that time.

"In 1477," he says, in one of his letters, "in the month of February, I
sailed more than a hundred leagues beyond Tile." By this he means Thule,
or Iceland. "Of this island the southern part is seventy-three degrees
from the equator, not sixty-three degrees, as some geographers pretend."
But here he was wrong. The Southern part of Iceland is in the latitude
of sixty-three and a half degrees. "The English, chiefly those of
Bristol, carry their merchandise, to this island, which is as large as
England. When I was there the sea was not frozen, but the tides there
are so strong that they rise and fall twenty-six cubits."

The order of his life, after his visit to Iceland, is better known.
He was no longer an adventurous sailor-boy, glad of any voyage which
offered; he was a man thirty years of age or more. He married in the
city of Lisbon and settled himself there. His wife was named Philippa.
She was the daughter of an Italian gentleman named Bartolomeo Muniz de
Perestrello, who was, like Columbus, a sailor, and was alive to all the
new interests which geography then presented to all inquiring minds.
This was in the year 1477, and the King of Portugal was pressing the
expeditions which, before the end of the century, resulted in the
discovery of the route to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope.

The young couple had to live. Neither the bride nor her husband had
any fortune, and Columbus occupied himself as a draftsman, illustrating
books, making terrestrial globes, which must have been curiously
inaccurate, since they had no Cape of Good Hope and no American
Continent, drawing charts for sale, and collecting, where he could, the
material for such study. Such charts and maps were beginning to assume
new importance in those days of geographical discovery. The value
attached to them may be judged from the statement that Vespucius paid
one hundred and thirty ducats for one map. This sum would be more than
five hundred dollars of our time.

Columbus did not give up his maritime enterprises. He made voyages to
the coast of Guinea and in other directions.

It is said that he was in command of one of the vessels of his relative
Colon el Mozo, when, in the Portuguese seas, this admiral, with his
squadron, engaged four Venetian galleys returning from Flanders. A
bloody battle followed. The ship which Christopher Columbus commanded
was engaged with a Venetian vessel, to which it set fire. There was
danger of an expl