Here is the man who has made the name of Spain ring with glory down the centuries. Here, in the background, somewhat dimmed in the sight of posterity through the radiance of a greater genius, is Isabel of Castile, she whose tireless patriotism made it possible for Spain to enter on the newly discovered heritage of wealth and empire. Between pioneer and Queen there is the link not only of mere capacity but of that greatness of vision and unfaltering determination to reach a desired goal, that finds in obstacles an incentive to renewed efforts rather than a check. It is a fitting harmony, not often granted in history, that two such spirits should act in unison. Yet in truth the proposed harmony threatened more than once to end if not in discord at least in silence; and the discoverer was to gain the sanction of his patroness to his schemes only after many vicissitudes and trials of his patience. The son of a Genoese wool-carder, the history of his youth and early manhood is obscured by numberless conflicting statements and traditions, a confusion only increased by the information volunteered by Columbus himself. From the suburb of a busy commercial city, unknown and poor, he passed to the seats of the mighty, and, in the light of his fame, recalled half-effaced memories of the days he had put so far behind him, an autobiography sometimes more in accordance with imagination than with truth. Admirers added their embellishments, detractors their quota of sneering comments, till the information so combined is almost more baffling than complete silence. [Illustration: IMAGINARY PORTRAIT THE AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS ] Even as to the date of his birth there is a divergence of opinion amongst historians varying as widely as some twenty-six years; while tradition has connected him with noble families of Italy and France, has sent him to the University of Pavia, has made him one of an expedition to place the House of Anjou on the throne of Naples, and has driven him on his journeyings as far north as Iceland. Here, some say, he heard of the voyages to Greenland and the Canadian coast of old Norse heroes of the tenth and eleventh centuries; and that, when in the island of Porto Santo many years later, the whispered tale of a shipwrecked mariner on his death-bed gave him the data, on which he based his belief that land existed beyond the Atlantic.