that try to prevent honest people
from doing what they have a perfect right to do, proved so
vexatious and ineffective withal that it had to be perpetually
fussed with and tinkered. One year you could ride a mule and
the next year you couldn't. In 1492, as we shall see, Columbus
immortalized one of these patient beasts by riding it a few
miles from Granada. But in 1494 Ferdinand and Isabella decreed
that nobody except women, children, and clergymen could ride on
mules,--"dont la marche est beaucoup plus douce que celle des
chevaux" (Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. iii. p. 338). This
edict remained in force in 1505, so that the Discoverer of the
New World, the inaugurator of the greatest historic event since
the birth of Christ, could not choose an easygoing animal for
the comfort of his weary old weather-shaken bones without the
bother of getting a special edict to fit his case. _Eheu, quam
parva sapientia regitur mundus!_]

[Sidenote: The family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of
residence.]

With regard to the place where the great discoverer was born there ought
to be no dispute, since we have his own most explicit and unmistakable
word for it, as I shall presently show. Nevertheless there has been no
end of dispute. He has been claimed by as many places as Homer,[416] but
the only real question is whether he was born in the city of Genoa or in
some neighbouring village within the boundaries of the Genoese republic.
It is easy to understand how doubt has arisen on this point, if we trace
the changes of residence of his family. The grandfather of Columbus
seems to have been Giovanni Colombo, of Terrarossa, an inland hamlet
some twenty miles east by north from Genoa. Giovanni's son, Domenico
Colombo, was probably born at Terrarossa, and moved thence with his
father, somewhere between 1430 and 1445, to Quinto al Mare, four miles
east of Genoa on the coast. All the family seem to have been weavers.
Before 1445, but how many years before is not known, Domenico married
Susanna Fontanarossa, who belonged to a family of weavers, probably of
Quezzi, four miles northeast of Genoa. Between 1448 and 1451 Domenico,
with his wife and three children, moved into the city of Genoa, where he
became the owner of a house and was duly qualified as a citizen. In 1471
Domenico moved to Savona, thir