have thrown around the birth of the man who has doubled our knowledge of the globe, does not appear to us to be impenetrable. As soon as one is completely unconcerned about the rival pretensions of families, of cities, and provinces, who claim the honor of having given him birth, he comes to recognize with certainty the origin of him whose destiny was without equal in the world. Let us endeavor, then, to fix definitively the time and the place of this birth, which was attended with such grand consequences to the whole universe.
It is by the date of the death of Columbus that we come to point out precisely that of his birth. It is known that he died in Valladolid the twentieth of May, 1506, at the age of seventy-one years. He was born, then, in 1435. According to the manuscript history of the veracious chronicler, D. Andres Bernaldez, curate of Los Palacios, who had received the Admiral of the Indies at his house, and seen with his own eyes his notes and charts, Columbus must have been born about 1435. This date perfectly coincides with the one assigned by the learned author of the Ecclesiastical History of Plaisance, the canon Pietro-Maria Campi. It is very nearly the same date that has been assigned for his birth by the last descendant of the Colombos of Cucarro, Monseigneur Luigi Colombo, in the work he lately published in Rome. This date of 1435, adopted also by Navarrete, was that which was also already admitted by Count Galeani Napione. It is the only one that is indubitable. It is, besides, in exact relation with the principal events recorded by historians; no fact contradicts it, no document gainsays it. All the facts attest its accuracy. It is, therefore, right to make it our fixed point of departure in our investigations.
As to the birthplace of Columbus, we cannot conceive why it has been so long contested, and so warmly disputed. We have been surprised at the hesitating tone hitherto adopted on this subject. It is time to make this hesitation give place to a precise and peremptory affirmation.
