In the meanwhile, some years before Vasco da Gama’s triumphant achievement, a still greater discovery was made that was destined in the course of time to change the whole commercial aspect of the world. Its author was a Genoese sailor, Christopher Columbus, who, tradition says, once sailed as far north as Iceland, and in the south to the island of Porto Santo. Always in his spare time he could be found bent over maps and charts, calculating, weaving around his reasoned mathematical arguments the tales of shipwrecked mariners, until at last he brought to the ears of his astonished fellow men and women a scheme for finding Cathay, neither by sailing south nor east, but due west across the Atlantic. Here is a fourteenth-century description of the Atlantic, a dismal picture still popularly accepted in the fifteenth: ‘A vast and boundless ocean on which ships dared not venture out of sight of land. For even if sailors knew the directions of the winds they would not know whither those winds would carry them; and, as there is no inhabited country beyond, they would run great risks of being lost in the mist and vapour. The limit of the west is the Atlantic Ocean.’ Many people still believed that the world was flat, and that to sail across the Atlantic was to incur the risk of being driven by the winds over the edge into space. Thus Columbus met with either reproof for contemplating such risks, or ridicule for his folly, but so convinced was he of his own wisdom that he only grew the more enthusiastic as a result of opposition. Without money or royal patronage he could not hope to make the voyage a success, and so he laid his scheme before the King of Portugal, usually a willing patron of adventure. Unfortunately for Columbus, the discoveries along the African coast promised such wealth and trade to Portugal that her ruler did not feel inclined to take risks in other directions that, while they must involve expense, as yet held no guarantee of repayment. ‘I went to take refuge in Portugal,’ wrote Columbus at a later date, ‘since the King of that country was more versed in discovery than any other, but ... in fourteen years I could not make him understand what I said.’ Driven at last from Portugal by a decided refusal, Christopher went to Spain, sending his brother Bartholomew with a letter explaining his project to King Henry VII of England. It is interesting to note that the keen-witted Tudor, as soon as the scheme was laid before him, is said to have expressed his readiness to learn more and to lend his support; but Bartholomew had been shipwrecked on his voyage northwards, and owing to this delay Columbus had already received the patronage of Spain and set out on his voyage before his brother returned with the news.