The principal contemporary Portuguese chronicle making any reference to Columbus is Ruy de Pina’s _Chronica del Rei Dom João II._, which is contained in the _Colleccão de livros ineditos de historia Portugueza_, published at Lisbon in 1792 (ii. 177), from which Garcia de Resende seems to have borrowed what appears in his _Choronica_, published at Lisbon in 1596; and this latter account is simply paraphrased in the _Decada primeira do Asia_ (Lisbon, 1752) of João de Barros, who, born in 1496, was too late to have personal knowledge of earlier time of the discoveries. Vasconcellos’ _Vida y acciones del Rey D. Juan al segundo_ (Madrid, 1639) adds nothing. The statement of the _Historie_ again thrown out, doubt at least is raised respecting the marriage of Columbus with Philippa, daughter of Bartholomeu Perestrello; and if the critic cannot disprove such union, he seems to think that as good, if not better, evidence exists for declaring the wife of Columbus to have been the daughter of Vasco Gil Moniz, of an old family, while it was Vasco Gill’s sister Isabel who married the Perestrello in question. The marriage of Columbus took place, it is claimed there is reason to believe, not in Madeira, as Gomara and others have maintained, but in Lisbon, and not before 1474. Further, discarding the _Historie_, there is no evidence that Columbus ever lived at Porto Santo or Madeira, or that his wife was dead when he left Portugal for Spain in 1484. If this is established, we lose the story of the tie which bound him to Portugal being severed by the death of his companion; and the tale of his poring over the charts of the dead father of his wife at Porto Santo is relegated to the region of fable. We have known that the correspondence of Toscanelli with the monk Martinez took place in 1474, and the further communication of the Italian _savant_ with Columbus himself has always been supposed to have occurred soon after; but reasons are now given for pushing it forward to 1482. The evidences of the offers which Columbus made, or caused to be made, to England, France, and Portugal,—to the latter certainly, and to the two others probably,—before he betook himself to Spain, are also reviewed. As to the embassy to Genoa, there is no trace of it in the Genoese Archives and no earlier mention of it than Ramusio’s; and no Genoese authority repeats it earlier than Casoni in his _Annali di Genova_, in 1708. This is now discredited altogether. No earlier writer than Marin, in his _Storia del commercio de’ Veneziani_ (vol. vii. published 1800), claims that Columbus gave Venice the opportunity of embarking its fortunes with his; and the document which Pesaro claimed to have seen has never been found.