But the simple truth is
far more honorable, and, indeed, far more romantic. It shows us the
young weaver loving his home and serving his parents with filial
devotion, but at the same time preparing, with zeal and industry, to
become an expert in the profession for which he was best fitted, and
even in his earliest youth making ready to fulfill his high destiny.

I believe that Columbus had conceived the idea of sailing westward to
the Indies even before he left his home at Savona. My reason is, that
his correspondence with Toscanelli on the subject took place in the very
year of his arrival in Portugal. That fact alone involves the position
that the young weaver had not only become a practical seaman--well
versed in all the astronomical knowledge necessary for his profession--a
cosmographer, and a draughtsman, but also that he had carefully digested
what he had learned, and had formed original conceptions. It seems
wonderful that a humble weaver's apprentice could have done all this in
the intervals of his regular work. Assuredly it is most wonderful; but I
submit that his correspondence with Toscanelli in 1474 proves it to be a
fact. We know that there were the means of acquiring such knowledge at
Genoa in those days; that city was indeed the center of the nautical
science of the day. Benincasa, whose beautiful _Portolani_ may still be
seen at the British Museum, and in other collections, was in the height
of his fame as a draughtsman at Genoa during the youth of Columbus; so
was Pareto. In the workrooms of these famous cartographers the young
aspirant would see the most accurate charts that could then be produced,
very beautifully executed; and his imagination would be excited by the
appearance of all the fabulous islands on the verge of the unknown
ocean.

When the time arrived for Columbus to leave his home, he naturally chose
Lisbon as the point from whence he could best enlarge his experience and
mature his plans. Ever since he could remember he had seen the
inscriptions respecting members of the Pasagni family, as we may see
them now, carved on the white courses of the west front of San Stefano,
his parish church. These Genoese Pasagni had been hereditary Admirals of
Portugal; they had brought many Genoese seamen to Lisbon; the Cross of
St. George marked their exploits on the _Portolani_, and Portugal was
thus closely connected with the tradition of Genoese enterprise. So it
was to Lisbon that Columbus and his