In our times such adventures have been conducted by mercantile corporations, but in those times no one thought of doing any such thing without the direct assistance and support of some monarch.
It is easy now to see and to say that Columbus himself was singularly well fitted to take the charge of the expedition of discovery.

He was an excellent sailor and at the same time he was a learned geographer and a good mathematician.

He was living in Portugal, the kings of which country had, for many years, fostered the exploration of the coast of Africa, and were pushing expeditions farther and farther South.
In doing this, they were, in a fashion, making new discoveries.

For Europe was wholly ignorant of the western coast of Africa, beyond the Canaries, when their expeditions began.

But all men of learning knew that, five hundred years before the Christian era, Hanno, a Carthaginian, had sailed round Africa under the direction of the senate of Carthage.