【国外文学】哥伦布传 The Life Of Christopher Columbus.docx

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1、【国外文学】哥伦布传 The Life Of Christopher ColumbusPrefaceThis book contains a life of Columbus, written with the hope ofinteresting all classes of readers.His life has often been written, and it has sometimes been well written.The great book of our countryman, Washington Irving, is a noble model ofdiligent

2、 work given to a very difficult subject. And I think every personwho has dealt with the life of Columbus since Irving's time, has expressedhis gratitude and respect for the author.According to the custom of biographers, in that time and since, heincludes in those volumes the whole history of the

3、 West India islands, forthe period after Columbus discovered them till his death. He also thinks ithis duty to include much of the history of Spain and of the Spanish court. Ido not myself believe that it is wise to attempt, in a book of biography, soconsiderable a study of the history of the time.

4、Whether it be wise or not, Ihave not attempted it in this book. I have rather attempted to followclosely the personal fortunes of Christopher Columbus, and, to the historyaround him, I have given only such space as seemed absolutely necessaryfor the illustration of those fortunes.I have followed on

5、the lines of his own personal narrative wherever wehave it. And where this is lost I have used the absolutely contemporaryauthorities. I have also consulted the later writers, those of the nextgeneration and the generation which followed it. But the more one studiesthe life of Columbus the more one

6、feels sure that, after the greatness of hisdiscovery was really known, the accounts of the time were overlaid bywhat modern criticism calls myths, which had grown up in the enthusiasmof those who honored him, and which form no part of real history. If thenthe reader fails to find some stories with w

7、hich he is quite familiar in thehistory, he must not suppose that they are omitted by accident, but mustgive to the author of the book the credit of having used some discretion inthe choice of his authorities.When I visited Spain in 1882, I was favored by the officers of theSpanish government with e

8、very facility for carrying my inquiry as far as a short visit would permit. Since that time Mr. Harrisse has published hisinvaluable volumes on the life of Columbus. It certainly seems as if everydocument now existing, which bears upon the history, had been collatedby him. The reader will see that I

9、 have made full use of this treasure-house.The Congress of Americanistas, which meets every year, bringsforward many curious studies on the history of the continent, but it canscarcely be said to have done much to advance our knowledge of thepersonal life of Columbus.The determination of the people

10、of the United States to celebrate fitlythe great discovery which has advanced civilization and changed the faceof the world, makes it certain that a new interest has arisen in the life ofthe great man to whom, in the providence of God, that discovery was due.The author and publishers of this book of

11、fer it as their contribution in thegreat celebration, with the hope that it may be of use, especially in thedirection of the studies of the young. EDWARD E. HALE.ROXBURY, MASS., June 1st, 1891.Chapter 1EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS. HIS BIRTH AND BIRTHPLACE-HIS EARLY EDUCATION-HIS EXPERIENCE AT SEA-HIS MAR

12、RIAGE AND RESIDENCE IN LISBON-HIS PLANS FORTHE DISCOVERY OF A WESTWARD PASSAGE TO THE INDIES.Christopher Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa. The honorof his birth-place has been claimed by many villages in that Republic, andthe house in which he was born cannot be now pointed out with certai

13、nty.But the best authorities agree that the children and the grown people of theworld have never been mistaken when they have said: "America wasdiscovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa." Hisname, and that of his family, is always written Colombo, in the Italianpapers w

14、hich refer to them, for more than one hundred years before histime. In Spain it was always written Colon; in France it is written asColomb; while in England it has always kept its Latin form, Columbus. Ithas frequently been said that he himself assumed this form, becauseColumba is the Latin word for

15、 "Dove," with a fanciful feeling that, incarrying Christian light to the West, he had taken the mission of the dove.Thus, he had first found land where men thought there was ocean, and hewas the messenger of the Holy Spirit to those who sat in darkness. It hasalso been assumed that he took

16、 the name of Christopher, "the Christ-bearer," for similar reasons. But there is no doubt that he was baptized"Christopher," and that the family name had long been Columbo. Thecoincidences of name are but two more in a calendar in which poetrydelights, and of which history is ful

17、l.Christopher Columbus was the oldest son of Dominico Colombo andSuzanna Fontanarossa. This name means Red-fountain. He bad twobrothers, Bartholomew and Diego, whom we shall meet again. Diego isthe Spanish way of writing the name which we call James.It seems probable that Christopher was born in the

