Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1892 — Columbus's Personal Appearance. [ARTICLE]

Columbus's Personal Appearance.

Emilio Castelarin June Century. Columbus was of powerful frame and large build; of ©ajj&stic 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“targe and his shoulders broad; his face rather long and his nose aquiline;- his complexion fair even inclining to redness; and somewhat disflured by freckles; his gaze piercing and his eye clear; his brow, high aud calm, furrowed with the deep workings of thought. 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 he was able to earn a living by engrossing and copying. In his private notes hS* said that every good map draughtsman ought to be a good painter as well, and he himself was such in his maps and globes and charts, over which are scattered all sorts of cleverly drawn figures. He never penned a letter or began a chapter without setting at its head this devout invo cation: “Jesus cum Maria sit nobis in via.” Besides his practical studies he devoted himself to astronomical and geometrical re- , searches. Thus he 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 aud services of the Church like any priest before the altar. He was, as I have already said, a mystic and merchant, a visionary and an algebraist. If at times he veiled his knowledge in cabalisties formulas, and allowed his vast powers to degenerate in puerile irritation, it was because his own age knew him not, bnd had dealt hardly with him for many years—from his yotrth until he reached the threshold of age—without taking into account the reverses which darkened and embittered his later 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 unknown achievement, the name of Columbus was to attain to fame aud unspeakable renown? There are those who hold that 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 mere caprice, nor in those after-rumors of the discoverers who died in obscurity.