Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/608

 *

widowed mother-in-law at Porto Santo, and these were treasures to Columbus. From these and other sources he soon made himself conversant with the various distant sea routes then known to the Portuguese, and learnt also their plans and conceptions for other voyages still more distant, having been allowed to sail occasionally with them in their expeditions to the coast of Guinea. On shore he maintained himself and family by the construction of maps and charts, an occupation which brought him into communication with many men of learning and influence, and notably with Pedro Correa, his wife's brother-in-law and a famous navigator, and also with Paulo Toscanelli of Florence, the most learned cosmographer of the period. The times, too, were favourable to his views. The discoveries of the Cape Verde Islands and of the Azores, with the explorations along the coasts of Africa, as far as the Cape of Good Hope, had inflamed the imaginations of men with visions of other lands of greater wealth and beauty yet to be discovered, and had again revived the speculation of the ancients, the imaginary Atlantis of Plato, and the great oceanic island which the Carthaginians were said to have found. Columbus, therefore, applied himself with redoubled zeal to the study of every writer on geography ancient or modern, being himself firmly convinced that the earth was a sphere or globe, which might be travelled round from east to west, and that men stood foot to foot when on its opposite points.
 * law's journals and charts, while living with his