What Alexander VI did totally worked. We haven't had a problem since. Best wishes, John Green. So Columbus's first journey, he made four, the last three of which were pretty calamitous, was tiny, and he initially landed on a small Caribbean island he called San Salvador in search, like the Portuguese, of gold and Christians. He was able to convince Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to fund his expedition by promising riches and conversions of the natives, hopefully to sign them up for yet another crusade. And there's a long-standing myth that Columbus tricked Ferdinand and Isabella into paying for his trip, but in fact, they commissioned two different sets of experts to analyze his plans, both of which agreed he was crazy. One called the plan, impossible to any educated person.