The Historie says that Columbus had determined beforehand to call whatever land he should discover, India, because he thought India was a name to suggest riches, and to invite encouragement for his project.
While this letter to the Portuguese king was in transit, the attempt was made by certain officers of the Portuguese navy in the port of Rastelo to induce Columbus to leave his ship and give an account of himself; but he would make no compromise of the dignity of a Castilian admiral. When his resentment was known and his commission was shown, the Portuguese officers changed their policy to one of courtesy.
The next day, and on the one following, the news of his arrival being spread about, a vast multitude came in boats from all parts to see him and his Indians.
1493. March 8.
Columbus visits the king.
On the third day, a royal messenger brought an invitation from the king to come and visit the court, which Columbus, not without apprehension, accepted. The king's steward had been sent to accompany him and provide for his entertainment on the way. On the night of the following day, he reached Val do Paraiso, where the king was. This spot was nine leagues from Lisbon, and it was supposed that his reception was not held in that city because a pest was raging there. A royal greeting was given to him. The king affected to believe that the voyage of Columbus was made to regions which the Portuguese had been allowed to occupy by a convention agreed upon with Spain in 1479. The Admiral undeceived him, and showed the king that his ships had not been near Guinea.
We have another account of this interview at Val do Paraiso, in the pages of the Portuguese historian, Barros, tinged, doubtless, with something of pique and prejudice, because the profit of the voyage had not been for the benefit of Portugal. That historian charges Columbus with extravagance, and even insolence, in his language to the king. He says that Columbus chided the monarch for the faithlessness that had lost him such an empire. He is represented as launching these rebukes so vehemently that the attending nobles were provoked to a degree which prompted whispers of assassination. That Columbus found his first harbor in the Tagus has given other of the older Portuguese writers, like Faria y Sousa, in his Europa Portuguesa, and Vasconcelles and Resende, in their lives of João II., occasion to represent that his entering it was not so much induced by stress of weather as to seek a triumph over the Portuguese king in the first flush of the news. It is also said that the resolution was formed by the king to avail himself of the knowledge of two Portuguese who were found among Columbus's men. With their aid he proposed to send an armed expedition to take possession of the new-found regions before Columbus could fit out a fleet for a second voyage. Francisco de Almeida was even selected, according to the report, to command this force. We hear, however, nothing more of it, and the Bull of Demarcation put an end to all such rivalries.
If, on the contrary, we may believe Columbus himself, in a letter which he subsequently wrote, he did not escape being suspected in Spain of having thus put himself in the power of the Portuguese in order to surrender the Indies to them.
1493. March 11. Columbus leaves the court.