Writing of himself to the Catholic sovereigns, he says that he had been a
sailor from his earliest youth, and curious to discover the secrets of the
world. This same impulse led him to the study of navigation, cosmography,
and kindred sciences, and his son Ferdinand states that the book which
most influenced his father was the _Cosmographia_ of Cardinal Aliaco in
which he read the following passage: Et dicit Aristoteles ut mare parvum
est inter finem Hispanicae a parte Occidentis, et inter principium Indiae a
parte Orientis. Et non loquitur de Hispania citeriori quae nunc Hispania
communiter dicitur sed de Hispania ulteriori quae nunc Africa dicitur.(9)

The illustrious Florentine, Paolo Toscanelli, definitely encouraged the
conviction Columbus had formed from his reading of Marco Polo's
descriptions of Cipango, Cathay, and the Grand Khan, that the lands might
be reached by sailing west, and there was doubtless little the ancients
had written concerning the existence of islands and continents lying
beyond the Pillars of Hercules with which he was not acquainted.

The story of his attempts to secure the necessary means and authority for
undertaking his great enterprise does not belong to our present subject,
but before hearing his own description of what and whom he found in the
western hemisphere when first he landed there, it is necessary to consider
the arguments by which his friends finally prevailed on the sovereigns of
Castile to grant him their patronage. That they did this contrary to the
the counsels of the learned cosmographers of the age and in defiance of
contemporary common-sense, is in itself a most noteworthy fact which
testifies both to the singular qualities of Columbus and to the rare
sagacity of the Catholic Queen who, in her momentous decision, acted
alone, there being little in the scheme to commend it to the colder
temperament of King Ferdinand.

By almost no intellectual effort can we of to-day realise the chimerical
stamp which the proposition of Columbus bore, and which served to mark him
as an adventurer and a visionary or, to use a forceful Americanism, as a
"crank" in the estimation of sensible, practical people. He has himself
recorded that he believed he was acting under inspiration and was merely
fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah. The council of cosmographers summoned
by the Queen's confessor, Fray Hernando de Talavera, to study the project
which Columbus, through the exertions of his