But America is just about three thousand miles from Spain, and if you read all this story you will see how Columbus's mistake really helped him to discover America.
I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do something great from the time when, as a little boy, he had hung around the wharves in Genoa and looked at the ships sailing east and west and talked with the sailors and wished that he could go to sea.

Perhaps what he had learned at school--how some men said that the earth was round--and what he had heard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set him to thinking and to dreaming that it might be possible for a ship to sail around the world without falling off.

At any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming and longing until, at last, he began doing.
Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portugal, of whom I have told you, in their trying to sail around Africa discovered two groups of islands out in the Atlantic that they called the Azores, or Isles of Hawks, and the Canaries, or Isles of Dogs.

When Columbus was in Portugal in 1470 he became acquainted with a young woman whose name was Philippa Perestrelo.

In 1473 he married her.
Now Philippa's father, before his death, had been governor of Porto Santo, one of the Azores, and Columbus and his wife went off there to live.