HIS APPLICATION AT THE COURT. 119 Filled with lofty anticipations of achieving a chapter discovery, which would settle a question of such '- — moment, so long involved in obscurity, Columbus ^p^Jif'^j" submitted the theory on which he had founded his belief in the existence of a western route to King John the Second, of Portugal. Here he was doomed to encounter for the first time the embarrassments and mortifications, which so often obstruct the con- ceptions of genius, too sublime for the age in which they are formed. After a long and fruitless nego- tiation, and a dishonorable attempt on the part of the Portuguese to avail themselves clandestinely of his information, he quitted Lisbon in disgust, determined to submit his proposals to the Spanish sovereigns, relying on their reputed character for wisdom and enterprise. ^^ The period of his arrival in Spain, being the lat- to the court ter part of 1484, would seem to have been the most unpropitious possible to his design. The na- tion was then in the heat of the Moorish war, and the sovereigns were unintermittingly engaged, as we have seen, in prosecuting their campaigns, or in active preparation for them. The large expendi- ture, incident to this, exhausted all their resources ; the Northmen had any connexion 13 Herrera, Indias Occidentales, with the Indies, of which he was torn. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 7. — in pursuit. In Columbus's day, Muiioz, Hist, del Nuevo-Mundo, indeed, so little was understood of lib. 2, sec. 19. — Gomara, Hist, the true position of these countries, de las Indias, cap. 15. — Benzoni, that Greenland is laid down on the Novi Orbis Historia, lib. 1, cap. 6. maps in the European seas, and as — Fernando Colon, Hist, del Al- a peninsular prolongation of Scan- mirante, cap. 10. — Faria y Sousa, dinavia. See Humboldt, G6ogra- EuropaPortuguesa, torn, ii.part. 3, phie du Nouveau Continent, torn. cap. 4. ii. pp. 118, 125.
