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This event had a marked influence upon his future career, for in the Portuguese capital his knowledge and ability were of great service in securing friends among seafarers, with whom plans were discussed for the discovery of a passage to the East Indies. An event soon happened which greatly promoted the ambitious purpose of his life. He married Felipa Perestrelli, daughter of a sea-captain, one of the early colonists and first governor of Porto Santo. This gave him possession of the diaries and charts of his experienced father-in-law, and as he studied them day and night his desire to visit these newly discovered islands grew stronger. He once more went on shipboard, made a voyage to Madeira, and for some time carried on a lucrative business, visiting the Canaries, the African coast, and the Azores in the meantime.

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During the short voyages which Columbus made from the Canary Islands he was still busy with the great scheme upon which he was engaged in Lisbon. He often said to himself: “There must be a nearer route by sea to the Indies than that attempted by the Portuguese. If one sails from here across the ocean in a westerly direction he must at last reach a country which is either India or some region adjacent to it. Is not the earth round? And if round, must not God have created countries upon the other side of it, upon which men and other creatures live? Is it at all likely that the whole hemisphere is covered by the ocean? No! No! India certainly is a vaster region than people believe. It must stretch far from the east toward Europe. Then if one sails straight to the west he must eventually reach it.” This was not his only reasoning. Several other considerations strengthened his belief and this one among them: A Portuguese navigator once, sailing far to the west, found curiously wrought sticks floating in the sea, which came from the westward. This fact convinced him there must be an inhabited country in that direction. Columbus’ father-in-law, on one of his voyages, found similar sticks which had been driven by the west winds. Felled trees of a kind unknown there had been found on the west shores of the Azores, evidently blown there by west winds. The bodies of two men had been washed ashore on these same coasts, with strange, broad faces, evidently not Europeans, and unlike the people of Asia and Africa.