CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. BY ERNLE BRADFORD IN CAPE TOWN

Hard cover with dust cover, 286 pages. Very good condition. Parcel over 1kg. Christopher Columbus has become the archetypal figure of the sailor, the adventure and the explorer. Columbus learned his seamanship as a young man in the Mediterranean and then in the service of Portugal. In Columbus' day no one believed the earth was flat. Opposition to his idea of finding the east by sailing west was based on differing ideas of the size of the world. Amazingly, MARCO POLO'S TRAVELS and THE BIBLE were two of Columbus' important navigational references! To the end of his days Columbus insisted that he was in the Indies, even when it became clear to his contemporaries that they were in fact in an area of the world unknown to Europeans. All that aside, and granted the irony, Columbus was nevertheless the foremost sailor and pilot the world has ever known.