Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

On the whole, then, it seems most probable that the Discoverer of America was born in the city of Genoa in 1436, or not much later. Of his childhood we know next to nothing. Las Casas tells us that he studied at the University of Pavia and acquired a good knowledge of Latin.[421] This has been doubted, as incompatible with the statement of Columbus that he began a seafaring life at the age of fourteen. Christopher's early years. It is clear, however, that the earlier years of Columbus, before his departure for Portugal, were not all spent in seafaring. Somewhere, if not at Pavia, he not only learned Latin, but found time to study geography, with a little astronomy and mathematics, and to become an expert draughtsman. He seems to have gone to and fro upon the Mediterranean in merchant voyages, now and then taking a hand in sharp scrimmages with Mussulman pirates.[422] In the intervals of this adventurous life he was probably to be found in Genoa, earning his bread by making maps and charts, for which there was a great and growing demand. About 1470, having become noted for his skill in such work, he followed his younger brother Bartholomew to Lisbon,[423] whither Prince Henry's undertakings had attracted able navigators and learned geographers until that city had come to be the chief centre of nautical science in Europe. Las Casas assures us that Bartholomew was quite equal to Christopher and Bartholomew at Lisbon. Christopher as a sailor, and surpassed him in the art of making maps and globes, as well as in the beauty of his handwriting.[424] In Portugal, as before in Italy, the work of the brothers Columbus was an alternation of map-making on land and adventure on the sea. We have Christopher's own word for it that he sailed with more than one of those Portuguese expeditions down the African coast;[425] and I think it not altogether unlikely that he may have been with Santarem and Escobar in their famous voyage of 1471.