which followed the application of the magnet to the mariner's compass, and the age which immediately commenced after the discovery of America and of the East Indies by sea. During this epoch, gunpowder and the art of printing were both invented; ancient learning, the arts and sciences, were revived; a powerful and successful resistance to the papal authority was declared; and the balance of power among princes became a leading policy in Europe.

To Portugal and to her sovereign, King John I., is due the honour of being the first nation and prince in Europe to undertake great discoveries. Some adventurers from Spain fell in previously with the Canaries; but this discovery was not considered a national enterprise; although the pope, in his assumed divine right to all the countries in the world, granted, in perpetuity, these Fortunate Islands, as they were called, with their infidel inhabitants as slaves, to Louis de la Cerda, of the royal family of Castile, who transferred them afterwards to a Norman baron.

In the year 1412, John I., King of Portugal, commenced those voyages along the coasts of Africa, directed by his son, Prince Henry, which, in 1419, discovered Madeira, and, in 1433, extended so far south as to double Cape Boyador, and to enter the dreaded torrid zone. Before the death of Prince Henry, in 1463, the Azores and Cape de Verd Islands were discovered by, the Portuguese. From this period until the accession of John II., the nephew of Prince Henry, in 1481, the spirit of maritime discovery languished in Portugal, although a trade with the previously found countries was carried on without interruption. In 1484, John II. fitted out a powerful fleet, and declared himself the patron of navigation and discovery. It was in his service that Columbus completed that knowledge and acquired that distinction which prepared him for engaging in the voyages that render his name immortal. The Portuguese, after advancing south and forming settlements along the coast of Africa, reached the Cape of Good Hope; and a voyage round it was accomplished by Vasco de Gama, in the year 1497, five years after the discovery of America by Columbus.

The mind of this extraordinary man had, from an early period, been occupied in preparing the design of the sublime enterprise that was destined to extend the limits to which ignorance and superstition had confined the boundaries of the earth. He, as a dutiful citizen, made his first proposal to sail westward to the Indies to Genoa. His offer was rejected as that of a visionary adventurer. He felt

PERSEVERANCE UNDER DISCOURAGEMENT.

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the consolation arising from having discharged a patriotic obligation, but was mortified, but not disheartened, that his native country should have derided a project, which he foresaw would extend fame to the nation under whose auspices it should be undertaken.

He was received favourably by John II. of Portugal, where the intelligence, and nautical skill, and boldness of Columbus were well known, and where he had married the daughter of Perestrello, the discoverer of Madeira. But Ortis, the Bishop of Ceuta, not only thwarted his views and derided them as chimerical, but meanly attempted to deprive him of the honour by sending, in the direction proposed by Columbus, a vessel under a Portuguese pilot, in order to attempt and secure the glory of the discovery. The pilot had neither the genius nor the fortitude which are necessary to accomplish bold enterprises. He consequently failed in the treacherous attempt.

Columbus applied, soon afterwards, to the government of France. But neither the prince nor the people had, at that period, been animated by the spirit of maritime discovery. The chivalrous and generous Francis I. had not ascended the throne; and it was destined that the most brilliant project ever made, was rejected-a project which finally succeeded under the patronage of a royal family which became, in consequence, the most powerful rival that ever mortified the predecessors of the House of Bourbon.

FRANCIS I

Columbus then sent his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII. of England. That distrustful prince, after one bold and successful attempt to obtain the crown, never encouraged great, if in his mind the least hazardous or doubtful, enterprises. He, however, by slight but not conclusive promises, detained Bartholomew in England for six years; and the latter finally arranged with the king for the employment of his brother Christopher in the proposed voyage of discovery.

In the mean time, Columbus, disgusted with the meanness and exasperated by the treachery of Ortis, proceeded with his charts and proposals to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. For eight years he exercised his address, his patience, his interest, and his

abilities at this court, so remarkable then and long after for the tardiness of its decisions. It is a trite remark, that projectors are enthusiasts. It is fortunate that this accusation is true as regards the projectors of arduous undertakings; otherwise, the spirit and the health of Columbus would have been subdued before he accomplished his great mission. He had to endure the most fatiguing delays, and to hear pronounced against him presumptuous and insulting judgments by the ignorant and by the bigoted. To the honour of Isabella and her sex, and at her own expense, we are bound to attribute, in justice, the final success of Columbus: who, after displaying, during eight years, in his whole character and conduct, an assiduity, a firmness and resolve of mind, never sufficiently to be applauded and imitated, sailed from Cadiz on the 3d of August, 1492, on the most daring enterprise ever undertaken by man.

He proceeded on this voyage without any chart to guide him,with no acquaintance with the currents, the winds, or climates of unknown seas and lands, and in ignorance of the magnetic variation. His own genius and instinctive judgment,-his confidence in

the spherical system of the world, although the law of gravity was undiscovered, his knowledge of the human heart, and his address in commanding and winning those placed under his authority, enabled him to prevail over a crew which at length became impatient, and to advance, regardless of imaginary as well as real dangers, until he discovered the island of San Salvador, on October 12, 1492.

he left a colony of thirty men, with various stores. He then returned towards Europe with gold, cotton, &c., and accompanied by some of the natives. He experienced a boisterous, dangerous, and tedious passage. He put into the port of Lisbon with his vessels

C

crippled. John II. received him with honourable respect, although mortified at having lost for ever, by rejecting the offer formerly made by Columbus, the glory of discovering a world which was now to be assigned to Spain. Columbus proceeded to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, where he was received with as much distinction as was consistent with the cold and formal etiquette of the royal household of Spain.

It is not within our present design to enter on the history of this memorable achievement. The voyages of Columbus have often been, and especially by a distinguished American, well narrated.

The merit of discovering the Continent of the New World was attempted to be denied to Columbus; and so far with success, that an able, unprincipled adventurer, with whom Fonseca, an unforgiving bishop, conspired, obtained by forgery and mis-statements the credit, for some time, of being the original discoverer, and had, in consequence, his name given to all the vast regions of the West.

Columbus reached the Continent of America, in August, 1498; whereas Alonzo Ojeda (one of the former companions of Columbus) and Amerigo Vespucci did not sail on their first voyage from Cadiz, until the 20th of May, 1499. Amerigo made skilful use of the admiral's maps and charts, which the Bishop of Burgos put, from hatred to Columbus, into his hands; and to whom the bishop gave also clandestine licenses, in contravention of the authority held by Columbus from Ferdinand and Isabella.