Already, others, not limiting themselves to having despoiled him of his discovery, disputed his assiduity and his talent for observation. It is well known that the first observation of terrestrial magnetism was made on the mariner's compass by Christopher Columbus, the thirteenth of September, 1492. Fontenelle, in his History of the Royal Academy of Sciences, hesitates not in giving the homage of this discovery to Sebastian Cabot, who did not set out until 1497, or even to Dieppois Grignon, who was posterior to the latter by thirty years!
This depreciation of Columbus, the incertitude in regard to his origin, his country, his work, was the reason why he was spoken of at random, and without attaching much importance to him. The gravest men by no means prided themselves with accuracy in facts and dates, when the question was about Columbus. Thus, Montesquieu himself, in his Spirit of the Laws, blames those who regretted that Francis I. had not furnished ships to "Christopher Columbus, who had proposed the Indies to him."[1] He forgets that America was discovered twenty-three years before Francis I. mounted the throne. It is thus that another pedant, a cotemporary of ours, M. de Marchangy, in his Poetic Gaul, considers the discovery only as accessory, accords it only a secondary rank, and, after having spoken of the Cape of Good Hope doubled by Vasco de Gama, says only: "Towards the same time, the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus gave new developments to this commercial activity, and to this liking for distant expeditions," etc.[2] As if the expedition of Vasco de Gama, which dates from 1497, was not the consequence of the discovery of Columbus in 1492!
In the same manner, Spain did not manifest greater scruples, and continued to treat very cavalierly the immortal renown of the discoverer of America. In his grand General
