Their Marriage and Funeral Ceremonies

Finding very little encouragement in his native city, and Prince Henry of Portugal being then engaged in his explorations of the western coast of Africa, Columbus went to Lisbon. He arrived there about the year 1470, when he was in the prime of his young manhood. There he was a strict attendant at religious services in the chapel of the Convent of All Saints. In that convent several ladies of rank boarded or resided. Among these was Dona Felipa, daughter of Bartolomeo de Perestrello, an Italian cavalier then lately dead, who had been one of Prince Henry's most noted navigators. He had discovered, colonized and governed the island of Porto Santo, one of the Madeiras. Columbus and Dona Felipa became acquainted. The acquaintance ripened into love and resulted in marriage.

Columbus and his bride resided with her mother in Porto Santo. Madame Perestrello placed in the hands of her son-in-law the maps, charts, journals and memoranda of her late husband. They opened new fields for the contemplation of the navigator, and inspired him with an irrepressible desire for attempting discoveries in the West. These desires were stimulated by facts that were given him by Pedro Correo, an eminent navigator, who had married a sister of the wife of Columbus. He told him of timber handsomely carved, and of immense canes such as it was said grew in India, that had been found floating on the sea, from the westward; also of the bodies of two men which had been cast ashore on one of the islands of the Azores by a westerly gale, whose faces were large and their skins a copper color. These things confirmed Columbus in a budding belief that he might reach India by sailing westward, and he formed plans accordingly. These he communicated to the eminent Toscanelli, of Florence, who wrote to him an encouraging letter, and sent him a map projected partly by Ptolemy and partly from descriptions of Marco Polo, a Venetian, who made an overland journey to China late in the thirteenth century, and was in the public employment of the Great Khan or Emperor of Tartary. With this map before him Columbus studied the narrative of Polo, and was impressed with the belief that by sailing westward he would find the rich country of Cathay described by that traveller (now known to be China) and the great island of Zipangi, supposed to be Japan. These were the subjects of his dreams, whilst cruising among the islands in American waters, many years after-ward.

Columbus made voyages in the service of the Portuguese; and in 1477 he sailed to Iceland and beyond. There he doubtless heard the traditions concerning the voyages of the sons of Eric the Red, or listened to rehearsals of the sagas in which they were recorded. On his return he was filled with zeal for undertaking western discoveries. But comparative poverty was his portion. He was not able to fit out a ship, so he appealed to the King of Portugal for assistance. That monarch was too much engrossed in a war with Spain to listen to him. He waited patiently until his successor, the young John the Second, ascended the throne. John was endowed with the spirit of his great uncle, Prince Henry, and listened to Columbus gladly. The scheme of the navigator was referred to a junta composed of two eminent cosmographers or describers of the universe, and a learned bishop. They decided that his project was extravagant and visionary.

The king was not satisfied. He called a council of learned men, who also decided against the project. Still the king was not satisfied; when the bishop (who was his confessor) proposed to him a mean stratagem. It was that he should get from Columbus his plans, charts, proposed directions for sailing and all other necessary information, under the pretext that he cherished his propositions. Then he was to send a caravel (a small three-masted vessel) to the Cape de Verd islands on the pretext of carrying provisions there, with instructions to go as far westward as possible, to ascertain if there were any foundation for the navigator's theory. This was to secure advantages to the state without committing it to what might turn out to be a mere chimera. The king permitted himself to follow the advice of the bishop. The cowardly crew of the caravel did not go far, before they were frightened back by the great waves. Columbus discovered the infamous trick to defraud him of the honors of such a discovery, and with lofty pride he scorned all offers of the monarch to renew the negotiations. His wife was now dead. She had borne him a son, whom they had named Diego. The domestic ties which bound him to Portugal were broken, and turning his back upon the faithless king and priest, he took his boy and secretly departed from Lisbon late in the year 1484. Whither he went then nobody certainly knows. He first reappears in history in the south of Spain, standing, in the twilight of a beautiful October day, at the door of the Franciscan monastery near Palos, asking for a little bread and water for his famishing boy.