Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/71



Time and Place of the Birth of Columbus. — Status of his Family. — His Childhood and Education. — His first services on Sea. — His accidental landing in Portugal.

DARK CLOUD has been cast around the cradle of Christopher Columbus. His genealogy, his true country, and the exact date of his birth, are still matters of discussion to the present hour, without any of the numerous writings on these topics having hitherto definitively elucidated them. The author of the most popular history of Columbus, Washington Irving, begins with these lines: "Nothing certain is known in regard to the first years of Christopher Columbus. The time, the place of his birth, are enveloped in equal obscurity. His ancestors are known no better; and such has been the fatiguing sterility of the commentators, that it is difficult to find the truth, in the midst of the mazes of conjectures with which it is surrounded."

And after these words, in place of presenting his readers with a clew to bring them out from this labyrinth of perplexities, he himself, in his turn, only increases their embarrassments, in increasing their incertitude.

As regards ourselves, the obscurity which several causes