Cousin's alleged voyage, 1488,
and Pinzon's supposed connection with it.
An alleged voyage of Jean Cousin, in 1488, two years and more before this, from Dieppe to the coast of Brazil, is here brought in by certain French writers, like Estancelin and Gaffarel, as throwing some light on the intercourse of Columbus and Pinzon, later if not now. It must be acknowledged that few other than French writers have credited the voyage at all. Major, who gave the story careful examination, utterly discredits it. It is a part of the story that one Pinzon, a Castilian, accompanied Cousin as a pilot, and this man is identified by these French writers as the navigator who is now represented as yielding a ready credence to the views of Columbus, and for the reason that he knew more than he openly professed. They find in the later intercourse of Columbus and this Pinzon certain evidence of the estimation in which Columbus seemed to hold the practiced judgment, if not the knowledge, of Pinzon. This they think conspicuous in the yielding which Columbus made to Pinzon's opinion during Columbus's first voyage, in changing his course to the southwest, which is taken to have been due to a knowledge of Pinzon's former experience in passing those seas in 1488. They trace to it the confidence of Pinzon in separating from the Admiral on the coast of Cuba, and in his seeking to anticipate Columbus by an earlier arrival at Palos, on the return, as the reader will later learn. Thus it is ingeniously claimed that the pilot of Cousin and colleague of Columbus were one and the same person. It has hardly convinced other students than the French. When the Pinzon of the "Pinta" at a later day was striving to discredit the leadership of Columbus, in the famous suit of the Admiral's heirs, he could hardly, for any reason which the French writers aver, have neglected so important a piece of evidence as the fact of the Cousin voyage and his connection with it, if there had been any truth in it.
Pinzon aids Columbus,
So we must be content, it is pretty clear, in charging Pinzon's conversion to the views of Columbus at Rabida upon the efficacy of Columbus's arguments. This success of Columbus brought some substantial fruit in the promise which Pinzon now made to bear the expenses of a renewed suit to Ferdinand and Isabella.
and Rodriguez goes to Santa Fé, with a letter to the queen.
Marchena follows.
The queen invites Columbus once more.
A conclusion to the deliberation of this little circle in the convent was soon reached. Columbus threw his cause into the hands of his friends, and agreed to rest quietly in the convent while they pressed his claims. Perez wrote a letter of supplication to the Queen, and it was dispatched by a respectable navigator of the neighborhood, Sebastian Rodriguez. He found the Queen in the city of Santa Fé, which had grown up in the military surroundings before the city of Granada, whose siege the Spanish armies were then pressing. The epistle was opportune, for it reënforced one which she had already received from the Duke of Medina-Celi, who had been faithful to his promise to Columbus, and who, judging from a letter which he wrote at a later day, March 19, 1493, took to himself not a little credit that he had thus been instrumental, as he thought, in preventing Columbus throwing himself into the service of France. The result was that the pilot took back to Rabida an intimation to Marchena that his presence would be welcome at Santa Fé. So mounting his mule, after midnight, fourteen days after Rodriguez had departed, the friar followed the pilot's tracks, which took him through some of the regions already conquered from the Moors, and, reaching the Court, presented himself before the Queen. Perez is said to have found a seconder in Luis de Santangel, a fiscal officer of Aragon, and in the Marchioness of Moya, one of the ladies of the household. The friar is thought to have urged his petition so strongly that the Queen, who had all along been more open to the representations of Columbus than Ferdinand had been, finally determined to listen once more to the Genoese's appeals.