Columbus's signature.
. S.
. S. A. S.
X. M. Y.
χρ̃ο Ferens.
The interpretation of this has been various: Servus Supplex Altissimi Salvatoris, Christus, Maria, Yoseph, Christo ferens, is one solution; Servidor sus Altezas sacras, Christo, Maria Ysabel, is another; and these are not all.
Unpopularity of Columbus.
The complacency of the Queen was soothing; her appointment of his son Ferdinand as her page (February 18, 1498) was gratifying, but it could not wholly compensate Columbus for the condition of the public mind, of which he was in every way forcibly reminded. There were both the whisper of detraction spreading abroad, and the outspoken objurgation. The physical debility of his returned companions was made a strong contrast to his reiterated stories of Paradise. Fortunes wrecked, labor wasted, and lives lost had found but a pitiable compensation in a few cargoes of miserable slaves. The people had heard of his enchanting landscapes, but they had found his aloes and mastic of no value. Hidalgoes said there was nothing of the luxury they had been told to expect. The gorgeous cities of the Great Khan had not been found. Such were the kind of taunts to which he was subjected.
His sojourn with Bernaldez.
Columbus, during this period of his sojourn in Spain, spent a considerable interval under the roof of Andres Bernaldez, and we get in his history of the Spanish kings the advantage of the talks which the two friends had together.
The Admiral is known to have left with Bernaldez various documents which were given to him in the presence of Juan de Fonseca. From the way in which Bernaldez speaks of these papers, they would seem to have been accounts of the voyage of Columbus then already made, and it was upon these documents that Bernaldez says he based his own narratives.
Bernaldez's opinions.