Adventures Bodily And Spiritual - 1
Columbus had not been long in Portugal before he was off again to sea, this time on alonger voyage than any he had yet undertaken. Our knowledge of it depends on his own
words as reported by Las Casas, and, like so much other knowledge similarly recorded, is
not to be received with absolute certainty; but on the whole the balance of probability is
in favour of its truth. The words in which this voyage is recorded are given as a quotation
from a letter of Columbus, and, stripped of certain obvious interpolations of the historian,
are as follows:—
"In the month of February, and in the year 1477, I navigated as far as the island of Tile
[Thule], a hundred leagues; and to this island, which is as large as England, the English,
especially those of Bristol, go with merchandise; and when I was there the sea was not
frozen over, although there were very high tides, so much so that in some parts the sea
rose twenty-five 'brazas', and went down as much, twice during the day."
The reasons for doubting that this voyage took place are due simply to Columbus's habit
of being untruthful in regard to his own past doings, and his propensity for drawing the
long bow; and the reason that has been accepted by most of his biographers who have
denied the truth of this statement is that, in the year 1492, when Columbus was
addressing the King and Queen of Spain on his qualifications as a navigator, and when he
wished to set forth his experience in a formidable light, he said nothing about this
voyage, but merely described his explorations as having extended from Guinea on the
south to England on the north. A shrewd estimate of Columbus's character makes it
indeed seem incredible that, if he had really been in Iceland, he should not have
mentioned the fact on this occasion; and yet there is just one reason, also quite
characteristic of Columbus, that would account for the suppression. It is just possible that
when he was at Thule, by which he meant Iceland, he may have heard of the explorations
in the direction of Greenland and Newfoundland; and that, although by other navigators
these lands were regarded as a part of the continent of Europe, he may have had some
glimmerings of an idea that they were part of land and islands in the West; and he was
much too jealous of his own reputation as the great and only originator of the project for
voyaging to the West, to give away any hints that he was not the only person to whom
such ideas had occurred. There is deception and untruth somewhere; and one must make
one's choice between regarding the story in the first place as a lie, or accepting it as truth,
and putting down Columbus's silence about it on a later occasion to a rare instinct of
judicious suppression. There are other facts in his life, to which, we shall come later, that
are in accordance with this theory. There is no doubt, moreover, that Columbus had a
very great experience of the sea, and was one of the greatest practical seamen, if not the
greatest, that has ever lived; and it would be foolish to deny, except for the greatest
reasons, that he made a voyage to the far North, which was neither unusual at the time
nor a very great achievement for a seaman of his experience.
Christopher returned from these voyages, of which we know nothing except the facts that
he has given us, towards the end of 1477; and it was probably in the next year that an
event very important in his life and career took place. Hitherto there has been no whisper
of love in that arduous career of wool-weaving, sailoring, and map-making; and it is not
unlikely that his marriage represents the first inspiration of love in his life, for he was, in
spite of his southern birth, a cool-blooded man, for whom affairs of the heart had never a
very serious interest. But at Lisbon, where he began to find himself with some footing
and place in the world, and where the prospect of at least a livelihood began to open out
before him, his thoughts took that turn towards domesticity and family life which marks a
moment in the development of almost every man. And now, since he has at last to emerge
from the misty environment of sea-spray that has veiled him so long from our intimate
sight, we may take a close look at him as he was in this year 1478.
Unlike the southern Italians, he was fair in colouring; a man rather above the middle
height, large limbed, of a shapely breadth and proportion, and of a grave and dignified
demeanour. His face was ruddy, and inclined to be freckled under the exposure to the
sun, his hair at this age still fair and reddish, although in a few years later it turned grey,
and became white while he was still a young man. His nose was slightly aquiline, his face
long and rather full; his eyes of a clear blue, with sharply defined eyebrows—seamen's
eyes, which get an unmistakable light in them from long staring into the sea distances.
Altogether a handsome and distinguished-looking young man, noticeable anywhere, and
especially among a crowd of swarthy Portuguese. He was not a lively young man; on the
contrary, his manner was rather heavy, and even at times inclined to be pompous; he had
a very good opinion of himself, had the clear calculating head and tidy intellectual
methods of the able mariner; was shrewd and cautious—in a word, took himself and the
world very seriously. A strictly conventional man, as the conventions of his time and race
went; probably some of his gayer and lighter-hearted contemporaries thought him a dull
enough dog, who would not join in a carouse or a gallant adventure, but would probably
get the better of you if he could in any commercial deal. He was a great stickler for the
observances of religion; and never a Sunday or feast-day passed, when he was ashore,
without finding him, like the dutiful son of the Church that he was, hearing Mass and
attending at Benediction. Not, indeed, a very attractive or inspiring figure of a man; not
the man whose company one would likely have sought very much, or whose conversation
one would have found very interesting. A man rather whose character was cast in a large
and plain mould, without those many facets which add so much to the brightness of
human intercourse, and which attract and reflect the light from other minds; a man who
must be tried in large circumstances, and placed in a big setting, if his qualities are to be
seen to advantage . . . . I seem to see him walking up from the shop near the harbour at
Lisbon towards the convent of Saints; walking gravely and firmly, with a dignified
demeanour, with his best clothes on, and glad, for the moment, to be free of his sea
acquaintances, and to be walking in the direction of that upper-class world after which he
has a secret hankering in his heart. There are a great many churches in Lisbon nearer his
house where he might hear Mass on Sundays; but he prefers to walk up to the rich and
fashionable convent of Saints, where everybody is well dressed, and where those kindling
eyes of his may indulge a cool taste for feminine beauty.
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