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About his haste to reach this spot Christopher had not breathed a word in the town where he had just landed; in fact, he always remained silent about it; but it appears that he went there to question a Portuguese monk named Marchena whom he had known in Portugal. This monk was an excellent cartographer, or map-maker, and Christopher wished to talk with him about the western lands.
We were already politicians to a man in those days, and the Englishman Pitt was map-maker, by special warrant, to all Europe. When the Prussians were serfs politically, our House of Representatives, in 1796, debated whether to insert in their reply to the President's speech the remark that "this nation is the freest and most enlightened in the world."
Student of cartography and professional map-maker, expert sailor himself, who had probably been to the Gold Coast, associating with captains and sailors in this seaport town of Lisbon, Columbus must have picked up all the common sailors' gossip of the age, and all the best-known scientific speculation.
Archbishops even today do not much like their pretty cousins marrying a man of Columbus's position, whether you call him a woolweaver, a sailor, a map-maker, or a bookseller. "Adventurer" is perhaps the truest description of him; and the word was as much distrusted in the best circles in Lisbon in the fifteenth century as it is to-day.
Still, he fair worshipped her, an' if he'd been given full charge o' the earth for jest one day, an' anything would 'a' pestered the girl durin' that day, why the map-maker would sure have had a job on the day follerin'; 'cause from his standpoint, that girl was what the sun shone for an' the rain rained for an' the blossoms blossomed for.
In his day, as we have seen, Portugal was the centre of geographical knowledge, and he and his brother Bartolomeo, after many voyages north and south, settled at last in Lisbon his brother as a map-maker, and himself as a practical seaman.
He is more map-maker than painter. He is of course more than a maker of maps. He has drawn many an intricate and accurate chart of the deeps and shallows of the human soul.
Ah! now he knew him the map-maker of the carrefour, the sneak-thief who had scaled the park wall with the box that was the face he had struck with his clenched fist, the same pink, high-boned face, with the little, pale, pig-like eyes. In the same second the man's name came back to him as he had deciphered it written in pencil on the maps Siurd von Steyr!
"'This is Mr. James Brunell? the young man asked. 'You are a map-maker, I understand. I have come to ask for your estimate on a large contract for wall-maps for suburban schools. If you can spare a half-hour, we can talk it over now, sir, in private. I have a letter of introduction to you from an old acquaintance. My name is Pennold.
"Well, if we've got to go looking for ivory right under that face the sooner we find it the better," exclaimed Ben. "I'd hate to be shipmates with the fellow who sat for that portrait." "No human being ever sat for it, Ben," laughed Frank; "it's a mere freak of nature which has so disposed the mountain mass at this point as to give the semblance of what the map-maker terms The Upturned Face."
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