Where Was Columbus Born?

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 168, 4 September 1886, Page 3

Where Was Columbus Born?

While statesmen and patriots are buey makitg history, the citizens of the little town of Calvi have be&n industriously upsetting , biography. Every one knows that Christopher Columbus was born at Genoa. The intelligent schoolboy has res»d it in 1 the geography books. The hard' working tourist has noted it in his Baedeker. The atatue to the great navigator has been set up just outside the railway station, alike regardless of expense and . (the critics say) of nature. No one can come in or out of the city without being impressed by the fact that he has seen it. ■ The citizens of Calvi have endured this for years. But the inhabitants of an island which produced a Bonaparte were not to be silenced, by statuary or guide bopka. Last." week • they revolted and claimed their '. rights. Such festivities were held in honour J of Columbus that all Corsica must regard his birthplace as settled. A marble tablet has been let into the front of the house . where he was born, and Calvi claims, henceforth, an indefeasible honour., Un-. fortunately, some sixteen miles out <of Genoa the' frontage of a little mean tavern ,. in the village of Cogoletoalso exhibits a re- ~ markable plaque. This is the inscription engraved upon it :- " Stop, traveller, , Here ' Columbus 'first paw light.' This too straitened house 'was' the home of a man -greater than the world. * There bad been but one" world. 'Let there be'two,' said Columbus, and two there were."- Till Calvi can rival'this superb piece of grandiloquence Cogo* ' leto i 9 safe. ~ —