few vines, a plantation of fruit-trees, and a large area of shrub and
underwood. The price, however, was never paid in full, and was the cause
of a lawsuit which dragged on for forty years, and was finally settled by
Don Diego Columbus, Christopher's son, who sent a special authority from
Hispaniola.

Owing, no doubt, to the difficulties that this un fortunate purchase
plunged him into, Domenico was obliged to mortgage his house at St.
Andrew's Gate in the year 1477; and in 1489 he finally gave it up to
Jacob Baverelus, the cheese-monger, his son-in-law. Susanna, who had
been the witness of his melancholy transactions for so many years, and
possibly the mainstay of that declining household, died in 1494; but not,
we may hope, before she had heard of the fame of her son Christopher.
Domenico, in receipt of a pension from the famous Admiral of the Ocean,
and no doubt talking with a deal of pride and inaccuracy about the
discovery of the New World, lived on until 1498; when he died also, and
vanished out of this world. He had fulfilled a noble destiny in being
the father of Christopher Columbus.




CHAPTER V

SEA THOUGHTS

The long years that Christopher Columbus spent at sea in making voyages
to and from his home in Genoa, years so blank to us, but to him who lived
them so full of life and active growth, were most certainly fruitful in
training and equipping him for that future career of which as yet,