Although Columbus never set foot on the Northern half of the American continent, with which alone we have, strictly speaking, now to do, no record of travel in any part of the New World would appear to us complete without some account of his first voyage, and of what led to that voyage. For there can be no doubt that, but for the noble steadfastness of purpose which resulted in the achievement of one discovery while its author was bent on another, the revelation of the existence of a quarter of the globe larger than Europe and Asia put together, and which was destined to be the scene of much of the most stirring history of modern times, would have been indefinitely postponed. Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. Of the early life of Christopher Columbus little is known with any certainty. He is supposed, however, to have been born about 1435, and, as the son of a poor wool-comber of Genoa, to have enjoyed few educational advantages, although, fortunately for him, what little teaching he received seems to have tended to foster his peculiar genius. According to his own account, preserved in the _Historia del Amirante_, he began his maritime career at fourteen, after a brief sojourn at the University of Pavia, enduring great hardships as a sailor employed in the half-commercial, half-nautical cruises of the roving ships which, in the latter part of the 15th century, haunted the Mediterranean and the coasts beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. In 1459 we hear of a certain “handy sea-captain” named Colombo taking part as a private adventurer in an expedition sent out by John of Genoa against Naples; and in 1470 we find the same sea-captain――now in the prime of life――settling in Lisbon, and by his marriage with the daughter of Palestrello, the discoverer of Porto Santo, coming into possession of many valuable charts and journals, the study of which is said to have first suggested to him the existence of land to the westward, which land, however, he from first to last erroneously supposed to be, not a new continent, but a continuation of the eastern shores of Asia. Whether our hero drew his inspiration from one author or another, or, as appears more likely, was led up to the conception of his great design by the spirit of the age in which he lived, affects but little the historical fact that it was about 1474, when the enlightened efforts of Prince Henry of Portugal had ushered in a new era of geographical research, that Columbus first enunciated his belief that there was land in the western part of the ocean; that it could be reached; that it was fertile; and, lastly, that it was inhabited――a belief which was shortly afterward converted into a design for seeking a _western_ route to India, although eighteen long years elapsed before the first step was taken in the realization of a scheme so totally opposed to all the preconceived notions of cosmographers.