Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1892 — Columbus’ Personal Appearance. [ARTICLE]

Columbus’ Personal Appearance.

Columbus was of jmwerful frame and large build, of majestic bearing and dignified in gesture; on the whole well formed; of middle height, inclining to tallness; his arms sinewy and bronzed like wave-beaten oars; his nerves high strung and sensitive, quickly responsive to all emotions;his neck large ana shoulders broad; his face rather long and nose aquiline; his complexion fair, even inclining to redness, and somewhat disfigured by freckles; his gaze piercing and his eyes clear, his brow high and calm, furrowed with tho deep working of thought, writes Emilio Castelar in tl e Century. In the life written by his son, Ferdinand, we are told that Columbus not only sketched most marvelously, but was so skilful a penman that ho was able to earn a living by engrossing and copying. In his private notes ne said that every good map draftsman ought to be a good painter ns well, and ho himself was such in his maps and globes and chart* over which are scattered all sorts of cleverly drawn figures. He never penned a letter or began a chapter without set* ting nt its head this devout invocation: ‘‘Jimi cum Maria sit noble in via." Besides his practical studies he devoted himself to astronomical and geographical researches. Thus ho was enabled to teach mathematics, with which, as with all the advanced knowledge of his time, he was conversant, and he could recite the prayers and services of the church like any priest before the altar. He was, ns I have already said, a mystic and a merchant, a visionary and an algebraist. If at times he veiled his knowledge in cabalistic formulas, and allowed his vast powers to degenerate into puerile irritation, it was because his own age knew him not, and had dealt hardly with him for many years—from his youth until he reached the threshold of age—without taking into account the reverses which darkened aud embittered his after years. Who could have predicted to him in the midst of the blindness that surrounded him, that there in Spain, and in that century of unfading achievement, the name of Columbus was to attain to fame and unspeakable renown? There are those who hold thnt this was the work of chance, and that the discovery of America was virtually accomplished when the Portuguese doubled the Cape of Good Hope. But I believe not in these posthumous alterations of history through more caprice, nor in those after rumors of the discoverer who died in obscurity.