Columbus, however, did not trust entirely to his own practical knowledge of navigation, or to the arguments he drew from a scientific acquaintance with cosmography:  he heard the reports of skilful and experienced pilots, and corresponded with several men of science.  He is said, in a particular manner to have been confirmed in his belief that India might be reached by sailing to the west, by the communications which he had with Paul, a physician of Florence, a man well known at this period for his acquaintance with geometry and cosmography, and who had paid particular attention to the discoveries of the Portuguese.  He stated several facts, and offered several ingenious conjectures, and moreover, sent a chart to Columbus, on which he pointed out the course which he thought would lead to the desired object.

As Columbus was at the court of Lisbon, when he had resolved to undertake his great enterprise, and, in fact, regarded himself as in some degree a Portuguese subject, he naturally applied in the first instance to John II., requesting that monarch to let him have some ships to carry him to Marco Polo’s island of Zepango or Japan.  The king referred him to the Bishop of Ceuta and his two physicians; but they having no faith in the existence of this island, rejected the services of Columbus.  For seven years afterwards he solicited the court of Spain to send him out, while, during the same period, his brother, Bartholomew, was soliciting the court of England:  the latter was unsuccessful, but Columbus himself at length persuaded Isabella to grant 40,000 crowns for the service of the expedition.  He accordingly sailed from Palos, in Andalusia, on the 3d of August, 1492; and in thirty-three days landed on one of the Bahamas.  He had already sailed nine hundred and fifty leagues west from the Canaries:  after touching at the Bahamas, he continued his course to the west, and at length discovered the island of Cuba.  He went no farther on this voyage; but on his return home, he discovered Hispaniola.  The variation of the compass was first observed in this voyage.  In a second voyage, in 1492, Columbus discovered Jamaica, and in a third, in 1494, he visited Trinidad and the continent of America, near the mouth of the Orinoco.  In 1502, he made a fourth and last voyage, in which he explored some part of the shores of the Gulph of Mexico.  The ungrateful return he met with from his country is well known:  worn out with fatigue, disappointment, and sorrow, he died at Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506, in the fifty-ninth year of his age.

In the mean time, the completion of the discovery of America was rapidly advancing.  In 1499, Ogeda, one of Columbus’s companions, sailed for the new world:  he was accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci:  little was discovered on the voyage, except some part of the coast of Guana and Terra Firma.  But Amerigo, having, on his return to Spain, published the first account of the New World, the whole of this extensive