134 WORKMEN AND HEROES On a subject fraught with so much inherent difficulty, contradictory evidence, and conflict of opinion, he is on the safest ground who candidly holds his judg- ment in reserve. In the light of the keenly-sifted evidence which modern critical study has brought to bear, the laudatory judgments of Irving and Prescott, ren- dered sixty years ago, cannot stand wholly approved. Neither can a discerning reader accept the fulsome laudations of his principal French biographer, Roselly de Lorgues, whose rhetorical panegyrics and pious eulogies place its author in the front rank of the canonizers. On the other hand, those who have taken the unfavorable view of Columbus, have done their utmost to divest him of most of the honors which the general voice of history has assigned him as America's greatest discoverer. The estab- lished fact that parts of North America were seen centuries before, though no permanent settlement nor continuity of intercourse ensued, has been used to dis- credit him, though he was undeniably the pioneer who set out with a plan to discover, and did discover by design, what others found only by accident. His geographical ideas were derived, they say, from Behaim and Toscanelli ; his nau- tical skill from Pinzon ; his certainty of finding new lands from Alonzo Sanchez ; his courage and daring from some of his fellow-voyagers. We are pointed to his double reckoning on his first voyage, by which he de- ceived his sailors as to their true distance from Spain, as evidence of a false nat- ure. He is charged with ambition, cupidity, and arrogance, in demanding titles, dignities, and money as fruits of his discoveries. He was, we are told, a fanatic, a visionary, a tyrant, a buccaneer, a liar, and a slave-trader. He was proud, cruel, and vindictive. What manner of man, then, was this Columbus, with whose name the trump of fame has been busy so long ? As to his person, we have no verified portrait, while the likenesses (of all periods) claiming to represent his features, present ir- reconcilable differences. But here is the description of him given by Herrera : "Columbus was tall of stature, long-visaged, of a majestic aspect, his nose hooked, his eyes gray, of a clear complexion, somewhat ruddy. He was witty and pleasant, well-spoken and eloquent, moderately grave, affable to strangers, to his own family mild. His conversation was discreet, which gained him the af- fection of those he had to deal with, and his presence attracted respect, having an air of authority and grandeur. He was a man of undaunted courage and high thoughts, patient, unmoved in the many troubles and adversities that attended him, ever relying on the Divine Providence." Gomara describes him as " a man of good height, strong-limbed, with a long countenance, fresh and rosy in aspect, somewhat given to anger, hardy in exposure to fatigues." Benzoni says that Columbus was "a man of exalted intellect, of a pleasant and ingenuous countenance." Bernaldez, the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, who knew him intimately in his later years, says " he was a man of very lofty genius, and of marvellously honored memory." With these personal characteristics, Columbus united a restless spirit, a firm
