Produced by David Widger
The man to whom Columbus proposed to address his request for means withwhich to make a voyage of discovery was no less a person than the newKing of Portugal. Columbus was never a man of petty or small ideas; ifhe were going to do a thing at all, he went about it in a large andcomprehensive way; and all his life he had a way of going to thefountainhead, and of making flights and leaps where other men would onlyclimb or walk, that had much to do with his ultimate success. King John,moreover, had shown himself thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit ofdiscovery; Columbus, as we have seen, had already been employed in atrusted capacity in one of the royal expeditions; and he rightly thoughtthat, since he had to ask the help of some one in his enterprise, hemight as well try to enlist the Crown itself in the service of his greatIdea. He was not prepared, however, to go directly to the King and askfor ships; his proposal would have to be put in a way that would appealto the royal ambition, and would also satisfy the King that there wasreally a destination in view for the expedition. In other words Columbushad to propose to go somewhere; it would not do to say that he was goingwest into the Atlantic Ocean to look about him. He therefore devoted allhis energies to putting his proposal on what is called a businessfooting, and expressing his vague, sublime Idea in common and practicalterms.
The people who probably helped him most in this were his brotherBartholomew and Martin Behaim, the great authority on scientificnavigation, who had been living in Lisbon for some time and with whomColumbus was acquainted. Behaim, who was at this time about forty eightyears of age, was born at Nuremberg, and was a pupil of Regiomontanus,the great German astronomer. A very interesting man, this, if we coulddecipher his features and character; no mere star-gazing visionary, but aman of the world, whose scientific lore was combined with a wide andliberal experience of life. He was not only learned in cosmography andastronomy, but he had a genius for mechanics and made beautifulinstruments; he was a merchant also, and combined a little business withhis scientific travels. He had been employed at Lisbon in adapting theastrolabe of Regiomontanus for the use of sailors at sea; and in theselabours he was assisted by two people who were destined to have a weightyinfluence on the career of Columbus—Doctors Rodrigo and Joseph,physicians or advisers to the King, and men of great academic reputation.There was nothing known about cosmography or astronomy that Behaim didnot know; and he had just come back from an expedition on which he hadbeen despatched, with Rodrigo and Joseph, to take the altitude of the sunin Guinea.
Columbus was not the man to neglect his opportunities, and there can beno doubt that as soon as his purpose had established itself in his mindhe made use of every opportunity that presented itself for improving hismeagre scientific knowledge, in order that his proposal might be setforth in a plausible form. In other words, he got up the subject. Thewhole of his geographical reading with regard to the Indies up to thistime had been in the travels of Marco Polo; the others—whose works hequoted from so freely in later years were then known to him only by name,if at all. Behaim, however, could tell him a go