1 - A Boy With An Idea
Men who do great things are men
we all like to read about. This
is the story of Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered
America. He lived four hundred years ago. When he was
boy he lived in Genoa. It was a beautiful city in the
northwestern part of the country called Italy. The mountains
behind it; the sea was in front of it, and it was so
place that the people who lived there called it "Genoa
Superb." Christopher Columbus was born in this beautiful
Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street.
He was a
bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear
golden hair. His father's name was Domenico Columbus;
his mother's name was Susanna. His father was a wool-comber.
cleaned and straightened out the snarled-up wool that
from the sheep so as to make it ready to be woven into
Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong
but he went to school, too, and learned to read and write
draw maps and charts. These charts were maps of the sea,
the sailors where they could steer without running on the
and sand, and how to sail safely from one country to another.
This world was not as big then as it is now--or, should
people did not know it was as big. Most of the lands that
Columbus had studied about in school, and most of the people
had heard about, were in Europe and parts of Asia and Africa.
city of Genoa where Columbus lived was a very busy and
rich city. It was on the Mediterranean Sea, and many of
people who lived there were sailors who went in their ships
voyages to distant lands. They sailed to other places on
Mediterranean Sea, which is a very large body of water,
and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far away
cold northern island of Iceland. This was thought to be
The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a time
this in which you live. People were alwaysquarreling and
about one thing or another, and the sailors who belonged
country would try to catch and steal the ships or the things
belonged to the sailors or the storekeepers of another
This is what we call piracy, and a pirate, you know, is
to be a very wicked man.
But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so very
to be a sort of half-way pirate, although they did know
would be killed if they were caught. So almost every sailor
about half pirate. Every boy who lived near the seashore
the ships and the sailors, felt as though he would like
away to far-off lands and see all the strange sights and
the brave things that the sailors told about. Many of them
said they would like to be pirates and fight with other
and show how strong and brave and plucky they could be.
Columbus was one of these. He was what is called an adventurous
boy. He did not like to stay quietly at home with his father
comb out the tangled wool. He thought it would be much
sail away to sea and be a brave captain or a rich merchant.
When he was about fourteen years old he really did go
There was a captain of a sailing vessel that sometimes
Genoa who had the same last name--Columbus. He was no relation,
but the little Christopher somehow got acquainted with
the wharves of Genoa. Perhaps he had run on errands for
helped him with some of the sea-charts he knew so well
draw. At any rate he sailed away with this Captain Columbus
his cabin boy, and went to the wars with him and had quite
exciting life for a boy.
Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their
adventures or about far-off lands and countries. Columbus,
listened to many of these sea-stories, and heard many wonderful
things about a very rich land away to the East that folks
If you look in your geographies you will not find any
on the map as Cathay, but you will find China, and that
men in the time of Columbus called Cathay. They told very
stories about this far-off Eastern land. They said its
lived in golden houses, that they were covered with pearls
diamonds, and that everybody there was so rich that money
plentiful as the stones in the street.
This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who
pirate, very anxious to go to Cathay and get some of the
jewels and spices and splendor for themselves. But Cathay
miles and miles away from Italy and Spain and France and
It was away across the deserts and mountains and seas and
and they had to give it up because they could not sail
At last a man whose name was Marco Polo, and who was a
and famous traveler, really did go there, in spite of all
trouble it took. And when he got back his stories were
surprising that men were all the more anxious to find a
sail in their ships to Cathay and see it for themselves.
But of course they could not
sail over the deserts and mountains,
and they were very much troubled because they had to give
idea, until the son of the king of Portugal, named Prince
said he believed that ships could sail around Africa and
to India or "the Indies" as they called that
land, and finally to
Just look at your map again and see what a long, long
would be to sail from Spain and around Africa to India,
Japan. It is such a long sail that, as you know, the Suez
was dug some twenty years ago so that ships could sail
the Mediterranean Sea and out into the Indian Ocean, and
to go away around Africa.
But when Columbus was a boy it
was even worse than now, for no
one really knew how long Africa was, or whether ships really
could sail around it. But Prince Henry said he knew they
and he sent out ships to try. He died before his Portuguese
sailors, Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and Vasco de Gama,
at last did sail around it and got as far as "the
So while Prince Henry was trying to see whether ships
around Africa and reach Cathay in that way, the boy Columbus
listening to the stories the sailors told and was wondering
whether some other and easier way to Cathay might not be
When he was at school he had
studied about a certain man named
Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands of years
was born, and who had said that the earth was round "like
or an orange."
As Columbus grew older and made
maps and studied the sea, and read books
and listened to what other people said, he began to believe
man named Pythagoras might be right, and that the earth
though everybody declared it was flat. If it is round ,
to himself, "what is the use of trying to sail around
to get to Cathay? Why not just sail west from Italy or
keep going right around the world until you strike Cathay?
I believe it could be done," said Columbus.
By this time Columbus was a man.
He was thirty years old and was
a great sailor. He had been captain of a number of vessels;
had sailed north and south and east; he knew all about
a ship and
all about the sea. But, though he was so good a sailor,
said that he believed the earth was round, everybody laughed
him and said that he was crazy. "Why, how can the
round?" they cried. "The water would all spill
out if it were,
and the men who live on the other side would all be standing
their heads with their feet waving in the air." And
laughed all the harder.
But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh at.
believed it so strongly, and felt so sure that he was right,
he set to work to find some king or prince or great lord
him have ships and sailors and money enough to try to find
to Cathay by sailing out into the West and across the Atlantic
Now this Atlantic Ocean, the
western waves of which break upon
our rocks and beaches, was thought in Columbus's day to
dreadful place. People called it the Sea of Darkness, because
they did not know what was on the other side of it, or
dangers lay beyond that distant blue rim where the sky
seem to meet, and which we call the horizon. They thought
ocean stretched to the end of a flat world, straight away
sort of "jumping-off place," and that in this
off place were giants and goblins and dragons and monsters
all sorts of terrible things that would catch the ships
destroy them and the sailors.
So when Columbus said that he wanted to sail away toward
dreadful jumping-off place, the people said that he was
than crazy. They said he was a wicked man and ought to
But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on trying.
from place to place trying to get the ships and sailors
and was bound to have. As you will see in the next chapter,
tried to get help wherever he thought it could be had.
the people of his own home, the city of Genoa, where he
and played when a boy; he asked the people of the beautiful
that is built in the sea--Venice; he tried the king of
the king of England, the king of France the king and queen
Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listen to such
and foolish and dangerous plan--to go to Cathay by the
way of the
Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off place. You would never
there alive, they said.
And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white while
though he was not yet an old man. He had thought and worked
hoped so much that he began to look like an old man when
forty years old. But still he would never say that perhaps
wrong, after all. He said he knew he was right, and that
he should find the Indies and sail to Cathay.