to have all the learned men of Spain come together and listen to the
Italian's project. If a majority of these wise men thought the voyage
might prove profitable, then they would immediately give Columbus the
necessary ships and men. Accordingly they issued three important orders:
one, bidding Columbus to appear before a learned council in Sevilla;
another, commanding every town through which he might pass in reaching
Sevilla to give him hospitality; a third, commanding Sevilla itself to
give him lodging and to treat him as if he were a government official.
All this must have looked so promising, so much in earnest, that
Columbus willingly put off his return to Portugal. In spite of the
narrow-mindedness he had encountered in the learned men of Salamanca, he
started off, full of hope, to talk to the same sort of learned men of
Sevilla. But it all came to naught. For some reason now unknown the
meeting was postponed; and the summer campaign starting soon after, the
government had other matters to consider.

In August of that year, 1488, Columbus's younger son Fernando, whose
mother was a Spanish woman, was born in Cordova, and soon after the
father appears to have returned to Lisbon.

Here again we do not know what happened; the only proof we have that he
made the journey at all is a memorandum written by him in his copy of
the "Imago Mundi." It is dated Lisbon, December, 1488, and states that
Bartholomew Dias had just rounded southern Africa--the Cape of Good
Hope. Whether Columbus made another fruitless appeal to Portugal we
shall never know. We only know that, instead of going from Lisbon to
England, he went back to procrastinating Spain. That he came back by
King Ferdinand's summons is almost positive, for another royal decree
was issued for every city through which he passed to furnish him with
board and lodging at the king's expense. This was in May, 1489, which