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 was disregarded. His plans, too, when known, were generally scoffed at and ridiculed as the dreams of one of the wildest of schemers. The very children of the towns were taught to regard him as a visionary madman, and pointed to their foreheads as he passed them; though, amid the sufferings hope long deferred creates, he was, on the whole, generously treated by the court and his expenses paid while attending on it.

But while the learned scoffers at his theory had no valid answer to give to arguments based on facts they could neither refute nor deny, men of more enlightened views were open to conviction, and saw with Columbus that as the gales from the West brought to Madeira trees and canes of an unknown species, there must be some land, and that too not very far distant, where these trees and canes had grown; and further, that as other productions were found, evidently the work of man, the unknown land must be the abode of human beings. Years, however, elapsed before the sovereigns of Spain could be induced to adopt means for solving the great problem of a new world in the West; till, at length, Columbus, wearied with these continued delays, sent his brother Bartholomew to England to endeavour to persuade Henry VII. to afford him the means of carrying out his expedition of discovery. Misfortunes befell Bartholomew on the way. The vessel in which he had taken his passage having been boarded by pirates, who stripped him of everything he possessed, he was compelled to live for a considerable time after he arrived in London in poverty and obscurity, earning a scanty existence by the construction and sale of