Genoa, like other large Italian cities, was teeming with this new spirit of investigation and adventure when Cristoforo Colombo (in his native land his name was pronounced Cristof'oro Colom'bo) was born there or first came there to live. Long before, Genoa had taken an active part in the Crusades, and every Genoese child knew its story. It had carried on victorious wars with other Italian seaports. It had an enormous commerce. It had grown rich, it was so full of marble palaces and churches, and it had such a glorious history, that its own people loved to call it _Genova la Superba_ (Superb Genoa). Although Cristoforo's family were humble people of little or no education, the lad must have had, or made, many opportunities for acquiring knowledge. Probably he _made_ them; for, as a boy in those days generally followed his father's trade, Cristoforo must have spent a good deal of time in "combing" wool; that is, in making the tangled raw wool ready for weaving. Perhaps he was sent to school, the school supported by the "Weavers' Guild." But between working at home and going to school, he evidently made many little trips down to the busy wharves. Was there ever any spot more fascinating than the wharves in olden days --in that far-off time when there were no books to read, and when a boy's only chance of hearing about other countries was to go and talk to the crew of each vessel that came into port? The men to whom our lad talked had sailed the whole length and breadth of the biggest body of explored water, the Mediterranean. Some had gone farther east, into the Black Sea; and still others--bravest of all--had passed beyond the Straits of Gibraltar and out on to the great unknown ocean. It was to these last, we may be sure, that the adventurous boy listened most eagerly. Those hardy sailors were the best possible professors for a boy who intended to follow the sea. They were, doubtless, practical men who never talked much about the sea-monsters and other nonsense that many landsmen believed in; nor did they talk of the world being flat, with a jumping-off place where the sun set. That belief was probably cherished by men of book-learning only, who lived in convents and who never risked their lives on the waves. Good men these monks were, and we are grateful to them for keeping alive a little spark of learning during those long, rude Middle Ages; but their ideas about the universe were not to be compared in accuracy with the ideas of the practical mariners to whom young Cristoforo talked on the gay, lively wharves of _Genova la Superba_.