should have found himself in the service of the Spaniards when he set
out upon his voyage which was to culminate in the discovery of the New
World. He himself had been far more concerned with the Portuguese than
with their eastern neighbours. Indeed, until the discovery of America,
the Spaniards, fully occupied with the expulsion of the Moors from
within their frontiers in Europe, could give but little attention to the
science of navigation.

The Portuguese, on the other hand, had for a considerable period been
specializing in seamanship. From his castle at Faro, on the southernmost
shores of Portugal, where Prince Henry the Navigator had founded his
maritime school, that royal scientist had watched with pride the
captains whom he had trained as they sailed their vessels over the gold
and blue horizon of the Far South, and had exultantly drunk in on their
return the tales of new shores and of oceans ploughed for the first
time; of spices, riches men, and beasts, all new and strange, and, all
appealing strongly to the imagination of the learned Prince, who only
restrained himself with difficulty from plunging into the unknown.

It was with men such as these of Prince Henry's with whom the Genoese
had been brought into contact on his first visit to Portugal. That he
had been received by this set as one of themselves is sufficiently
evidenced by the fact of his marriage with a daughter of Bartholomew
Perestrello. It was naturally, therefore, to the Portuguese Government
that Columbus first applied for the assistance in men and ships which
were to bear him to the land which he so fiercely promised.

As has been said, there is no doubt that Columbus was a visionary who
possessed a large amount of practical knowledge and experience, from
which the indulgence in these visions sprang. That his theories were the