After a time Columbus came to Lis´bon, hoping to be employed in making discoveries for the crown; for, as we have seen, the Portuguese were the boldest seamen of the day. Whether or not Columbus took part in some of their journeys we do not now know; but we do know that he soon found himself obliged to earn his scanty living by drawing maps. As he was a very pious man, he daily went to say his prayers in a neighboring convent church, where he met a young lady whom the nuns were educating. Falling in love with her, Columbus soon made her his wife. The newly married couple lived with the mother of the bride, the widow of a seaman and chart maker. She soon gave her son-in-law her husband's papers and instruments. In looking over the former, Columbus found that his wife's father had once been in the employ of Henry the Navigator, and had written an account of his voyages. Poring over these papers, and thinking over all he had read and heard from travelers, Columbus became more and more convinced that the earth is round, and that by sailing directly westward one would reach the coast of Asia. This idea, which had already haunted him for some time, now left him no rest He longed to try, for he was in hopes of finding a new road to India, which would enable his native city to carry on the trade which had made it so rich. This trade had been stopped, when he was about seventeen, by the taking of Constantinople, as you have already heard. According to the calculations of Columbus,--for, like all the wise men of his time, he fancied the earth smaller than it is,--the lands known to the Europeans extended over about two thirds of the surface of the globe. As he thought that Asia stretched much farther east, he now began to think that perhaps the strip of ocean which separated Cipango from the Canary Islands might not be so very broad, after all. To discover whether others shared this belief, Columbus wrote to Tos-ca-nel´li, a learned Italian, asking him whether he thought it possible to reach Asia by sailing straight across the Atlantic. Toscanelli answered that he thought it could be done. He also sent Columbus a map he had drawn, on which he had placed Cipango (Japan) nearly on the spot which Cu´ba occupies in your geographies. When Columbus received this map he determined to make an attempt to reach Asia by boldly sailing westward. But he was too poor to buy or hire a vessel himself, and we are told that when he once asked the Genoese to supply him with one, offering to give them the benefit of his discoveries, they only made fun of his plans. Although disappointed, Columbus did not give up his idea, and still tried to gain all the information he could. He even made a journey to Iceland; but the people he talked with there had so entirely forgotten the land that Eric and Biarni had visited in the west, that they never even mentioned it to him, so far as we now know. IX. COLUMBUS AND THE QUEEN.