WHEN Columbus arrived at Cordova he was given in charge to Alonzo de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of Castile, but was disappointed in his expectation of receiving immediate audience from the queen. He found the city in all the bustle of military preparation. It was a critical juncture of the war. The rival kings of Granada, Muley Boabdil the uncle, and Mohammed Boabdil the nephew had just formed a coalition, and their league called for prompt and vigorous measures. . . .

This was an unpropitious moment to urge a suit like that of Columbus. In fact the sovereigns had not a moment of leisure throughout this eventful year. Early in the spring, the King marched off to lay siege to the Moorish city of Loxa; and though the Queen remained at Cordova, she was continually employed in forwarding troops and supplies to the army, and, at the same time, attending to the multiplied exigencies of civil government.

In the winter, Columbus followed the court to Salamanca. Here his zealous friend, Alonzo de Quintanilla, exerted his influence to obtain for him the countenance of the celebrated Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo and grand cardinal of Spain. This was the most important personage about the court ; and was facetiously called by Peter Martyr, the "third king of Spain." The King and Queen had him always by their side, in peace and war. He accompanied them in their campaigns, and they never took any measure of consequence without consulting him. He was a man of sound judgment and quick intellect, eloquent in conversation, and able in the despatch of business. His appearance was lofty and venerable ; he was simple yet curiously nice in his apparel, and of gracious and gentle deportment. Though an elegant scholar, yet, like many learned men of his day, he was but little skilled in cosmography. When the theory of Columbus was first mentioned to him, it struck him as involving heterodox opinions, incompatible with the farm of the earth as described in the Sacred Scriptures. Further explanations had their force with a man of his quick apprehension and sound sense. He perceived that at any rate there could be nothing irreligious in attempting to extend the bounds of human knowledge, and to ascertain the works of creation : his scruples once removed, he permitted Columbus to be introduced to him, and gave him a courteous reception. The latter knew the importance of his auditor, and that a conference with the grand cardinal was almost equivalent to a communication with the throne ; he exerted himself to the utmost, therefore, to explain and demonstrate his proposition. The clear-headed cardinal listened with profound attention. He was pleased with the noble and earnest manner of Columbus, which showed him to be no common schemer ; he felt the grandeur, and, at the same time, the simplicity of his theory, and the force of many of the arguments by which it was supported. He determined that it was a matter highly worthy of the consideration of the sovereigns, and through his representations Columbus at length obtained admission to the royal presence.

We have but scanty particulars of this audience, nor can we ascertain whether Queen Isabella was present on the occasion; the contrary seems to be most probably the case. Columbus appeared in the royal presence with modesty, yet self-possession, neither dazzled nor daunted by the splendor of the court or the awful majesty of the throne. He unfolded his plan with eloquence and zeal, for he felt himself, as he afterwards declared, kindled as with a fire from on high, and considered himself the agent chosen by Heaven to accomplish its grand designs.

Ferdinand was too keen a judge of men not to appreciate the character of Columbus. He perceived that, however soaring might be his imagination, and vast and visionary his views, his scheme had scientific and practical foundation. His ambition was excited by the possibility of discoveries far more important than those which had shed such glory upon Portugal; and perhaps it was not the least recommendation of the enterprise to this subtle and grasping monarch, that, if successful, it would enable him to forestall that rival nation in the fruits of their long and arduous struggle, and by opening a direct course to India across the ocean, to bear off from them the monopoly of oriental commerce.

Still, as usual, Ferdinand was cool and wary and would not trust his own judgment in a matter that involved so many principles of science. He determined to take the opinion of the most learned men. in the kingdom, and to be guided by their decision. Fernando de Talavera, prior of the monastery of Prado and confessor of the queen, one of the most erudite men of Spain, and high in the royal confidence, was commanded to assemble the most learned astronomers and cosmographers for the purpose of holding a conference with Columbus, and examining him as to the grounds on which he founded his proposition. After they had informed themselves fully on the subject, they were to consult together and make a report to the sovereign of their collective opinion.

THE interesting conference relative to the proposition of Columbus took place in Salamanca, the great seat of learning in Spain. It was held in the Dominican convent of St. Stephen, in which he was lodged and entertained with great hospitality during the course of the examination.

