Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/142

118 118 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. PART I. Since to one common centre all things tend ; So earth, by curious mystery divine Well balanced, hangs amid the starry spheres. At our Antipodes are cities, states, And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore. But see, the Sun speeds on his western path To glad the nations with expected light." ^^ Columbus's hypothesis rested on much higher ground than mere popular belief. What indeed was credulity with the vulgar, and speculation with the learned, amounted in his mmd to a settled practical conviction, that made him ready to peril life and fortune on the result of the experiment. He was fortified still further in his conclusions by a correspondence with the learned Italian Tosca- nelli, who furnished him with a map of his own projection, in which the eastern coast of Asia was delineated opposite to the western frontier of Eu- rope. ^^ 11 Pulci, Morgante Maggiore, canto 25, st. 229, 230. — I have used blank verse, as affording fa- cility for a more literal version than the corresponding ottava rima of the original. This passage of Pul- ci, which has not fallen under the notice of Humboldt, or any other writer on the same subject whom I have consulted, affords, probably, the most circumstantial prediction that is to be found of the existence of a western world. Dante, two centuries before, had intimated more vaguely his belief in an un- discovered quarter of the globe. " De' vostri sensi, ch' k del rimanente, Noil vogliate iicgar I'espericiua, Uiietro al sol, del mondo sem.n gcnte." Inferno, cant. 26, v. 115. 12 Navarrete, Coleccion de Via- gcs, torn, ii., Co^ Dipl., no. 1. — Munoz, Hist, del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 17. — It is singular that Columbus, in his visit to Iceland, in 1477, (see Fernando Colon, Hist, del Almirante, cap. 4.) should have learned nothing of the Scandina- vian voyages to the northern shores of America in the tenth and fol- lowing centuries ; yet if he was acquainted with them, it appears equally surprising that he should not have adduced the fact in sup- port of his own hypothesis of the existence of land in the west ; and that he should have taken a route so different from that of his prede- cessors in the path of discovery. It may be, however, as M. de Hum- boldt has well remarked, that the information he obtained in Iceland was too.vague to suggest the idea, that the lands thus discovered by