His tinguished navigator, but was not now living. tures in his different voyages, as he had related them to her, and communicated to him a great deal of information, which was of much advantage. to him. She also produced and delivered to Co lumbus her husband's maps, charts, and journals, all of which she had carefully preserved, and which Columbus now studied with great interest and attention. SUPPOSED MAGNITUDE OF THE EARTH. One of the first questions to be determined in respect to the possibility of reaching India by sailing directly round the globe was what the distance would be, and that, of course, would depend upon the magnitude of the earth. Since the days of Columbus the circumference of the earth has been very accurately measured in both directions, but the means of determining the question which he could command were very imperfect and few. He made his calculation, as indeed all calculations of longitude are made at the present day, by time. The sun he knew was twenty-four hours in passing round the world. So he imagined the equator to be divided into twenty-four parts, one for each hour. He calculated that from the furthest known portion of Asia to the longitude of the Cape Verd Islands, which was the furthest point to the westward that the European navigation had yet attained, there were comprised sixteen of these hours, leaving only eight to be explored. Now, the distance from the Cape Verd Islands to the furthest portion of Asia then known to Europeans was about eight thousand miles, and if this distance had really represented sixteen out of the twenty-four hours of time comprised in the circuit of the earth, then the remaining space, which would have represented eight hours, would have made only four thousand miles. Columbus supposed that even this distance would be very much diminished by the extension of Asia to the eastward much further than the point which European travelers had yet reached. So that he thought by sailing west from Europe he should reach the land long before he should have passed over the whole interval. He might come to it after sailing three, or even two, thousand miles. But the truth was, the earth was very much larger than he supposed it to be. So that instead of reaching India by a voyage of two thousand miles, the distance, by the way that he proposed to go, was nearer sixteen thousand. Then, moreover, it was impossible to reach India by such a route at all, for the continent of America lay directly in the way. And so it happened in the end that, on making his voyage, after he had proceeded about as far as he expected to go before coming to India, he was stopped by the American shores, while he was still ten thousand miles from his intended destination. DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY COLUMBUS. Columbus met with a great many difficulties and· Escouragements before he could obtain the means of carrying his plans into effect. Very few private individuals were wealthy and powerful enough to furnish vessels and men for such an undertaking, and the governments to whom he applied were very slow in coming to a decision; and in repeated instances, when they did decide, their answer was unfavorable. It is said that the king of Portugal was strongly inclined to favor his views, but the great geographers and learned men of his court, to whom the project was referred for examination, pronounced against it so decidedly that the king had not courage to proceed. Other governments, after long delays, decided, one after another, against the plan. At last, Queen Isabella of Spain, who reigned in conjunction with her husband Ferdinand, was induced to look favorably upon the undertaking, but a long delay took place, and many difficulties intervened, before an arrangement was finally made. Some of these difficulties arose from the very grandeur of the views which Columbus entertained and the high personal expectations which he cherished. He was a man of great exaltation of character, and in revolving in his mind the subject of a new route to India, and of the discovery of new islands and continents beyond the sea, he had been led to form very lofty ideas of the mission which Divine Providence designed him to fulfill. He was about to open the way to many new heathen nations and tribes which would be converted to Christianity by the light which his coming would cause to shine upon them, and he was going to bring home untold treasures of wealth, which Isabella was to employ in a new crusade against the Turks, for the recovery of the Holy City. His conceptions, moreover, of the importance of his own personal agency in these grand achievements were such that he demanded to be invested, in advance, with the authority of admiral and viceroy over all the seas and lands that he should discover. The idea of investing a private person like Columbus with the rank and title of viceroy was extremely distasteful both to Isabella and to all the Spanish court, composed as it was of grandees as proud of their aristocratic birth as any nobles in Europe, and it was a long time before this difficulty could be surmounted. Columbus was, however, firm in insisting on |