AMERICA’S DISCOVERER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 April 1934, Page 3

AMERICA’S DISCOVERER

Heartbreaking setbacks, official incredulity, poverty, treachery—that was tlie lot of Christopher Columbus, who discovered a New -World on 3rd August, 1492. • For eighteen years lie hawked his idea about Europe. He had to, contend with quotations , from the Psalms, Genesis, and St. Chrysostom. The men of the supposed new lands, it was said, could not lie descended from Adam, and therefore could not exist.

Even if tlie ship got down tho slope across the Atlantic, lie was told, it could never climb back again! Children pointed to tlieir foreheads when he passed. The King of Portugal tried to double-cross him after the plan had been confided to him. His native Geneva and Venice repulsed him. Henry VII. of England did not reply until too late. Columbus had almost begged, his way from Court to Court when, at last, the Queen „pf Spain offered to pawn her jewels for him if need be,- and he left Palos keeping a false log to conceal the immense distance from his followers. Forty days later he was able to go on his knees and kiss the shore of an island off the American coast.

He returned to Spain with six painted Indians (ns lie called them) and live parrots, and he was magnificently welcomed by the Court and followed by cheering crowds, though a member of the expedition who thought he had a grievance left the country and turned Mussulman.

Loaded with honour, Columbus returned to America to find that his colony had been massacred. There was insubordination among his followers, and soon he was taken to Spain in irons

The Court refused all pleas for reinstatement, and a few years later the man who had added half ji world to the globe died, broken in health and neglected, in poverty. One Coat makes Floors like New 1 The