Entering a narrow doorway at the back, Mr. Douglass and Harry found themselves in a large hall, which was no doubt the chapel of the original building. To their right was the place where the altar had stood, but in the model this inclosure contained pictures on the walls. They were very old, no doubt; but when a Columbian guard told an inquirer that they were “more than a thousand years, I guess,” Mr. Douglass and Harry concluded that the guard’s uniform was no guaranty of his knowledge.
THE ORIGINAL CONVENT OF LA RÁBIDA, IN SPAIN.
In the front of this chancel was an easel sustaining a frame that protected the commission authorizing Christopher Columbus to go and see what he could find. A placard requested “gentlemen to remove their hats,” as Philip had said; but the American public had made up its mind to disregard this inscription. Mr. Douglass said to Harry, in a low tone, “I can see no reason for removing one’s hat to a piece of paper with ink on it. One can show a proper respect and appreciation for a relic without flunkeyism.” And Harry quite agreed with him.
The commission was a bit of brown parchment written in a crabbed hand, probably by some court copyist; and not even the signatures were intelligible. Moving onward through the crush of people, they came next to the west wall, where there was a glass case containing the rarest ancient treatises upon geographical matters. There were twenty or thirty in the case, some ornamented with woodcuts; but though Harry had come with the best of intentions to study the exhibits carefully, he could do nothing but gaze wonderingly at the type, saying to himself, “This is an old, old book. Columbus may have read it. Here’s another. What a queer picture!” At length he said to Mr. Douglass:
“What do you make of them, Mr. Douglass?”
“Very little, I must confess,” said the tutor. “One has to read such books to learn how much wheat there is amid the chaff of fable, folly, and guesswork. Even if I could read all the languages, I could get little from the two pages which are all they can show. All you can do now, Harry, is to get a good idea of what these old books and charts are like. Perhaps we can buy a catalogue which will give us translations of some parts of the books and of the letters that are also shown here.”
“What can one learn from these old books?” asked Harry. “Surely there is nothing in them that we don’t know about.”
THE CONVENT OF LA RÁBIDA AT THE FAIR.