted himself to the
mathematical and natural sciences, and where he probably received
instruction in nautical astronomy from Antonio da Terzago and Stefano di
Faenza. On his removal from the university it appears that he worked for
some months at his father's trade; but on reaching his fifteenth year he
made his choice of life, and became a sailor.

Of his apprenticeship, and the first years of his career, no records
exist. The whole of his earlier life, indeed, is dubious and
conjectural, founded as it is on the half-dozen dark and evasive
chapters devoted by Hernando, his son and biographer, to the first
half-century of his father's times. It seems certain, however, that
these unknown years were stormy, laborious, and eventful; "wherever ship
has sailed," he writes, "there have I journeyed." He is known, among
other places, to have visited England, "Ultima Thule" (Iceland), the
Guinea Coast, and the Greek Isles; and he appears to have been some time
in the service of Rene of Provence, for whom he is recorded to have
intercepted and seized a Venetian galley with great bravery and
audacity. According to his son, too, he sailed with Colombo el Mozo, a
bold sea captain and privateer; and a sea fight under this commander was
the means of bringing him ashore in Portugal. Meanwhile, however, he was
preparing himself for greater achievements by reading and meditating on
the works of Ptolemy and Marinus, of Nearchus and Pliny, the
Cosmographia of Cardinal Aliaco, the travels of Marco Polo and
Mandeville. He mastered all the sciences essential to his calling,
learned to draw charts and construct spheres, and thus fitted himself to
become a consummate practical seaman and navigator.

In 1470 he arrived at Lisbon, after being wrecked in a sea fight that
began off Cape St. Vincent, and escaping to land on a plank. In Portugal
he married Felipa Moniz de Perestrello, daughter of Bartollomeu
Perestrello, a captain in the service of Prince Henry, called the
Navigator, one of the early colonists and the first governor of Port