Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/93

] Fortunatus, and which moved in the ocean at the mercy of the winds. In reality, he soon ascertained that the venturesome excursion of Martin Vinccnte was only a piece of bragging, as he was never more than a hundred leagues from the coasts. As for those sculptured pieces of wood, those gigantic reeds, and pines of unknown species, and those corpses belonging to an unknown race, which the western winds had pushed to the Azores and the Canaries, their testimony established nothing positive; for they might have been carried from the unexplored parts of Africa into the high seas of the equatorial regions, and thence driven on the islands by western winds. Besides, during many years of voyages and of transient residence in those latitudes, he had never seen or touched anything like them himself. In these indices all became reduced to hearsays. Irving is obliged to confess that these facts "could not have been known by Columbus but only after he had formed his opinion, and could have served only to confirm it."

However the case may have been, from the year 1474 his resolution to set out for the discovery of lands which he had a presentiment of existing in the west, was fully formed. Through the agency of a Tuscan residing in Lisbon, he opened a correspondence with one of the greatest celebrities of Italy, Paul Toscanelli, a Florentine physician, a mathematician and a cosmographer, who was familiarly admitted into the pontifical court during his visits to Rome, and whose advice the King of Portugal requested on subjects connected with geography and navigation.

Toscanelli, a man of ardent zeal for the advancement of science, was incited to the study of mathematics by his relations with an old artist, goldsmith, sculptor and engineer, named Brunellesco, who raised aloft and covered with marble the admirable cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence. Toscanelli devoted himself to the study of nature. After having read all the narrations of