several children, considered it would be for his interest to rent out his house to one of those tavern-keepers who take their stand near the entrance into a city, and to remove to the quarter specially occupied by cap-makers, dyers, and wool-combers. For this purpose he leased a small house in Mulcento Street, having a ground floor, besides a hall lighted from the door, contiguous to which there was an apartment which could serve as a shop. The old register of the Republic of Genoa showed this house to be No. 166. It belonged to the religious of the Benedictine order. Several receipt-books of that community, which have escaped the ravages of revolutions, and exist to this day, mention the successive payments made by Dominic Columbus. The last one that appears under his name is for the year 1489. From this period, his son-in-law, James Bavarello, leased the house by virtue of an agreement entered into the twentieth of July, 1489, in the office of the notary, Lorenzo Costa.
Mulcento Street, narrow, rugged, and steep as it was, was at that time the general quarter of cap-makers and workers in woollen cloths. At the present day, in the grave silence of its solitude, it preserves, with some remains of the piety of its ancient inhabitants, which are here and there incrusted in the doors or in the old walls, — a calm and austere aspect, which reminds us of the simple and strong faith of the middle ages.
Dominic Columbus had four sons: Christopher, Bartholomew, Pelligrino, and James. He had also a daughter, who, expecting no better fortune, married a pork-butcher of the vicinity, named James Bavarello, the obscurity of whose condition, when living, withdrew him from the notice of history. Pelligrino died soon after he came to his majority. He worked at the trade of his father. Most writers have forgotten, or been ignorant of, his existence.
It is certain that the ancestors of Columbus belonged to the nobility.
In the veins of the wool-comber there flowed very pure
