[44] Of these, twenty-nine are also given in fac-simile; there are besides about two hundred and fifty fac-similes of autographs. The volume is priced at 150 marks and 300 francs. Cf. Leclerc, no. 2,688. H. H. Bancroft (Mexico, ii. 606) says of the volume: “There are about two hundred and twenty-four pages of geographical notes, vocabulary, biographical data, a glossary, and cuts, maps, and indexes. The letters and fac-similes, from the first to the last, are valuable in a historic sense, and the vocabulary is useful; but the biographical and historical data are not always reliable, numerous errors having been detected in comparing with official records and with memoranda of witnesses of the events related.” Mr. Bancroft’s own library is said to contain twelve hundred volumes of manuscript amassed for his own work; but a large portion of them, it is supposed, do not concern the Spanish history of the Pacific coast.
[45] Mr. Dexter, a graduate of Harvard in 1858, after most serviceable labors as Recording Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society, resigned that position on account of ill health, and died at Santa Barbara, California, Dec. 18, 1883. The Proceedings of the Society for January, 1884, contain tributes to his memory. Various communications in earlier volumes of the same Proceedings show the painstaking of his research, and the accuracy of his literary method. The first chapter in Vol. IV. of the present History was his last effort in historical study, and he did not live to correct the proofs. His death has narrowed the circle of those helpful friends who have been ever ready to assist the Editor in his present labors.
[46] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xvi. 318; also issued separately. The letters of Columbus are also translated in the Magazine of American History, January, 1883, p. 53.
[47] An Italian version of the letters of Columbus and Vespucius, with fac-similes of the letters (Tre lettere di Colombo ed Vespucci), edited by Augusto Zeri, was printed (six hundred copies) at Rome in 1881. Cf. Murphy Catalogue, no. 642.
[48] Irving’s Life of Columbus, app. no. vii.
[49] Ferdinand Columbus tried to make his readers believe that his father was of some kinship with this corsair. The story of Columbus escaping on an oar from a naval fight off Cape St. Vincent, and entering Portugal by floating to the shore, does not agree with known facts in his life of the alleged date. (Harrisse, Les Colombo, p. 36.) Allegri Allegretti, in his Ephemerides Senenses ab anno 1450 usque ad 1496 (in Muratori, xxiii. 827), gives a few particulars regarding the early life of Columbus. (Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 41.) Some of the latest researches upon his piratical life are given by Rawdon Brown in the Calendar of State Papers, 1864, covering 1202-1509, vol. i.
[50] This name is sometimes given Palestrello.
[51] Rawdon Brown’s Calendar of State Papers in the Archives of Venice, vol. i. (1864).
[52] Prescott (Ferdinand and Isabella, ed. 1873, vol. ii. p. 123) says: “The discrepancies among the earliest authorities are such as to render hopeless any attempt to settle with precision the chronology of Columbus’s movements previous to his first voyage.”
[53] It cannot but be remarked how Italy, in Columbus, Cabot, and Vespucius, not to name others, led in opening the way to a new stage in the world’s progress, which by making the Atlantic the highway of a commerce that had mainly nurtured Italy on the Mediterranean, conduced to start her republics on that decline which the Turk, sweeping through that inland sea, confirmed and accelerated.