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HIS APPLICATION AT THE COURT.
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Early history of Columbus. This extraordinary man was a native of Genoa, of humble parentage, though perhaps honorable descent.[1] He was instructed in his early youth at Pavia, where he acquired a strong relish for the mathematical sciences, in which he subsequently excelled. At the age of fourteen, he engaged in a seafaring life, which he followed with little intermission till 1470; when, probably little more than thirty years of age,[2] he landed in Portugal, the country to which adventurous spirits from all parts
- ↑ Spotorno, Memorials of Columbus, (London, 1823,) p. 14.—Senarega, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., torn. xxiv. p. 535.—Antonio Gallo, De Navigatione Columbi, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiii. p. 202.It is very generally agreed that the father of Columbus exercised the craft of a wool-carder, or weaver. The admiral's son, Ferdinand, after some speculation on the genealogy of his illustrious parent, concludes with remarking, that, after all, a noble descent would confer less lustre on him than to have sprung from such a father; a philosophical sentiment, indicating pretty strongly that he had no great ancestry to boast of. Ferdinand finds something extremely mysterious and typical in his father's name of Columbus, signifying a dove, in token of his being ordained to "carry the olive-branch and oil of baptism over the ocean, like Noah's dove, to denote the peace and union of the heathen people with the church, after they had been shut up in the ark of darkness and confusion." Fernando Colon, Historia del Almirante, cap. 1, 2, apud Barcia, Historiadores Primitives de las Indias Occidentales, (Madrid, 1749,) tom. i.
- ↑ Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 131.—Murioz, Historia del Nuevo-Mundo, (Madrid, 1793,) lib. 2, sec. 13. There are no sufficient data for determining the period of Columbus's birth. The learned Muñoz places it in 1446. (Hist, del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 12.) Navarrete, who has weighed the various authorities with caution, seems inclined to remove it back eight or ten years further, resting chiefly on a remark of Bernaldez, that he died in 1506, " in a good old age, at the age of seventy, a little more or less." (Cap. 131.) The expression is somewhat vague. In order to reconcile the facts with this hypothesis, Navarrete is compelled to reject, as a chirographical blunder, a passage in a letter of the admiral, placing his birth in 1456, and to distort another passage in his book of" Prophecies," which, if literally taken, would seem to establish his birth near the time assigned by Munoz. Incidental allusions in some other authorities, speaking of Columbus's old age at or near the time of his death, strongly corroborate Navarrete's inference. (See Coleccion de yiages, tom. i. introd., sec. 54.) — Mr. Irving seems willing to rely exclusively on the authority of Bernaldez.