18、 year 1436, thoughsome writers have said that he was older than this, and some that he wasyounger. The record of his birth and that of his baptism have not beenfound.His father was not a rich man, but he was able to send Christopher, asa boy, to the University of Pavia, and here he studied grammar,

19、geometry,geography and navigation, astronomy and the Latin language. But this wasas a boy studies, for in his fourteenth year he left the university andentered, in hard work, on "the larger college of the world." If the dategiven above, of his birth, is correct, this was in the year 1450,

20、a few yearsbefore the Turks took Constantinople, and, in their invasion of Europe,affected the daily life of everyone, young or old, who lived in theMediterranean countries. From this time, for fifteen years, it is hard totrace along the life of Columbus. It was the life of an intelligent youngseama

21、n, going wherever there was a voyage for him. He says himself, "Ipassed twenty-three years on the sea. I have seen all the Levant, all thewestern coasts, and the North. I have seen England; I have often made thevoyage from Lisbon to the Guinea coast." This he wrote in a letter toFerdinand

22、and Isabella. Again he says, "I went to sea from the most tenderage and have continued in a sea life to this day. Whoever gives himself upto this art wants to know the secrets of Nature here below. It is more thanforty years that I have been thus engaged. Wherever any one has sailed,there I hav

23、e sailed."Whoever goes into the detail of the history of that century will comeupon the names of two relatives of his-Colon el Mozo (the Boy, or theYounger) and his uncle, Francesco Colon, both celebrated sailors. Thelatter of the two was a captain in the fleets of Louis XI of France, andimagin

24、ative students may represent him as meeting Quentin Durward atcourt. Christopher Columbus seems to have made several voyages underthe command of the younger of these relatives. He commanded theGenoese galleys near Cyprus in a war which the Genoese had with theVenetians. Between the years 1461 and 14

25、63 the Genoese were acting asallies with King John of Calabria, and Columbus had a command ascaptain in their navy at that time."In 1477," he says, in one of his letters, "in the month of February, Isailed more than a hundred leagues beyond Tile." By this he means Thule,or Icelan

26、d. "Of this island the southern part is seventy-three degrees fromthe equator, not sixty-three degrees, as some geographers pretend." But here he was wrong. The Southern part of Iceland is in the latitude of sixty-three and a half degrees. "The English, chiefly those of Bristol, carry

27、 theirmerchandise, to this island, which is as large as England. When I wasthere the sea was not frozen, but the tides there are so strong that they riseand fall twenty-six cubits."The order of his life, after his visit to Iceland, is better known. He wasno longer an adventurous sailor-boy, gla

28、d of any voyage which offered; hewas a man thirty years of age or more. He married in the city of Lisbonand settled himself there. His wife was named Philippa. She was thedaughter of an Italian gentleman named Bartolomeo Muniz de Perestrello,who was, like Columbus, a sailor, and was alive to all the

29、 new interestswhich geography then presented to all inquiring minds. This was in theyear 1477, and the King of Portugal was pressing the expeditions which,before the end of the century, resulted in the discovery of the route to theIndies by the Cape of Good Hope.The young couple had to live. Neither

30、 the bride nor her husband hadany fortune, and Columbus occupied himself as a draftsman, illustratingbooks, making terrestrial globes, which must have been curiouslyinaccurate, since they had no Cape of Good Hope and no AmericanContinent, drawing charts for sale, and collecting, where he could, them

31、aterial for such study. Such charts and maps were beginning to assumenew importance in those days of geographical discovery. The valueattached to them may be judged from the statement that Vespucius paidone hundred and thirty ducats for one map. This sum would be more thanfive hundred dollars of our

32、 time.Columbus did not give up his maritime enterprises. He made voyagesto the coast of Guinea and in other directions.It is said that he was in command of one of the vessels of his relativeColon el Mozo, when, in the Portuguese seas, this admiral, with hissquadron, engaged four Venetian galleys ret

33、urning from Flanders. Abloody battle followed. The ship which Christopher Columbuscommanded was engaged with a Venetian vessel, to which it set fire.There was danger of an explosion, and Columbus himself, seeing thisdanger, flung himself into the sea, seized a floating oar, and thus gained the shore

