In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places with which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this imperfect information concerning his earlier years.[405] A number of data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been attempted.[406] The general impression, however, which the discussions of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more violent hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a history of the Discovery of America. [Footnote 405: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884, 2 vols., a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable to every student of the subject, though here and there somewhat over-ingenious and hypercritical, and in general unduly biased by the author's private crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.] [Footnote 406: One of the most radical of these reconstructions may be found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas chronologique de la vie de Christophe Colomb," in _Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e serie, tom. iv. pp. 5-59.] [Footnote 407: Washington Irving's _Life of Columbus_, says Harrisse, "is a history written with judgment and impartiality, which leaves far behind it all descriptions of the discovery of the New World published before or since." _Christophe Colomb_, tom. i. p. 136. Irving was the first to make use of the superb work of Navarrete, _Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Espanoles desde fines del siglo XV._, Madrid, 1825-37, 5 vols. 4to. Next followed Alexander von Humboldt, with his _Examen critique de l'histoire de la geographie de Nouveau Continent_, Paris, 1836-39, 5 vols. 8vo. This monument of gigantic erudition (which, unfortunately, was never completed) will always remain indispensable to the historian.] * * * * * [Sidenote: Date of the birth of Columbus: archives of Savona.] [Sidenote: Statement of Bernaldez.] [Sidenote: Columbus's letter of September, 1501.]