Giuseppe Joseph Garibaldi was born at Nice on July 4, Nice is now, and has been since , a French town, but between these dates it was included in the kingdom of Piedmont, and its Italian name is Nizza. The Garibaldis were pure Italians, having come thirty years before from Chiavari, on the other side of Genoa.
It is quite possible, however, that hundreds of years ago a forefather of theirs was one of the Longobardi or German barbarians who crossed the Alps and settled in the north of Italy, which they won with the sword. The name points to that conclusion, and very fit was that name for Italy's deliverer, meaning something like 'warrior bold. Our hero's father did not spring from the ranks of the nobility.
He was an honest shipmaster, and not rich. Domenico Garibaldi, however, was resolved to give his son a good education, no matter what the cost, and it seems a pity that his parental sacrifice should have been wasted.
His son, alas! When he should have been poring over his books, he with his cousin was exploring the mountains, or down in the harbor feasting his eyes on ships and sailors arrived from distant climes. He had a beautiful voice, and knew all the songs of the peasants and sailors, and a good many French ones besides. Even as a boy we all looked up to him, and chose him for our umpire, while the little ones regarded him as their natural protector. He was the strongest and most enduring swimmer I ever knew, and a very fish in water.
When a small boy, Garibaldi helped a washer-woman out of a deep ditch. She was the first of sixteen persons whom he saved from drowning—which shows that his skill and gallantry were not confined to the battlefield. This youthful heroism, however, hardly compensated for his backwardness as a student, and his education in the ordinary sense ceased when he was fifteen. One of his masters knew English and would have taught it to him, but the boy threw away this opportunity of learning what he afterward called "the beautiful tongue of Byron.
