When the Court went to Salamanca at the end of 1486, Dea arranged that Columbus should go there too, and he lodged him in a country farm called Valcuebo, which belonged to his convent and was equi-distant from it and the city.  Here the good Dominican fathers came and visited him, bringing with them professors from the university, who discussed patiently with Columbus his theories and ambitions, and, himself all conscious, communicated new knowledge to him, and quietly put him right on many a scientific point.  There were professors of cosmography and astronomy in the university, familiar with the works of Alfraganus and Regiomontanus.  It is likely that it was at this time that Columbus became possessed of d’Ailly’s ‘Imago Mundi’, which little volume contained a popular resume of the scientific views of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, and was from this time forth Columbus’s constant companion.

Here at Valcuebo and later, when winter came, in the great hall of the Dominican convent at Salamanca, known as the “De Profundis” hall, where the monks received guests and held discussions, the Idea of Columbus was ventilated and examined.  He heard what friendly sceptics had to say about it; he saw the kind of argument that he would have to oppose to the existing scientific and philosophical knowledge on cosmography.  There is no doubt that he learnt a good deal at this time; and more important even than this, he got his project known and talked about; and he made powerful friends, who were afterwards to be of great use to him.  The Marquesa de Moya, wife of his friend Cabrera, took a great liking to him; and as she was one of the oldest and closest friends of the Queen, it is likely that she spoke many a good word for Columbus in Isabella’s ear.

By the time the Court moved to Cordova early in 1487, Columbus was once more hopeful of getting a favourable hearing.  He followed the Court to Cordova, where he received a gracious message from the Queen to the effect that she had not forgotten him, and that as soon as her military preoccupations permitted it, she would go once more, and more fully, into his proposals.  In the meantime he was attached to the Court, and received a quarterly payment of 3000 maravedis.  It seemed as though the unfavourable decision of Talavera’s committee had been forgotten.

In the meantime he was to have a change of scene.  Isabella followed Ferdinand to the siege of Malaga, where the Court was established; and as there were intervals in which other than military business might be transacted, Columbus was ordered to follow them in case his affairs should come up for consideration.  They did not; but the man himself had an experience that may have helped to keep his thoughts from brooding too much on his unfulfilled ambition.  Years afterwards, when far away on lonely seas, amid the squalor of a little ship and the staggering buffets of a gale, there would surely sometimes leap into his