nor to heed the discredit that might be cast upon it by others; reminding
them that his great scheme of discovery had originally been treated with
similar contempt. He avowed in the fullest manner his persuasion, that,
from his earliest infancy, he had been chosen by Heaven for the
accomplishment of those two great designs, the discovery of the New World,
and the rescue of the holy sepulchre. For this purpose, in his tender
years, he had been guided by a divine impulse to embrace the profession of
the sea, a mode of life, he observes, which produces an inclination to
inquire into the mysteries of nature; and he had been gifted with a
curious spirit, to read all kinds of chronicles, geographical treatises,
and works of philosophy. In meditating upon these, his understanding had
been opened by the Deity, "as with a palpable hand," so as to discover the
navigation to the Indies, and he had been inflamed with ardor to undertake
the enterprise. "Animated as by a heavenly fire," he adds, "I came to your
highnesses: all who heard of my enterprise mocked at it; all the sciences
I had acquired profited me nothing; seven years did I pass in your royal
court, disputing the case with persons of great authority and learned in
all the arts, and in the end they decided that all was vain. In your
highnesses alone remained faith and constancy. Who will doubt that this
light was from the holy Scriptures, illumining you as well as myself with
rays of marvelous brightness?"

These ideas, so repeatedly, and solemnly, and artlessly expressed, by a
man of the fervent piety of Columbus, show how truly his discovery arose
from the working of his own mind, and not from information furnished by
others. He considered it a divine intimation, a light from Heaven, and the
fulfillment of what had been fortold by our Saviour and the prophets.
Still he regarded it but as a minor event, preparatory to the great
enterprise, the recovery of the holy sepulchre. He pronounced it a miracle
effected by Heaven, to animate himself and others to that holy