Footnote 527: He was also allowed to quarter the royal arms with his own, "which consisted of a group of golden islands amid azure billows. To these were afterwards added five anchors, with the celebrated motto, well known as being carved on his sepulchre." Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, pt. i. chap. vii. This statement about the motto is erroneous. See below, p. [514]. Considering the splendour of the reception given to Columbus, and the great interest felt in his achievement, Mr. Prescott is surprised at finding no mention of this occasion in the local annals of Barcelona, or in the royal archives of Aragon. He conjectures, with some probability, that the cause of the omission may have been what an American would call "sectional" jealousy. This Cathay and Cipango business was an affair of Castile's, and, as such, quite beneath the notice of patriotic Aragonese archivists! That is the way history has too often been treated. With most people it is only a kind of ancestor worship.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 528: The unique copy of this first edition of this Spanish letter is a small folio of two leaves, or four pages. It was announced for sale in Quaritch's Catalogue, April 16, 1891, No. 111, p. 47, for £1,750. Evidently most book-lovers will have to content themselves with the facsimile published in London, 1891, price two guineas. A unique copy of a Spanish reprint in small quarto, made in 1493, is preserved in the Ambrosian library at Milan. In 1889 Messrs. Ellis & Elvey, of London, published a facsimile alleged to have been made from an edition of about the same date as the Ambrosian quarto; but there are good reasons for believing that these highly respectable publishers have been imposed upon. It is a time just now when fictitious literary discoveries of this sort may command a high price, and the dealer in early Americana must keep his eyes open. See Quaritch's note, op. cit. p. 49; and Justin Winsor's letter in The Nation, April 9, 1891, vol. lii. p. 298.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 529: "The lands, therefore, which Columbus had visited were called the West Indies; and as he seemed to have entered upon a vast region of unexplored countries, existing in a state of nature, the whole received the comprehensive appellation of the New World." Irving's Columbus, vol. i. p. 333. These are very grave errors, again involving the projection of our modern knowledge into the past. The lands which Columbus had visited were called simply the Indies; it was not until long after his death, and after the crossing of the Pacific ocean, that they were distinguished from the East Indies. The New World was not at first a "comprehensive appellation" for the countries discovered by Columbus; it was at first applied to one particular region never visited by him, viz. to that portion of the southeastern coast of South America first explored by Vespucius. See vol. ii. pp. 129, 130.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 530: Peter Martyr, however, seems to have entertained some vague doubts, inasmuch as this assumed nearness of the China coast on the west implied a greater eastward extension of the Asiatic continent than seemed to him probable:—"Insulas reperit plures; has esse, de quibus fit apud cosmographos mentio extra oceanum orientalem, adjacentes Indiæ arbitrantur. Nec inficior ego penitus, quamvis sphæræ magnitudo aliter sentire videatur; neque enim desunt qui parvo tractu a finibus Hispaniæ distare littus Indicum putent." Opus Epist., No. 135. The italicizing is mine.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 531: This abominable piece of wickedness, driving 200,000 of Spain's best citizens from their homes and their native land, was accomplished in pursuance of an edict signed March 30, 1492. There is a brief account of it in Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, pt. i. chap. vi.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 532: "Un duplicata de cette relation," Harrisse, Christophe Colomb, tom i. p. 419.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 533: Often called Raphael Sanchez.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 534: The following epigram was added to the first Latin edition of the latter by Corbaria, Bishop of Monte-Peloso:—
Ad Invictissimum Regem Hispaniarum:
Iam nulla Hispanis tellus addenda triumphis,
Atque parum tantis viribus orbis erat.
Nunc longe eois regio deprensa sub undis,
Auctura est titulos Betice magne tuos.
Unde repertori inerita referenda Columbo
Gratia, sed summo est maior habenda deo,
Qui vincenda parat noua regna tibique sibique
Teque simul fortem prestat et esse pium.