and learns the condition of the public mind.
He found in the harbor three caravels just about starting for Española with tardy supplies. It had been intended to send some in January; but the ships which started with them suffered wreck on the neighboring coasts. He had only to ask Pedro Alonso Niño, the commander of this little fleet, for his dispatches, to find the condition of feeling which he was to encounter in Spain. They gave him a sense, more than ever before, of the urgent necessity of making the colony tributary to the treasury of the Crown. It was clear that discord and unproductiveness were not much longer to be endured. So he wrote a letter to the Adelantado, which was to go by the ships, urging expedition in quieting the life of the colonists, and in bringing the resources of the island under such control that it could be made to yield a steady flow of treasure.
1496. June 17. Columbus writes to Bartholomew.
To this end, the new mines of Hayna must be further explored, and the working of them started with diligence. A port of shipment should be found in their neighborhood, he adds. With such instructions to Bartholomew, the caravels sailed on June 17, 1496. It must have been with some trepidation that Columbus forwarded to the Court the tidings of his arrival. If the two dispatches which he sent could have been preserved, we might better understand his mental condition.
Invited to Court.
As soon as the messages of Columbus reached their Majesties, then at Almazan, they sent, July 12, 1496, a letter inviting him to Court, and reassuring him in his despondency by expressions of kindness. So he started to join the Court in a somewhat better frame of mind. He led some of his bedecked Indians in his train, not forgetting "in the towns" to make a cacique among them wear conspicuously a golden necklace.
Bernaldez tells us that it was in this wily fashion that Columbus made his journey into the country of Castile,—"the which collar," that writer adds, "I have seen and held in these hands;" and he goes on to describe the other precious ornaments of the natives, which Columbus took care that the gaping crowds should see on this wandering mission.
It is one of the anachronisms of the Historie of 1571 that it places the Court at this time at Burgos, and makes it there to celebrate the marriage of the crown prince with Margaret of Austria. The author of that book speaks of seeing the festivities himself, then in attendance as a page upon Don Juan. It was a singular lapse of memory in Ferdinand Columbus—if this statement is his—to make two events like the arrival of his father at Court, with all the incidental parade as described in the book, and the ceremonies of that wedding festival identical in time. The wedding was in fact nine months later, in April, 1497.
Received by the sovereigns.