He married in the city of Lisbon and settled himself there.

His wife was named Philippa.
She was the daughter of an Italian gentleman named Bartolomeo Muniz de Perestrello, who was, like Columbus, a sailor, and was alive to all the new interests which geography then presented to all inquiring minds.
This was in the year 1477, and the King of Portugal was pressing the expeditions which, before the end of the century, resulted in the discovery of the route to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope.
The young couple had to live.

Neither the bride nor her husband had any fortune, and Columbus occupied himself as a draftsman, illustrating books, making terrestrial globes, which must have been curiously inaccurate, since they had no Cape of Good Hope and no American Continent, drawing charts for sale, and collecting, where he could, the material for such study.

Such charts and maps were beginning to assume new importance in those days of geographical discovery.

The value attached to them may be judged from the statement that Vespucius paid one hundred and thirty ducats for one map.