ises, are now inflamed with desire[445] to execute
the said voyage."

[Footnote 442: The original of this letter is not forthcoming.
I translate from _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii.]

[Footnote 443: Yet poor old Toscanelli did not live to see it
accomplished; he died in 1482, before Columbus left Portugal.]

[Footnote 444: That is, of Europe, and especially of Italy.
Toscanelli again refers to Kublai Khan's message to the pope
which--more or less mixed up with the vague notions about
Prester John--had evidently left a deep impression upon the
European mind. In translating the above sentence I have
somewhat retrenched its excessive verbiage without affecting
the meaning.]

[Footnote 445: In including the "whole Portuguese nation" as
feeling this desire, the good astronomer's enthusiasm again
runs away with him.]

[Sidenote: Who first suggested the feasibleness of a westward route? Was
it Columbus?]

These letters are intensely interesting, especially the one to Martinez,
which reveals the fact that as early as 1474 the notion that a westward
route to the Indies would be shorter than the southward route had
somehow been suggested to Alfonso V.; and had, moreover, sufficiently
arrested his attention to lead him to make inquiries of the most eminent
astronomer within reach. Who could have suggested this notion to the
king of Portugal? Was it Columbus, the trained mariner and map-maker,
who might lately have been pondering the theories of Ptolemy and Mela as
affected by the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, and whose connection
with the Moniz and Perestrelo families would now doubtless facilitate
his access to the court? On some accounts this may seem probable,
especially if we bear in mind Columbus's own statement implying that his
appeals to the crown dated almost from the beginning of his fourteen
years in Portugal.

[Sidenote: Perhaps it was Toscanelli.]

All the circumstances, however, seem to be equally consistent with the
hypothesis that the first suggestion of the westward route may have come
from Toscanelli himself, through the medium of the canon Martinez, who
had for so many years been a member of King Alfonso's household. The
words at the beginning of the letter lend some probability to this view:
"I have formerly spoken with you about a shorter route to the places of
Spices by