File:History of the United States from the earliest discovery of America to the present time (1912) (14783556335).jpg

Identifier: historyofunited01andr (find matches)
Title: History of the United States from the earliest discovery of America to the present time
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Andrews, Elisha Benjamin, 1844-1917 James, James Alton, 1864-1962
Subjects: United States -- History
Publisher: New York : Charles Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
From 1470 to 1484 we find him in Portu-
gal, the country most interested and en-
gaged then in ocean-going and discovery.
Here he must have known Martin Behem,
author of the famous globe, finished in
1492, whereon Asia is exhibited as reaching
far into the same hemisphere with Europe.
Prince Henry of Portugal earnestly patron-
ized all schemes for exploration and dis-
covery, and the daughter, Philippa, of one
of his captains, Perestrello, Columbus mar-
ried. With her he lived at Porto Santo in
the Madeiras, where he became familiar
with Correo, her sister's husband, also a dis-
tinguished navigator. The islanders fully
believed in the existence of lands in the
western Atlantic. West winds had brought
to them strange woods curiously carved,
huge cane-brakes like those of India de-
scribed by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned
canoes, and corpses with skin of a hue un-
known to Europe or Africa.
Reflecting on these things, studying
Perestrellos and Correos charts and ac-
counts of their voyages, corresponding with
Text Appearing After Image:

Prince Henry of Portugal— "The Navigator."
From an old print.

1475] COLUMBUS 47

Toscanelli and other savans, himself an
adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for
a time his occupation in Lisbon, cruising
here and there, once far northward to Ice-
land, and talking with navigators from
every Atlantic port, Columbus became ac-
quainted with the best geographical science
of his time.
This had convinced him that India could
be reached by sailing westward. The theo-
retical possibility of so doing was of course
admitted by all who held the earth to be a
sphere, but most regarded it practically im-
possible, in the then condition of navigation,
to sail the necessary distance. Columbus
considered the earth far smaller than was
usually thought, a belief which we find
hinted at so early as 1447, upon the famous
mappe-inonde of the Pitti Palace in Florence,
whereon Europe appears projected far
round to the northwest. Columbus seems
to have viewed this extension as a sort of
yoke joining India to Scandinavia by theno

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