Part 20 (2/2)

Various circumstances in the life of Columbus will be found to corroborate the state infires, and which at last rendered him a cripple and confined hie in one of his letters to the sovereigns, wherein he relates the consolation he had received froht season: _Tu vejez no irande Abrahae shall be no i Abrahaat Isaac, &c) The per the year previous to his death to travel on a e_ and infirmities; and the assertion of Oviedo that at the time of his death he was quite old (_era ya viejo_)

This fact of the advanced age of Colu over his character and history How much more extraordinary is the ardent enthusias career of solicitation, and the noble pride hich he refused to descend froain about his proposition, though life was rapidly wasting in delays How much more extraordinary is the hardihood hich he undertook repeated voyages into unknown seas, amidst all kinds of perils and hardshi+ps; the fortitude hich he bore up against an accuh to have disheartened and destroyed the most youthful and robust, and the irrepressible buoyancy of spirit hich to the last he still rose from under the ruined concerns and disappointed hopes and blasted projects of one enterprise, to launch into another, still more difficult and perilous

We have been accustos in Coluor of his life; how much more are they entitled to our wonder as the achieveht of years and infire of Columbus

The ancestry of Christopher Columbus has formed a point of zealous controversy, which is not yet satisfactorily settled Several honorable fa domains in Placentia, Montferrat, and the different parts of the Genoese territories, clai to their houses; and to these has recently been added the noble family of Colombo in Modena [Spotorno, Hist Meuinity with a uished renown has excited this rivalry; but it has been heightened, in particular instances, by the hope of succeeding to titles and situations of wealth and honor, when his ation is involved in particular obscurity, as even his inorance on the subject

Fernando Coluraphy of the admiral, after a poue and cloudy htly the atte hies; and dwells with more complacency upon others who make him a native of places in which there were persons of much honor of the name, and many sepulchral monuments with ar hione to the castle of Cucureo, to visit two brothers of the faest of as above one hundred years of age, and who he had heard were relatives of his father; but they could give him no information upon the subject; whereupon he breaks forth into his professed conte, that he thinks it better to content hio about inquiring whether his father ”were a merchant, or one who kept his hawks;”

[268] since, adds he, of persons of similar pursuits, there are thousands who die every day, whose hbors and relatives, perishes i possible afterwards to ascertain even whether they existed

After this, and a few more expressions of sies in veheostino Guistiniani, whom he calls a false historian, an inconsiderate, partial, or , in his psalter, traduced his father, by saying, that in his youth he had been employed in mechanical occupations

As, after all this discussion, Fernando leaves the question of his father's parentage in all its original obscurity, yet appears irritably sensitive to any derogatory suggestions of others, his whole evidence tends to the conviction that he really knew nothing to boast of in his ancestry

Of the nobility and antiquity of the Colombo family, of which the admiral probably was a remote descendant, we have some account in Herrera, ”We learn,” he says, ”that the emperor Otto the Second, in 940, confirmed to the counts Pietro, Giovanni, and Alexandro Colombo, brothers, the feudatory possessions which they held within the jurisdiction of the cities of Ayqui, Savona, Aste, Montferrato, Turin, Viceli, Paramo, and all others which they held in Italy It appears that the Colombos of Cuccaro, Cucureo, and Placentia, were the same, and that the emperor in the same year, 940, made donation to the said three brothers of the castles of Cuccaro, Conzano, Rosignano, and others, and of the fourth part of Bistanio, which appertained to the eraphers, bent on ennobling Coluh of Montferrat, in Piedmont, and to prove that he was born in his father's castle at that place; whence he and his brothers eloped at an early age, and never returned This was asserted in the course of a process brought by a certain Baldasser, or Balthazar, Colo the title and estates, on the death of Diego Colon, duke of Veragua, in 1578, the great-grandson, and last legitimate male descendant of the adainst this claim to relationshi+p Some account of the lawsuit will be found in another part of the work

This romantic story, like all others of the nobility of his parentage, is at utter variance with the subsequent events of his life, his long struggles with indigence and obscurity, and the difficulties he endured from the want of family connections How can it be believed, says Bossi, that this same man, who, in his most cruel adversities was incessantly taunted by his enemies with the obscurity of his birth, should not reply to this reproach, by declaring his origin, if he were really descended fronano? a circuhest credit with the Spanish nobility

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The different faator, seem to be various branches of one tree, and there is little doubt of his appertaining remotely to the same respectable stock

It appears evident, however, that Colu immediately from a line of humble but industrious citizens, which had existed in Genoa, even from the time of Giacomo Colombo the wool-carder, in 1311, mentioned by Spotorno; nor is this in any wise incompatible with the intimation of Fernando Colureat poverty, by the wars of Loes, had broken down and scattered many of the noblest fae of castles and domains, others were confounded with the humblest population of the cities

No VI

Birthplace of Columbus

There has been reatness of his renown has induced various places to lay claim to hi reflects greater lustre upon a city than to have given birth to distinguishedestablished opinion was in favor of Genoa; but such strenuous claims were asserted by the states of Placentia, and in particular of Piedmont, that the Academy of Sciences and Letters of Genoa was induced, in 1812, to noio, commissioners to examine into these pretensions

The claims of Placentia had been first advanced in 1662, by Pietro Maria Campi, in the ecclesiastical history of that place, who e of Pradello, in that vicinity It appeared probable, on investigation, that Bertolino Colorandfather to the admiral, had owned a small property in Pradello, the rent of which had been received by Domenico Colombo of Genoa, and after his death by his sons Christopher and Bartholo this assertion to be correct, there was no proof that either the adrandfather, had ever resided on that estate The very circumstances of the case indicated, on the contrary, that their home was in Genoa