34、. He was not far from Lisbon, and from this time made Lisbon hishome for many years.* The critics challenge these dates, but there seems to be goodfoundation for the story.It seems. clear that, from the time when he arrived in Lisbon, formore than twenty years, he was at work trying to interest peop

35、le in his"great design," of western discovery. He says himself, "I was constantlycorresponding with learned men, some ecclesiastics and some laymen,some Latin and some Greek, some Jews and some Moors." Theastronomer Toscanelli was one of these correspondents.We must not suppose t

36、hat the idea of the roundness of the earth wasinvented by Columbus. Although there were other theories about its shape,many intelligent men well understood that the earth was a globe, and thatthe Indies, though they were always reached from Europe by going to theEast, must be on the west of Europe a

37、lso. There is a very funny story inthe travels of Mandeville, in which a traveler is represented as havinggone, mostly on foot, through all the countries of Asia, but finallydetermines to return to Norway, his home. In his farthest easterninvestigation, he hears some people calling their cattle by a

38、 peculiar cry,which he had never heard before. After he returned home, it was necessaryfor him to take a day's journey westward to look after some cattle he hadlost. Finding these cattle, he also heard the same cry of people callingcattle, which he had heard in the extreme East, and now learned,

39、 for thefirst time, that he had gone round the world on foot, to turn and come backby the same route, when he was only a day's journey from home,Columbus was acquainted with such stories as this, and also had theastronomical knowledge which almost made him know that the world wasround, "and

40、, like a ball, goes spinning in the air." The difficulty was topersuade other people that, because of this roundness, it would be possibleto attain Asia by sailing to the West.Now all the geographers of repute supposed that there was not nearlyso large a distance as there proved to be, in truth

41、, between Europe andAsia. Thus, in the geography of Ptolemy, which was the standard book atthat time, one hundred and thirty-five degrees, a little more than one-third of the earth's circumference, is given to the space between the extremeeastern part of the Indies and the Canary Islands. In fac

42、t, as we now know,the distance is one hundred and eighty degrees, half the world'scircumference. Had Columbus believed there was any such immensedistance, he would never have undertaken his voyage.Almost all the detailed knowledge of the Indies which the people ofhis time had, was given by the e

43、xplorations of Marco Polo, a Venetiantraveler of the thirteenth century, whose book had long been in thepossession of European readers. It is a very entertaining book now, andmay well be recommended to young people who like stories of adventure.Marco Polo had visited the court of the Great Khan of T

44、artary at Pekin, theprince who brought the Chinese Empire into very much the condition inwhich it now is. He had, also, given accounts of Japan or Cipango, whichhe had himself never visited. Columbus knew, therefore, that, well east ofthe Indies, was the island of Cipango, and he aimed at that islan

45、d, becausehe supposed that that was the nearest point to Europe, as in fact it is. Andwhen finally he arrived at Cuba, as the reader will see, he thought he wasin Japan.Columbus's father-in-law had himself been the Portuguese governor ofthe island of Porto Santo, where he had founded a colony. H

46、e, therefore,was interested in western explorations, and probably from him Columbuscollected some of the statements which are known to have influenced him,with regard to floating matters from the West, which are constantly borneupon that island by the great currents of the sea.The historians are fon

47、d of bringing together all the intimations whichare given in the Greek and Latin classics, and in later authors, with regardto a land beyond Asia. Perhaps the most famous of them is that of Seneca,"In the later years there shall come days in which Ocean shall loose hischains, and a great land s

48、hall appear . . . and Thule shall not be the last ofthe worlds."In a letter which Toscanelli wrote to Columbus in 1474, he inclosed acopy of a letter which he had already sent to an officer of Alphonso V, theKing of Portugal. In writing to Columbus, he says, "I see that you have agreat and

49、 noble desire to go into that country (of the East) where the spices come from, and in reply to your letter I send you a copy of that which Iaddressed some years ago to my attached friend in the service of the mostserene King of Portugal. He had an order from his Highness to write meon this subject.

50、 . . . If I had a globe in my hand, I could show you what isneeded. But I prefer to mark out the route on a chart like a marine chart,which will be an assistance to your intelligence and enterprise. On thischart I have myself drawn the whole extremity of our western shore fromIreland as far down as the coast of Guinea toward the South, with