tly, if somewhat
severely, characterized by my old friend, the lamented Henry
Stevens (_Historical Collections_, London, 1881, vol. i. No.
1379), and have been elaborately refuted by M. d'Avezac, _Le
livre de Ferdinand Colomb: revue critique des allegations
proposees contre son authenticite_, Paris, 1873; and by
Prospero Peragallo, _L' autenticita delle Historie di Fernando
Colombo_, Genoa, 1884. See also Fabie, _Vida de Fray Bartolome
de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1869, tom. i. pp. 360-372.]

[Sidenote: Researches of Henry Harrisse.]

In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse
and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places
with which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this
imperfect information concerning his earlier years.[405] A number of
data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most
remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it
in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus
before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some
pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been
attempted.[406] The general impression, however, which the discussions
of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more
violent hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the
newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference
with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has
heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no
likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal
sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and
it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a
history of the Discovery of America.

[Footnote 405: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884,
2 vols., a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable
to every student of the subject, though here and there somewhat
over-ingenious and hypercritical, and in general unduly biased
by the author's private crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.]

[Footnote 406: One of the most radical of these reconstructions
may be found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas
chronologique de la vie de Christophe Colomb," in _Bulletin de
la Societe de