酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

The Story of Mankind-Part15_Hendrik van Loon(1882-1944)_Academic Readings-第3页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共3页


and, as I said, they were now debating the respective

advantages of the eastern and the western routes.



Among the advocates of the western route was a Genoese

mariner by the name of Cristoforo Colombo. He was the son



of a wool merchant. He seems to have been a student at the

University of Pavia where he specialised in mathematics and



geometry. Then he took up his father's trade but soon we find

him in Chios in the eastern Mediterranean travelling on business.



Thereafter we hear of voyages to England but whether

he went north in search of wool or as the captain of a ship we



do not know. In February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we

are to believe his own words) visited Iceland, but very likely



he only got as far as the Faroe Islands which are cold enough

in February to be mistaken for Iceland by any one. Here



Colombo met the descendants of those brave Norsemen who

in the tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had



visited America in the eleventh century, when Leif's vessel

had been blown to the coast of Vineland, or Labrador.



What had become of those far western colonies no one

knew. The American colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the husband



of the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, founded in the

year 1003, had been discontinued three years later on account



of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland, not a

word had been heard from the settlers since the year 1440.



Very likely the Greenlanders had all died of the Black Death.

which had just killed half the people of Norway. However



that might be, the tradition of a ``vast land in the distant west''

still survived among the people of the Faroe and Iceland, and



Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered further information

among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands and



then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one

of the captains who had served under Prince Henry the



Navigator.

From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself



to the quest of the western route to the Indies. He sent his

plans for such a voyage to the courts of Portugal and Spain.



The Portuguese, who felt certain that they possessed a monop-

oly of the eastern route, would not listen to his plans. In



Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, whose

marriage in 1469 had made Spain into a single kingdom, were



busy driving the Moors from their last stronghold, Granada.

They had no money for risky expeditions. They needed every



peseta for their soldiers.

Few people were ever forced to fight as desperately for



their ideas as this brave Italian. But the story of Colombo

(or Colon or Columbus, as we call him,) is too well known to



bear repeating. The Moors surrendered Granada on the second

of January of the year 1492. In the month of April of the



same year, Columbus signed a contract with the King and

Queen of Spain. On Friday, the 3rd of August, he left Palos



with three little ships and a crew of 88 men, many of whom

were criminals who had been offered indemnity of punishment



if they joined the expedition. At two o'clock in the morning

of Friday, the 12th of October, Columbus discovered land. On



the fourth of January of the year 1493, Columbus waved farewell

to the 44 men of the little fortress of La Navidad (none



of whom was ever again seen alive) and returned homeward.

By the middle of February he reached the Azores where the



Portuguese threatened to throw him into gaol. On the fifteenth

of March, 1493, the admiral reached Palos and together with



his Indians (for he was convinced that he had discovered some

outlying islands of the Indies and called the natives red



Indians) he hastened to Barcelona to tell his faithful patrons

that he had been successful and that the road to the gold and



the silver of Cathay and Zipangu was at the disposal of their

most Catholic Majesties.



Alas, Columbus never knew the truth. Towards the end

of his life, on his fourth voyage, when he had touched the mainland



of South America, he may have suspected that all was

not well with his discovery. But he died in the firm belief






文章总共3页

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号