Discoverer

COLUMBUS, DON QUIXOTE OF THE SEAS --Jacob Wassermann--Little, Brown ($3.50).

Columbus discovered a New World, and never knew it. Biographer Wassermann has taken this mystical-dogmatic adventurer as the prototype of Cervantes' famed Sorrowful Knight: he has made a good case.

Genoa claims the birth of Christobal Colon, so do six other towns. Columbus' early life is wrapped in obscurity. Says Wassermann: he told conflicting tales about his origins, his early experiences. "He was as morose as a monk, crafty as a peasant, without a glimmer of humor--a character unrelieved by a single ray of cheerfulness. A man of sighs and lamentations, misery and gloom. But for all that, his capacity for suffering and his patience in the bearing of it were prodigious and are strangely touching, like stories from the life of a saint. He learned almost nothing, and knew everything that might serve his ends. He was sickly, and bore the most incredible hardships with iron endurance. He sprang from the lowest level of society, and had the manners of a grandee and the epistolary style of a Machiavelli. He knew no enjoyment of life, a home meant nothing to him, his wants were as few as those of a dervish, yet he died of worry because he could not get the forty thousand pesos owed him by the Colonial Administration."

Columbus' belief that he could sail to India across the Atlantic grew to be a monomania that he could persuade no one to share: the King of Portugal gave him some encouragement, but no help; when he came to Spain he was an exhausted beggar, in his late 40's. Said he: "I must beg my bread because Kings will not accept the Empires that I offer them." When Ferdinand and Isabella finally fitted out his little fleet of three boats, the crews had to be made up of criminals and riffraff: no one else would join. The voyage of discovery took more than two months: from Aug. 3 to Oct. 12. The first land sighted was an island called by the Indians Guanahani: geographers today think it was Watling Island. Columbus believed it was one of the East Indies; when he came to Cuba, decided it was the continent of Asia, made all his crew sign an affidavit that they believed Cuba was a continent.

Says Wassermann: Columbus was a poor administrator, a hopelessly lax disciplinarian. When his men had smoked so much tobacco they were unable to work, his reproof was mild. Said he: "What sort of satisfaction you can get from a sort of smouldering tube is more than I can understand." No land but gold was Columbus' quest: from his first voyage he brought back little, promises of much more. On his first return to Spain he was made, according to previous agreement, High Admiral of Spain, Viceroy of the Indies, given a coat of arms,* his family raised forever to noble rank.

Columbus made altogether four voyages to America; once he landed on the mainland of South America: he insisted on thinking it was an island. Soon he fell into disfavor at court, for he could not produce the wealth of gold he had promised. Finally Columbus' enemies had him arrested, brought back to Spain in fetters. His honors and his position taken from him, he died in 1505, leaving this typical will: "... I am making a free gift of India to the King and Queen."

The Author. One of the foremost of living German novelists, Author Jacob Wassermann has never before written a biography, has pondered the subject of this one for 20 years. He has written more than 20 novels. Some of them: The World's Illusion, Gold, Caspar Hauser, The Maurizius Case.

*The motto: Por Castillo e par Leon Nuevo mundo dio Colon.

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