COLUMBUS, a city of the United States, capital of Muscogee county, in Georgia, is situated on the east bank of the Chattahochee, opposite the town of Girard, 84 miles south-west of Macon. The river, which here separates the States of Georgia and Alabama, is navigable from Macon to the Gulf of Mexico during the greater part of the year, and affords ready communication with the neighbouring cotton-growing districts. A change in the level of the river at this place furnishes a strong head of water, which has been turned to practical use by the construction of a dam and other hydraulic contrivances. The town, which occupies a pretty extensive area, is regularly laid out, and its streets are of a good breadth. It contains a court-house, a temperance hall, and several churches. Its chief industry is connected with the cotton trade, but there are also some flour-mills and other works. The town dates from 1828, when it was laid out on the Coweta Reserve. Population in 1850, 5042, and in 1870, 7401, of whom 3204 were coloured.
COLUMBUS, Christopher (c. 1436–1506), was the eldest son of Dominico Colombo and Suzanna Fontanarossa, and was born at Genoa in 1435 or 1436, the exact date being uncertain. His father was a wool-comber, of some small means, who was yet living two years after the dis covery of the West Indies, and who removed his business from Genoa to Savona in 1469. His eldest boy was sent to the university of Pavia, where he devoted himself to the mathematical and natural sciences, and where he probably received instruction in nautical astronomy from Antonio da Terzago and Stefano di Faenza. On his removal from the university it appears that he worked for some months at his father s trade; but on reaching his fifteenth year he made his choice of life, and became a sailor.
Of his apprenticeship, and the first years of his career, no records exist. The whole of his earlier life, indeed, is dubious and conjectural, founded as it is on the half dozen dark and evasive chapters devoted by Fernando, his son and biographer, to the first half century of his father s times. It seems certain, however, that these unknown years were stormy, laborious, and eventful ; "wherever ship has sailed," he writes, "there have I journeyed." He is known, among other places, to have visited England, "Ultima Thule " (Iceland), the Guinea coast, and the Greek Isles ; and he appears to have been some time in the service of Rene of Provence, for whom he is recorded to have intercepted and seized a Venetian galley with great bravery and audacity. According to his son, too, he sailed with Colombo el Mozo, a bold sea captain and privateer ; and a sea fight under this commander was the means of bringing him ashore in Portugal. Mean while, however, he was preparing himself for greater achieve ments by reading and meditating on the works of Ptolemy and Marinus, of Nearchus and Pliny, the Cosmographia of Cardinal Aliaco, the travels of Marco Polo and Mande- ville. He mastered all the sciences essential to his calling, learned to draw charts and construct spheres, and thus fitted himself to become a consummate practical seaman and navigator.
In 1470 he arrived at Lisbon, after being wrecked in a sea fight that began off Cape St Vincent, and escaping to land on a plank. In Portugal he married Felipa Munnia Perestrello, daughter of a captain in the service of Prince Henry, called the Navigator, one of the early colonists and the first governor of Porto Santo, an island off Madeira. Columbus visited the island, and employed his time in making maps and charts for a livelihood, while he pored over the logs and papers of his deceased father-in-law, and talked with old seamen of their voyages, and of the mystery of the western seas. About this time, too, he seems to have arrived at the conclusion that much of the world remained undiscovered, and step by step to have conceived that design of reaching Asia by sailing west which was to result in the discovery of America. In 1474 we find him expounding his views to Paolo Toscanelli, the Florentine physician and cosinographer, and receiving the heartiest encouragement.
These views he supported with three different arguments, derived from natural reasons, from the theories of geographers, and from the reports and traditions of mariners. " He be lieved the world to be a sphere," says Helps ; " he under estimated its size ; he over-estimated the size of the Asiatic continent. The farther that continent extended to the east, the nearer it came round towards Spain." And he had but to turn from the marvellous propositions of Mandeville and Aliaco to become the recipient of confidences more marvellous still. The air was full of rumours, and the weird imaginings of many generations of mediaeval navi gators had taken shape and substance, and appeared bodily to men s eyes. Martin Vicente, a Portuguese pilot, had found, 400 leagues to the westward of Cape St Vincent, and after a westerly gale of many days duration, a piece of strange wood, wrought, but not with iron; Pedro Correa, his own brother-in-law, had seen another such waif at Porto Santo, with great canes capable of holding four quarts of wine between joint and joint, and had heard of two men being washed up at Flores, " very broad-faced, and differing in aspect from Christians." West of the Azores now and then there hove in sight the mysterious islands of St Brandam ; and 200 leagues west of the Canaries lay somewhere the lost Island of the Seven Cities, that two valiant Genoese had vainly endeavoured to discover. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless tradi tions may have reached his ear, of the voyages of Biorn and Leif, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland and Vinland that lay towards the setting sun. All were hints and rumours to bid the bold mariner sail westward, and this he at length determined to do.
was necessary for the success of this design. The Senate of Genoa had the honour to receive the first offer, and the responsibility of refusing it. Rejected by his native city, the projector turned next to John II. of Portugal. This king had already an open field for discovery and enterprise along the African coast ; but he listened to the Genoese, and referred him to a Committee of Council for Geographical Affairs. The council s report was altogether adverse ; but the king, who was yet inclined to favour the theory of Columbus, assented to the suggestion of the bishop of Ceu.ta that the plan should be carried out in secret and without Columbus s knowledge by means of a
caravel or light frigate. The caravel was dispatched, but