Remembering their perils past, he called it "the Stormy Cape" and hastened home to the King of Portugal with his great news. The King was overjoyed, but he refused to name it the Cape of Storms. Would not such a name deter the seamen of the future? Was not this the long-sought passage to India? Rather it should be called the Cape of Good Hope, the name which it has held throughout the centuries. In the course of one voyage, Diaz had accomplished the great task which for the past seventy years Prince Henry had set before his people. He had lifted for the first time in the history of the world the veil that had hung over the mysterious extremity of the great African continent. The Phoenicians may have discovered it some seventeen hundred years before Diaz, but the record of tradition alone exists. Now with the new art of printing, which was transforming the whole aspect of life, the brilliant achievement of Bartholomew Diaz was made known far and wide. It was shortly to be followed by a yet more brilliant feat by a yet more brilliant navigator, "the most illustrious that the world has seen." The very name of Christopher Columbus calls up the vision of a resolute man beating right out into the westward unknown seas and finding as his great reward a whole new continent--a New World of whose existence mankind had hardly dreamt. CHAPTER XXII CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS Every event in the eventful life of Christopher Columbus is of supreme interest. We linger over all that leads up to the momentous start westwards: we recall his birth and early life at Genoa towards the middle of the fifteenth century, his apprenticeship to his father as a weaver of cloth, his devotion to the sea, his love of the little sailing ships that passed in and out of the busy Genoese harbour from all parts of the known world. At the age of fourteen the little Christoforo went to sea--a red-haired, sunburnt boy with bright blue eyes. He learnt the art of navigation, he saw foreign countries, he learnt to chart the seas, to draw maps, and possibly worked with some of the noted Italian draughtsmen. At the age of twenty-eight, in 1474, he left Genoa for Portugal, famous throughout the world for her recent discoveries, though as yet the Stormy Cape lay veiled in mystery. Columbus wanted to learn all he could about these discoveries; he made voyages to Guinea, Madeira, and Porto Santo. He also went to England and "sailed a hundred leagues to the island of Thule in 1477." He was now a recognised seaman of distinction, with courteous manners and fine appearance. He set himself to study maps and charts at Lisbon, giving special attention to instruments for making observations at sea. For many long years he had been revolving a scheme for reaching India by sailing westward instead of the route by Africa. The more he studied these things the more convinced he became that he was right.