** "The [Atlantic] Ocean," observes Xerif al Edrisi, an eminent Arabian writer, quoted by Irving, "encircles the ultimate bounds of tbe inhabited earth, and all beyond is unknown. No one has been able to verify any thing concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation, its great obscurity, its profound depth, and frequent tempests; through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds; yet there are many islands in it, some of which are peopled and others uninhabited. There is no mariner who dares to enter into its deep waters; or, if any have done so, they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of departing from them. The waves of this ocean, although they roll as high as mountains, yet maintain themselves without breaking, for if they broke, it would be impossible for a ship to plow through them." {xviii}Indies might be leached by doubling its most southerly headlands. Expeditions were fitted out; the Cape de Verd and the Azore Islands were discovered; Cape Bojador was passed; the tropical region was penetrated, and divested of its terrors; and at length the lofty promontory which terminates Africa on the south, was descried. It was hailed as a harbinger of the coveted passage to the Indian Seas, and on that account King John gave it the appellation of the Cape of Good Hope. The Spaniards were also making maritime discoveries at the same time, but Lisbon was the point of great attraction to the learned, the curious, and the adventurous, who were desirous to engage in the expeditions then continually fitting out there. Among them came Christopher Columbus, or Colombo, a native of Genoa, then in the vigor of maturity. * Already he had made many a perilous voyage upon the ocean, having engaged in the life of a mariner at the age of fourteen years. The bent of his mind for such pursuits was early discovered by his father, and in the University of Pavia he was allowed, by a short course of study, to obtain sufficient elementary knowledge of geometry, astronomy, geography, and navigation, and of the Latin language,.to enable him to make those sciences afterward subservient to his genius. From the commencement of his nautical career to his landing in Portugal, his history ** is very obscure. * There is some obscurity and doubt respecting the precise year in which Columbus was born. Munoz, in his History of the New World, places it in 1446. Mr. Irving, relying upon the authority of Bernaldez, who says that "he died in 1506, in a good old age, at the age of seventy, a little more or less," places it in 1436, which would make him about forty- eight years old when he landed in Portugal. ** This peculiar signature of Columbus is attached to various documents written by him subsequent to his first voyage. It was customary, in his time, to precede a signature with the initials (and sometimes with the words in full) of some pious ejaculation. We accordingly find the signature of Columbus with initial prefixes, thus: S