[Nullgroupware-general] weathe

[Zapato <mon...@ju...>]

 He is known, among other places, to have visited England, "Ultima
Thule" (Iceland), the Guinea Coast, and the Greek Isles; and he appears
to have been some time in the service of Rene of Provence, for whom he
is recorded to have intercepted and seized a Venetian galley with great
bravery and audacity. According to his son, too, he sailed with Colombo
el Mozo, a bold sea captain and privateer; and a sea fight under this
commander was the means of bringing him ashore in Portugal. Meanwhile,
however, he was preparing himself for greater achievements by reading
and meditating on the works of Ptolemy and Marinus, of Nearchus and
Pliny, the Cosmographia of Cardinal Aliaco, the travels of Marco Polo
and Mandeville. He mastered all the sciences essential to his calling,
learned to draw charts and construct spheres, and thus fitted himself to
become a consummate practical seaman and navigator. In 1470 he arrived
at Lisbon, after being wrecked in a sea fight that began off Cape St.
Vincent, and escaping to land on a plank. In Portugal he married Felipa
Moniz de Perestrello, daughter of Bartollomeu Perestrello, a captain in
the service of Prince Henry, called the Navigator, one of the early
colonists and the first governor of Porto Santo, an island off Madeira.
Columbus visited the island, and employed his time in making maps and
charts for a livelihood, while he pored over the logs and papers of his
deceased father-in-law, and talked with old seamen of their voyages and
of the mystery of the Western seas. About this time, too, he seems to
have arrived at the conclusion that much of the world remained
undiscovered, and step by step to have conceived that design of reaching
Asia by sailing west which was to result in the discovery of America. In
1474 we find him expounding his views to Paolo Toscanelli, the
Florentine physician and cosmographer, and receiving the he