the fame kind of ftuff of which great inventors and discoverers have mostly been made. Lower down, too, in mankind there is much of the fame nature leading to various kinds of worthy deeds, though there are no more continents for it to difcover. There was great fimplicity about him, and much loyalty and veneration, (for truly great people are apt to fee here, and beyond here, fomething greater than themselves, or even than their own ideas). He was as magnanimous as it is, perhaps, poffible to be for one so fenfitive and impaffioned as he was. He was humane, selfdenying, courteous. He had an intellect of that largely-enquiring kind which may remind us of our great English philosopher Bacon. He was fingularly refolute and enduring. The Spaniards have a word, "longanimidad," (longanimity) which has been well applied to him. He was rapt in his defigns, having a ringing for ever in his ears of great projects, making him deaf to much, perhaps, that prudence might have heeded; -one to be loved by those near him, and likely by his presence to inspire favour and respect.

Such was the man under whom we are now going to enter into a wider sphere of our history of Slavery.

80

tors.

CHAPTER III.

DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

OLUMBUS was born in the Genoese territory in the year 1447 or 1448.

His family was obfcure, but, like most others, when the light of a great man born in it is thrown upon its records, real and poffible, it presents some other names not altogether unworthy to be put down as the great man's ancefColumbus was fent to Pavia for his education, and seems to have profited by it, for we find that he wrote legibly, defigned well, was a good Latin fcholar, and it is probable that he acquired then the rudiments of the various fciences in which he afterwards became proficient. At the age of fourteen he went to fea. Of his many voyages, which of them took place before, and

which after, his coming to Portugal, we have no diftinct record; but we know that he traversed Early voy- most of the known parts of the world, that he Columbus. vifited England,* that he made his way to Ice

ages of

* Ví todo el Levante y Poniente, que dice por ir al camino de

land,* that he had been at El Mina, on the coast of Africa,† and had seen the islands of the Archipelago. He also mentions having been employed by King René of Provence, to intercept a Venetian galliot. The next thing that we may say we know for certain of him is, that he went to Portugal, where he married Donna Felipa Muñiz Pereftrelo; and is faid to have been shown by his mother-in-law the papers of her deceased husband, the late governor of Porto Santo. Columbus lived for some time at Porto Santo,§ and made voyages to different parts of Africa in company with Portuguese mariners. At what precise period his great idea came into his mind we have no records to show. The flow of Portuguese disco

Septentrion, que es Inglaterra.-Navarrete, Coleccion. Madrid, 1825. vol. 1, p. 101.

* Yo navegué el año de cuatrocientos y setenta y fiete en el mes de Febrero ultra Tile . . . . es tan grande como Inglaterra, van los Ingleses con mercaderia; especialmente los de Bristol.Las Cafas, Hift. de las Indias, MSS. Primera Parte, tom. 1, cap. 8.

Yo estuve en la Fortaleça de San Jorge de la Mina.Barcia, Hift. del Almirante Chrift. Colon. Madrid, 1749. cap. 4.

En otra parte hace mencion haber navegado à las Islas del Archipiélago donde en una dellas que fe llama Enxion vido facar almaciga de ciertos arboles. - Las Cafas, Hift. de las Indias,

MSS. Primera Parte, tom. 1, cap. 3.

Las Cafas, upon the authority of Diego Columbus.-Hift.

de las Indias, MSS. Primera Parte, tom. 1, cap. 3.

G

The fources of his great refolve.

veries had excited the mind of Europe, and must have influenced Columbus, living in the midst of them. This may be faid without in the least detracting from the merits of Columbus as a difcoverer. Men do not jump from nothing to the highest realities, like people in fick dreams. A great invention or discovery is like a daring leap, but from land to land, not from nothing to something. And if we look at the subject fairly, we shall probably admit that Columbus had as large a share in the merit of his discovery as most inventors, or discoverers, can lay claim to. If the idea which has rendered him famous was not in his mind at the outfet of his career of inveftigation, at any rate he had from the first the desire for discovery, or, as he says himself, the wish to know the fecrets of this world.* Whether this impulse foon brought him to his utmost height of furvey, and that he then only applied to learning in order to confirm his first views; or whether the impulse merely carried him along, with growing perception of the great truth he was to

*Muy altos Reges; de muy pequeña edad entré en la mar navegando e lo he contínuado fasta hoy: la mesma arte inclina á quien le profigue á defear de faber los fecretos deste mundo. Ya pasan de cuarenta años que yo voy en este uso: todo lo que fasta hoy se navega todo lo he andado.-Navarrete, Col. Doc. Dip. num. 140.

prove, into deep thinking upon cosmographical ftudies, Portuguese discoveries, the dreams of learned men, the labours of former geographers, the dim prophetic notices of great unknown lands and vague reports amongst mariners of drift wood seen on the feas; at any rate we know that he arrived at a fixed conclufion that there is a way by the weft to the Indies, that he could find it out, and fo come to Cipango, Cathay, the grand Can, and all that his much-studied Marco Polo told him of. Let us not pretend to lay down the exact chronological order of the formation of the idea in his mind,-in fact to know more about it than the man would probably be able to tell us himself.

Of the works of learned men, that which according to Ferdinand Columbus, had moft weight with his father, was the "Cofmographia" of Cardinal Aliaco.* Columbus was also confirmed in his views of a western passage to the Indies by Paulo Tofcanelli, the Florentine philosopher. That the notices, however, of western lands were not

* The following paffage is particularly referred to by Ferdinand Columbus: "Et dicit Ariftoteles ut mare parvum est inter finem Hifpaniæ a parte occidentis et inter principium Indiæ a parte orientis. Et non loquitur de Hispaniâ citeriori, quæ nunc Hispania communiter dicitur, fed de Hispaniâ ulteriori quæ nunc Africa dicitur."-Aliaco, Ymago Mundi Capitulum o&tavum.