lumbus.

He tells us that his attention was drawn to this subject by the writings
of Averroes, but among his friends he numbered Toscanelli, a Florentine,
who had turned his attention to astronomy, and had become a strong
advocate of the globular form. In Genoa itself Columbus met with but
little encouragement. He then spent many years in trying to interest
different princes in his proposed attempt. Its irreligious tendency was
pointed out by the Spanish ecclesiastics, and condemned by the Council
of Salamanca; its orthodoxy was confuted from the Pentateuch, the
Psalms, the Prophecies, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the writings of
the Fathers--St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St.
Basil, St Ambrose.

At length, however, encouraged by the Spanish Queen Isabella, and
substantially aided by a wealthy seafaring family, the Pinzons of Palos,
some of whom joined him personally, he sailed on August 3, 1492, with
three small ships, from Palos, carrying with him a letter from King
Ferdinand to the Grand-Khan of Tartary, and also a chart, or map,
constructed on the basis of that of Toscanelli. A little before
midnight, October 11, 1492, he saw from the forecastle of his ship a
moving light at a distance. Two hours subsequently a signal-gun from
another of the ships announced that they had descried land. At sunrise
Columbus landed in the New World.

On his return to Europe it was universally supposed that he had reached
the eastern parts of Asia, and that therefore his voyage bad been
theoretically successful. Columbus himself died in that belief. But
numerous voyages which were soon undertaken made known the general
contour of the American coast-line, and the discovery of the Great South
Sea by Balboa revealed at length the true facts of the case, and the
mistake into which both Toscanelli and Columbus had fallen, that in a
voyage to the West the distance from Europe to Asia could not exceed
the distance passed over in a voyage from Italy to the Gulf of Guinea--a
voyage that Columbus had repeatedly made.

In his first voyage, at nightfall on September 13, 1492, being then two
and a half degrees east of Corvo, one of the Azores, Columbus observed
that the compass needles of the ships no longer pointed a little to the
east of north, but were varying to the west. The deviation became more
and more marked as the expedition advanced. He was not the first to
detect the fact of variation, but he was incontesta