Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa in Italy in 1451. When he was 25 year old he moved to Lisbon, Portugal. While he lived there he sailed on many ships. He sailed as far north as England and as far south as Guinea on the west coast of Africa. He even said that once he sailed as far north as Iceland, but that is probably not true.
In Lisbon he studied a lot. He studied geography, read the Bible carefully, and listened to what other sailors had to tell about distant places. He loved the sea and sailing and when he got married he lived for some time on a small island near Madeira. Quite early in his life Columbus was absolutely sure that the passage across the Atlantic was quite short and that on the other side was Asia. He wrote: “From the point where Spain ends to the point where India begins, the ocean is not wide and it is possible to sail across it in a few days.”
He asked the Portuguese King, John II, to help him organize an expedition, but the king was himself a very good sailor and had studied maps and reports from other sailors. He didn’t believe in Columbus’s ideas at all and didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
Columbus moved to Spain. After some years, he managed to convince the Spanish Queen Isabella to help him finance an expedition. Queen Isabella was deeply religious. She agreed to help Columbus when he told her that they could spread Christianity to all those people who lived on the other side of the Atlantic. But there were, of course, also political and economic reasons for the expedition. And Columbus himself would become Viceroy of all the islands and all the land that he discovered.
On October 12, 1492, after 33 days at sea, they saw land. They had discovered a new continent, but Columbus was quite sure that they had arrived in India. He rowed ashore himself, put up the royal flag and claimed the land for Spain. He called the natives Indians.
Columbus called the island where they landed San Salvador, but today experts are not quite sure which island he landed on, because the logbook, which he sent to Queen when he got back, disappeared and has never been found. The island he landed on was one of the Bahamas. During this first expedition he also discovered Cuba and Haiti. Near Haiti the Santa Maria was shipwrecked and sank. When Columbus started the journey back to Spain in January 1493, some of the sailors stayed on Haiti as colonists.
Back in Spain, Columbus went to the Queen and told her enthusiastically about the rich countries he had visited and showed her some of the valuable things he had brought back – plants, spices and pieces of gold. He had also brought back some slaves from the islands.
The text is about …
the Portuguese King, John II, his childhood, studies and his expedition
how Christopher Columbus discovered Cuba and Haiti
the Spanish Queen Isabella, her childhood and her expedition
Christopher Columbus, his childhood, studies and his expedition