Religion and science were at that time, and more especially in that country, closely associated. The treasures of learning were immured in monasteries, and the professors' chairs were exclusively filled from the cloister. The domination of the clergy extended over the state as well as the church, and posts of honor and influence at court, with the exception of hereditary nobles, were almost entirely confined to ecclesiastics. It was even common to find cardinals and bishops in helm and corslet at the head of armies ; for the crosier had been occasionally thrown by for the lance, during the holy war against the Moors. The era was distinguished for the revival of learning, but still more for the prevalence of religious zeal, and Spain surpassed all other countries in Christendom in the fervor of her devotion. . . .

Such was the period when a council of clerical sages was convened in the collegiate convent of St. Stephen, to investigate the new theory of Columbus. It was composed of professors of astronomy, geography, mathematics, and other branches of science, together with various dignitaries of the church, and learned friars. Before this erudite assembly, Columbus presented himself, to propound and defend his conclusions. He had been scoffed at as a visionary by the vulgar and the ignorant; but he was convinced that he only required a body of enlightened men to listen dispassionately to his reasonings, to insure triumphant conviction.

The greater part of this learned junto, it is very probable, came prepossessed against him, as men in place and dignity are apt to be against poor applicants. There is always a proneness to consider a man under examination as a kind of delinquent, or impostor, whose faults and errors are to be detected and exposed. Columbus, too, appeared in a most unfavorable light before a scholastic body: an obscure navigator, a member of no learned institution, destitute of all the trappings and circumstances which sometimes give oracular authority to dullness, and depending upon the mere force of natural genius. Some of the junto entertained the popular notion that he was an adventurer, or at best a visionary ; and others had that morbid impatience of any innovation upon established doctrine, which is apt to grow upon dull and pedantic men in cloistered life.

What a striking spectacle must the hall of the old convent have presented at this memorable conference! A simple mariner, standing forth in the midst of an imposing array of professors, friars, and dignitaries of the church ; maintaining his theory with natural eloquence, and, as it were, pleading the cause of the new world.

Several of the objections proposed by this learned body have been handed down to us, and have provoked many a sneer at the expense of the university of Salamanca; but they are proofs, not so much of the peculiar deficiency of that institution, as of the imperfect state of science at the time. . . . All subjects were still contemplated through the obscure medium of those ages when the lights of antiquity were trampled out and faith was left to fill the place of inquiry. Bewildered in a maze of religious controversy, mankind had retraced their steps, and receded from the boundary line of ancient knowledge. Thus, at the very threshold of the discussion, instead of geographical objections, Columbus was assailed with citations from the Bible and the Testament: the book of Genesis, the Psalms of David, the prophets, the epistles, and the gospels. To these were added the expositions of various saints and reverend commentators: St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. Gregory, St. Basil and St. Ambrose, and Lactantius Firmianus, a redoubted champion of the faith. Doctrinal points were mixed up with philosophical discussions, and a mathematical demonstration was allowed no weight, if it appeared to clash with a text of Scripture, or a commentary of one of the fathers. Thus the possibility of antipodes, in the southern hemisphere, an opinion so generally maintained by the wisest of the ancients, as to be pronounced by Pliny the great contest between the learned and the ignorant, became a stumbling-block with some of the sages of Salamanca. Several of them stoutly contradicted this fundamental position of Columbus, supporting themselves by quotations from Lactantius and St. Augustine, who were considered in those days as almost evangelical authority. But, though these writers were men of consummate erudition, and two of the greatest luminaries of what has been called the golden age of ecclesiastical learning, yet their writings were calculated to perpetuate darkness in respect to the sciences.

The passage cited from Lactantius to confute Columbus, is in a strain of gross ridicule, unworthy of so grave a theologian. "Is there any one so foolish," he asks, "as to believe that there are antipodes with their feet opposite to ours ; people who walk with their heels upward, and their heads hanging down? That there is a part of the world in which all things. are topsy-turvy ; where the trees grow with their branches downward, and where it rains, hails and snows upward? The idea of the roundness of the earth," he adds, "was the cause of inventing this fable of the antipodes, with their heels in the air; for these philosophers, having once erred, go on in their absurdities, defending one with another."

Objections of a graver nature were advanced on the authority of St. Augustine. He pronounces the doctrine of antipodes to be incompatible with the historical foundations of our faith; since, to assert that there were inhabited lands on the opposite side of the globe, would be to maintain that there were nations not descended from Adam, it being impossible for them to have passed the intervening ocean. This would be, therefore, to discredit the Bible, which expressly declares, that all men are descended from one common parent.