enerally solely to him. As reflex lights of
that glory, history mentions the names of Queen Isabella, of the Pinzon
brothers, the friar Juan Perez. There is another name that should be
placed at head of the list. That is, Bartolomeo Columbus, the brother of
Christopher. From the beginning there existed a partnership between the
two in the mighty undertaking; the effect of a common conviction that
the land of spices, Cipango and Cathay, the East, could be reached by
traveling west. Both of them spent the best years of their life in
privation, hardship, and poverty, at times the laughing stock of the
courts of Europe, in humbly begging from monarchies and republics the
ships necessary to undertake their voyage. While Christopher patiently
waited in the antechambers of the Catholic monarchs of Spain,
Bartolomeo, map in hand, explained to Henry VII. of England the
rotundity of the earth, and the feasibility of traveling to the
antipodes. Having failed in his mission to the English king, he passed
to France to ask of her what had been refused by Portugal, Spain,
Venice, England, and Genoa. While he was there, Columbus, who had no
means of communicating with him, sailed from Palos. Had there been, as
now, a system of international mails, Bartolomeo would now share with
his brother the title of Discoverer of America. Las Casas represents him
as little inferior to Christopher in the art of navigation, and as a
writer and in things pertaining to cartography as his superior. Gallo,
the earliest biographer of Columbus, and writing during his lifetime,
has told us that Bartolomeo settled in Lisbon, and there made a living
by drawing mariners' charts. Giustiniani, another countryman of
Columbus, says in his polyglot Psalter, published in 1537, that
Christopher learned cartography from his brother Bartolomeo, who had
learned it himself in Lisbon. But what may appear more surprising is the
plain statement of Gallo that Bartolomeo was the first to conceive the
idea of reaching the East by way of the West, by a transatlantic voyage,
and that he communicated it to his brother, who was more experienced
than himself in nautical affairs.
FIRST GLIMPSE OF LAND.
CHARLES H. EDEN, English historical writer and traveler. From "The
West Indies."
Nearly four centuries ago, in the year 1492, before the southern point
of the great African continent had been doubled, and when the barbaric
splendor of Cathay and the wealth of Hindust
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