Page:Lamb - History of the city of New York - Volume 1.djvu/32

14, and the art of navigation developed with singular rapidity. People began to talk about a new channel of communication with the Oriental countries, where they could change even the bark of trees into money.

Columbus had for his birthright the intellectual restlessness of the age. As a hoy, his brain was filled with unformed projects and scientific uncertainties. The new theories as well as the new learning took root within his mind and grew with his growth. He read what Aristotle had written about the small space of sea between Spain and the eastern coast of India. He speculated over what Seneca had said about the ease with which that sea might be passed in a few days by the aid of favorable winds. He pondered again and again the hypothetical doctrine that the earth was a sphere. He became a sailor, and applied his energies to the study of nautical science.

Meanwhile years rolled on. Islands in the Atlantic were discovered, and the coast of Europe, from Iceland to the Cape Verde Islands, was becoming known. Columbus had made several important voyages himself. On one occasion he visited Iceland, which was now a dependent and neglected province of Denmark, and stayed some time in the country and conversed with the inhabitants. Whether he obtained any knowledge of the early adventures of the Northmen it is impossible to determine. But after his return his fancies seem to have taken more definite shape. The question finally settled itself to his satisfaction that the glittering gold regions could be reached by sailing due west; and then he conceived one of the boldest designs in human history, and pursued it to its accomplishment with the firm resolve of a lofty genius. It was from want of a correct estimate of longitude that, like every one else from Ptolemy down, he was so vastly deceived as to the size of the globe. He was a clever politician, and danced attendance before incredulous kings and supercilious courtiers until time whitened his locks, so pronounced were his convictions, and so enthusiastic was he in the success of his enterprise, could he but get funds to put it in execution. But alas! he could not convince one man that it was possible to sail west and reach east. It remained for him to find in a woman’s mind the capacity to appreciate and the liberality to patronize him; and at last he launched forth over unknown seas, trusting to his own stout heart and a mariner’s compass, and, reaching an unknown land, planted the chief milestone in the advance of civilization. He aimed for Zipango, and to his dying day believed he had found it, or its outlying isles, very nearly where his calculations had placed it. Never was man's mistake more prolific in great results.

Europe was stunned with admiration, and the Pope of Pome, who up