Christopher Columbus was born in the city Genoa, about 1447, and became one of the most remarkable men of any land or time. Having carefully studied the sciences of geography and astronomy he became convinced that the earth was not flat, as most men then believed, but was really a vast globe or ball. He perceived that when the moon was eclipsed, the {79} shadow which the earth cast upon the moon was round; and he reasoned that as the shadow was round, the object that made that shadow must be round also. He visited the great Saracen schools in Spain, and there received additional proof of this truth. Spain, was then a great maritime nation, and there he conversed with great sea-captains whose voyages were already attracting the attention of the learned. He himself also made a voyage to far off Iceland, and possibly to Greenland, to which country the pope had already sent a bishop and several missionaries. [Image: Christopher Columbus.] In A. D. 1485, when Columbus was about thirty-eight years of age he made his first application to the king of Portugal for aid in his great scheme of maritime discovery, but without success. He then successively applied to Spain, Genoa, Venice and England. But the monarchs of Europe were under the control of Rome, and therefore too busy in aiding her religious persecutions to listen to the appeals of science. Indeed in the very year in which Columbus made his first application, the Inquisition put to death nearly seventeen thousand persons, besides imprisoning thirty-two thousand {80} more. Nor was this all, ninety-two thousand Jews had suffered confiscation of their property, and had been given the unenviable choice of death, banishment or perpetual slavery. And the Saracens, who had dwelt in Spain for more than seven hundred years, or nearly twice as long a time as has elapsed since the discovery of America, were expelled from the lands which they had so long cultivated and beautified, and from their cities which had so long led the world in the arts, sciences and general civilization. One evening in the autumn of A. D. 1485, a man of majestic appearance, pale, care-worn, and though in the meridian of life, with silver hair, leading a little boy by the hand, asked alms at the gate of a Franciscan convent near Polos--not for himself, but only a little bread and water for his child. That man was Columbus, destined to startle the inhabitants of Europe with the discovery of a new continent. But he was obliged to wait until he could take advantage of the commercial rivalry of Spain and Portugal.