st be a much
longer voyage than he supposed to Cipango and Cathay,[485] Others
argued that the late war had impoverished the country, and that the
enterprises on the African coast were all that the treasury could
afford. Here the demands of Columbus were of themselves an obstacle to
his success. He never at any time held himself cheap,[486] and the
rewards and honours for which he insisted on stipulating were greater
than the king of Portugal felt inclined to bestow upon a plain Genoese
mariner. It was felt that if the enterprise should prove a failure, as
very likely it would, the less heartily the government should have
committed itself to it beforehand, the less it would expose itself to
ridicule. King John was not in general disposed toward unfair and
dishonest dealings, but on this occasion, after much parley, he was
persuaded to sanction a proceeding quite unworthy of him. Having
obtained Columbus's sailing plans, he sent out a ship secretly, to carry
some goods to the Cape Verde islands, and then to try the experiment of
the westward voyage. If there should turn out to be anything profitable
in the scheme, this would be safer and more frugal than to meet the
exorbitant demands of this ambitious foreigner. So it was done; but the
pilots, having no grand idea to urge them forward, lost heart before the
stupendous expanse of waters that confronted them, and beat an
ignominious retreat to Lisbon; whereupon Columbus, having been informed
of the trick,[487] departed in high dudgeon, to lay his proposals before
the crown of Castile. He seems to have gone rather suddenly, leaving
his wife, who died shortly after, and one or two children who must also
have died, for he tells us that he never saw them again. But his son
Diego, aged perhaps four or five years, he took with him as far as the
town of Huelva, near the little port of Palos in Andalusia, where he
left him with one of his wife's sisters, who had married a man of that
town named Muliar.[488] This arrival in Spain was probably late in the
autumn of 1484, and Columbus seems to have entered into the service of
Ferdinand and Isabella January 20, 1486. What he was doing in the
interval of rather more than a year is not known. There is a very
doubtful tradition that he tried to interest the republic of Genoa in
his enterprise,[489] and a still more doubtful rumour that he afterwards
made proposals to the Venetian senate.[490] If these things ever
happened, there was time