文档介绍：THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
THE LIFE OF
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS
by EDWARD EVERETT HALE
1
THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
PREFACE.
This book contains a life of Columbus, written with the hope of
interesting all classes of readers.
His life has often been written, and it has sometimes been well written.
The great book of our countryman, Washington Irving, is a noble model of
diligent work given to a very difficult subject. And I think every person
who has dealt with the life of Columbus since Irving's time, has expressed
his gratitude and respect for the author.
According to the custom of biographers, in that time and since, he
includes in those volumes the whole history of the West India islands, for
the period after Columbus discovered them till his death. He also thinks it
his duty to include much of the history of Spain and of the Spanish court. I
do not myself believe that it is wise to attempt, in a book of biography, so
considerable a study of the history of the time. Whether it be wise or not, I
have not attempted it in this book. I have rather attempted to follow
closely the personal fortunes of Christopher Columbus, and, to the history
around him, I have given only such space as seemed absolutely necessary
for the illustration of those fortunes.
I have followed on the lines of his own personal narrative wherever we
have it. And where this is lost I have used the absolutely contemporary
authorities. I have also consulted the later writers, those of the next
generation and the generation which followed it. But the more one studies
the life of Columbus the more one feels sure that, after the greatness of his
discovery was really known, the accounts of the time were overlaid by
what modern criticism calls myths, which had grown up in the enthusiasm
of those who honored him, and which form no part of real history. If then
the reader fails to find some stories with which he is quite familiar in the
history, he must not