aled to the daring navigator. The genial country of Dante and
Buonarotti gave birth to Christopher Columbus, by whom these lessons
were so received and weighed that he gained the glory of fulfilling the
prophecy.

Accounts of the navigation from the eastern coast of Africa to Arabia
had reached the western kingdoms of Europe, and adventurous Venetians,
returning from travels beyond the Ganges, had filled the world with
dazzling descriptions of the wealth of China, as well as marvelous
reports of the outlying island empire of Japan. It began to be believed
that the continent of Asia stretched over far more than a hemisphere,
and that the remaining distance around the globe was comparatively
short. Yet from the early part of the fifteenth century the navigators
of Portugal had directed their explorations to the coast of Africa; and
when they had ascertained that the torrid zone is habitable, even under
the equator, the discovery of the islands of Madeira and the Azores
could not divert them from the purpose of turning the southern capes of
that continent and steering past them to the land of spices, which
promised untold wealth to the merchants of Europe, new dominions to its
princes, and heathen nations to the religion of the cross. Before the
year 1474, and perhaps as early as 1470, Columbus was attracted to
Lisbon, which was then the great center of maritime adventure. He came
to insist with immovable resoluteness that the shortest route to the
Indies lay across the Atlantic. By the words of Aristotle, received
through Averroes, and by letters from Toscanelli, the venerable
cosmographer of Florence--who had drawn a map of the world, with Eastern
Asia rising over against Europe--he was riveted in his faith and lived
only in the idea of laying open the western path to the Indies.

After more than ten years of vain solicitations in Portugal, he left the
banks of the Tagus to seek aid of Ferdinand and Isabella, rich in
nautical experience, having watched the stars at sea from the latitude
of Iceland to near the equator at Elmina. Though yet longer baffled by
the skepticism which knew not how to comprehend the clearness of his
conception, or the mystic trances which sustained his inflexibility of
purpose, or the unfailing greatness of his soul, he lost nothing of his
devotedness to the sublime office to which he held himself elected from
his infancy by the promises of God. When, half resolved to withdraw from
Spain, travel