anna
Fontanarossa. This name means Red-fountain. He bad two brothers,
Bartholomew and Diego, whom we shall meet again. Diego is the Spanish
way of writing the name which we call James.

It seems probable that Christopher was born in the year 1436, though
some writers have said that he was older than this, and some that he was
younger. The record of his birth and that of his baptism have not been
found.

His father was not a rich man, but he was able to send Christopher, as a
boy, to the University of Pavia, and here he studied grammar, geometry,
geography and navigation, astronomy and the Latin language. But this was
as a boy studies, for in his fourteenth year he left the university and
entered, in hard work, on "the larger college of the world." If the date
given above, of his birth, is correct, this was in the year 1450, a few
years before the Turks took Constantinople, and, in their invasion of
Europe, affected the daily life of everyone, young or old, who lived in
the Mediterranean countries. From this time, for fifteen years, it
is hard to trace along the life of Columbus. It was the life of an
intelligent young seaman, going wherever there was a voyage for him. He
says himself, "I passed twenty-three years on the sea. I have seen all
the Levant, all the western coasts, and the North. I have seen England;
I have often made the voyage from Lisbon to the Guinea coast." This he
wrote in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella. Again he says, "I went to
sea from the most tender age and have continued in a sea life to this
day. Whoever gives himself up to this art wants to know the secrets of
Nature here below. It is more than forty years that I have been thus
engaged. Wherever any one has sailed, there I have sailed."

Whoever goes into the detail of the history of that century will come
upon the names of two relatives of his--Colon el Mozo (the Boy, or the
Younger) and his uncle, Francesco Colon, both celebrated sailors. The
latter of the two was a captain in the fleets of Louis XI of France,
and imaginative students may represent him as meeting Quentin Durward at
court. Christopher Columbus seems to have made several voyages under
the command of the younger of these relatives. He commanded the Genoese
galleys near Cyprus in a war which the Genoese had with the Venetians.
Between the years 1461 and 1463 the Genoese were acting as allies with
King John of Calabria, and Columbus had a command as captain in their
navy at