follow the southern track in going and the northern in returning, the only safe, not to say the only possible, courses in either direction. We may well ask whether divine Providence traced beforehand these guiding lines on Columbus's charts? His panegyrists give an affirmative answer, but satisfactory proofs of miraculous intervention are wanting in the present case; and it is our opinion that it was Columbus's science, acquired from the sad experience of others, that led him not only to find the New World, but also to return to the Old, there to proclaim a feat that should be considered as simply supernatural, had it not been prepared and taught by previous though less famous discoveries.

It is not our intention to "shorten the hand of the Lord," but it looks certainly more rational and even more theological to give a probable explanation by what little we know of Alonso Sanchez's and of other mariners' exploits than to apply to Almighty God for a reasonable understanding of Columbus's admirable deed and of its circumstances still more wonderful. Is it not highly presumable that the storms which must have driven Alonso Sanchez to the West Indies were simply the very habitual and natural trade-winds? Is it not likely that this pilot, afraid of entering more unknown waters, had tried for months to retrace his former course, yet in vain, as we readily understand; that after much labor and time and deaths of his crew, he may accidentally have gotten out of the forbidding currents and winds, and by a more northern route have succeeded at last in bringing the news of his achievements to Christopher Columbus and other captains of that time? As for myself, I prefer to consider as natural facts and events such as are naturally possible and probable, rather than to accept them without sufficient proofs as supernatural and miraculous.

Once or twice already we have insinuated that Columbus may have received useful and effective information from Spanish or Portuguese seafarers different from Sanchez de Huelva. Nor are good reasons wanting for such an intimation, when Columbus himself has taken care to record some of his interviews with

1

sailors of the distant western seas. The Portuguese archives still contain the official copies of several diplomas issued by kings Alfonsus V. and John II. in the years 1473, 1475, and especially in 1484, by which license is granted to set out to discover and to take possession of unknown isles and lands in the Atlantic Ocean. Already Herrera relates an instance of these curious transactions, when he says that an inhabitant of Madeira, in the year 1484, requested the king of Portugal to give him permission to sail to a land which, he asserted under oath, he had for several years uniformly descried in a western direction. So also did the Flemish Ferdinand Dulmo, at Santarem, in the beginning of March, 1486, pray King John II. for leave to go to take possession of the large island, islets, or continental tracts which had the name of Seven Cities, and which he should discover or have others to discover at his own expense. Not a few of the royal documents speak of other exploring vessels that had left Portugal, never to return. The homeward course from the West Indies lay in such a peculiar direction that its knowledge was obtained only at the price of suffering and death. At the court and in the city of the Portuguese kings more than anywhere else were carefully gathered and learnedly discussed at the time every indication and every information that might lead to the discovery of new territories in the Dark Ocean,

1 Dec. i. lib. i. cap. ii. p. 5.

'Moosmüller, S. 173.

now freed of its ancient mythical terrors. Clarke gives a picture of the social condition of Lisbon at the end of the fifteenth century, so striking and accurate that we cannot resist the temptation of placing it before the eyes of our readers.

"The constant reports," he says, "of the discovery of new kingdoms on the African coast and of new islands in the Atlantic on the African route to Asia fired the imaginations, stimulated the adventures, nerved the energies, and inflamed the fancies of the varied, commingling, diversified, and scientific groups of aspiring people, attracted together in Lisbon from every quarter of Europe. Commotion and excitement constituted the staple resources of this strange city. Delusions, seeking mythical islands, cities, and empires, and the imaginations of overwrought adventurers filled the Atlantic with phantom islands and countries. The Egyptian narrative of the once powerful and vast Atlantis, submerged by direst cataclysm, was now revived. Aristotle's Antilla was again called up from the abyss to the possible horizon of the ocean. The tradition of the island of the Seven Cities, where many an adventurous Portuguese pilot was alleged to have visited and to be detained, for fear that he might communicate to Spain the existence of the island, was now again repeated with every assurance of its verity. The famous Island of St. Brendan came forth to view, and its mountains and forests had been often and distinctly seen by the inhabitants of the Canaries, and so vividly presented to Prince Henry the Navigator, that several expeditions were sent out to discover and locate it; and the failure of each did not deter others from following the same delusive method, a method not based upon scientific data, as

1 Amer. Cath. Quar. Rev., vol. xvii. p. 65.

were the subsequent triumphant voyages of Christopher Columbus. But in the Portuguese rage for maritime expeditions and new territorial discoveries there was much that was practical blended with the chimerical, much that resulted in extending the known area of the earth and increasing the domains of that kingdom."

The writer very correctly adds: "The atmosphere of naval and maritime energy and prowess which Columbus breathed during his residence at Lisbon had a vast influence on his intelligent and enthusiastic character and mind, and constituted a part of the schooling which he received towards his illustrious deed."

The English did not remain free from the southern enthusiasm. After former attempts a ship sailed from Bristol again in the year 1491 to explore the legendary islands; and the great discoveries of the Cabots were prompted as much by English national initiative spirit as by imitation of the Spanish success.

It is quite remarkable and not sufficiently known that Columbus found during his second voyage on the coast of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, as we see in his own log-book, portions of the stern of a European ship and an iron kettle which could never have been made by the natives. Both, evidently, were memorials of late Spanish or, more probably, Portuguese sailors, who had proudly been conscious of their discoveries, but, while anxious to publish their achievement, had perished, either through adverse winds or at the hands of the fierce cannibals who were in possession of these testimonials of their misfortune.1

It is the place here to touch upon the oft-debated question, whether Columbus had obtained any informa

1 Cf. Southall, p. 573.

tion towards his grand discovery, on the occasion of his visit to Frisland or the Faroe group and to Iceland. The contradictory answers are generally in keeping with either the northern or the southern nationality of the disputants. Pietro Amat blames1 Maltebrun and others for their affirmative opinion, and American writers are equally divided on the subject.

2

The fact is that, in the year 1477, Christopher Columbus sailed to Flanders, England, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, and one hundred leagues farther; and, consequently, may have descried the outlines of Greenland. It is said that he landed in the bay of Hvalfiardareyri, when Magnus, bishop of Skalholt, was visiting the churches of that peninsula, and that he conversed in Latin with him. It is not likely that the great discoverer, who was so anxious to gather all possible intelligence regarding western countries and seas, would have learned nothing of the Scandinavian voyages and settlements in Greenland and Vinland, while in a country and with learned persons so well acquainted with them. The contrary is possible, however, and the information which he received in Iceland has left no trace in any word or act of his subsequent career, nor is it set forth as an objection to the claims of his son Diego.

The probability is, that Columbus heard in several places of the exploits and colonies of the Northmen in the northeastern parts of America, but, as did the geog

1 P. 84.

* Moosmüller, S. 229, ref. to 'Mémoires des Antiq., 1836-39, Rafn, Antiq. Amer., p. xxiv, n. 1. notices.

His Treatise on the Five Habitable Zones, his Life by his son Fer

dinand, ap. von Humboldt, Examen, t. i. p. 271; t. ii. p. 105; Roselly de Lorgues, Cristoforo Colombo, t. i. p. 103.

5 Clarke, in Amer. Cath. Quar. Rev., vol. xiii. p. 237; Kunstmann, S. 74; Rasmus Anderson, p. 86.

• Von Humboldt, Kosmos, S. 276; Farnum, p. 8.