Thus encouraged, Columbus began his efforts to secure patronage and money for the expedition. He tried in his birthplace, Genoa, and in Portugal and Spain, even in England, where he was accompanied by his brother Bartholomew after the latter’s return from the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and suffered many refusals. Toscanelli had been dead eight years before he at last succeeded; and then, had he known that the distance from Lisbon to the coast of Asia was in fact some 13,000 miles, or twice that which the astronomer had estimated, and that, even so, the route straight across was barred by the Isthmus of Panama—had he known that Cathay did not, as his mentor believed, extend some thousands of miles farther east than it does, even such a man as Columbus might have abandoned the project as chimerical when the cockleshells then available for ocean travel were taken into consideration. Nor, if she too had not been misled by the same “valuable pieces of ignorance,” is it likely that his plea would have prevailed on the practical Isabella of Castile, however elated and invincible she may have felt over the taking of the last of the Saracen strongholds at Granada and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, for in that she was engaged when Columbus finally succeeded in securing her aid. Fortunately, however, whatever might have happened if Toscanelli had not held the voyage to be practicable, Columbus was not only a man of indomitable spirit but possessed of a presence that inspired in others the confidence he felt in himself. A man of striking personality, he is said to have been about forty-five years of age at the time, tall, well formed, and dignified, with sharp gray eyes, alight with “that divine spark of enthusiasm which makes true genius,” and hair prematurely white. And so, in spite of his many disheartening failures, he did not abandon the project; so also was Queen Isabella sufficiently impressed by his learning and appearance to agree, in consideration of a fifth share in the profits, that he should have the rank of Admiral and govern, as Viceroy, all the lands that he might discover and bring under her dominion. With the great astronomer’s chart before him, therefore, and vowing to devote his share of the profits to the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher, he set out from Palos, Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492. His vessels, the _Niña_, _Pinta_ (well named the “Pint Cup”), and _Santa María_, bore a company of but ninety, including the crews.