[54] Notwithstanding this disappointment of Columbus, it is claimed that Alfonso V., in 1474, had consulted Toscanelli as to such a western passage “to the land where the spices grow.”
[55] There is great uncertainty about this English venture. Benzoni says Columbus’s ideas were ridiculed; Bacon (Life of Henry VII.) says the acceptance of them was delayed by accident; Purchas says they were accepted too late. F. Cradock, in the Dedication of his Wealth Discovered, London, 1661, regrets the loss of honor which Henry VII. incurred in not listening to the project. (Sabin, v. 55.) There is much confusion of statement in the early writers. Cf. Las Casas, lib. i. cap. 29; Barcia, Hist. del Almirante, cap. 10; Herrera, dec. i. lib. 2; Oviedo, lib. i. cap. 4; Gomara, cap. 15; Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vet., p. 4.
[56] As, for instance, Oviedo and Bossi.
[57] The same whom Isabella advised Columbus to take “as an astrologer” on one of his later voyages. Cf. P. Augustin d’Osimo’s Christophe Colomb et le Père Juan Perez de Marchena; ou, de la co-opération des franciscains à la découverte de l’Amérique, 1861, and P. Marcellino da Civezza’s Histoire générale des missions franciscaines, 1863.
[58] Cf. Schanz on “Die Stellung der beiden ersten Tudors zu den Entdeckungen,” in his Englische Handelspolitik.
[59] Stevens, Historical Collection, vol. i. no. 1,418; Leclerc, no. 235 (120 francs); Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 376; Sabin, vol. vii. no. 27,116; Murphy, no. 1,046. This book, which in 1832 Rich priced at £1 10s., has recently been quoted by Quaritch at £5 5s. Harrisse calls the book mendacious (Notes on Columbus, p. 37). The book was written in 1522; its author was born in 1465, and died in 1525 as bishop of Santo Domingo.
[60] There are two views of Seville in Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum, published at Antwerp in 1572, and again at Brussels (in French) in 1574. In one of the engravings a garden near the Puerta de Goles is marked “Guerta de Colon;” and in the other the words “Casa de Colon” are attached to the top of one of the houses. Muller, Books on America, 1877, no. 712. The book is in the Harvard College Library.
[61] Santangel supplied about seventeen thousand florins from Ferdinand’s treasury. Bergenroth, in his Introduction to the Spanish State Papers, removes not a little of the mellow splendor which admirers have poured about Isabella’s character.
[62] Palos is no longer a port, such has been the work of time and tide. In 1548 the port is described in Medina’s Libro de grandezas y cosas de España. (Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 281.) Irving described it in 1828. Its present unmaritime character is set forth by E. E. Hale in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., ii. 159; Seven Spanish Cities, p. 17; and Overland Monthly, Jan., 1883, p. 42.
[63] Cf. Irving, app. no. xvi., on the route of Columbus. Brevoort in his Verrazzano, p. 101, describes the usual route of the early navigators from Spain to the West Indies. Columbus kept two records of his progress. One was an unworthily deceitful one (reminding us of an earlier deceit, when he tampered with the compass to mislead his crew), by which he hoped to check the apprehensions of his men arising from his increasing longitude; and the other a dead reckoning of some kind, in which he thought he was approximately accurate. The story of his capitulating to his crew, and agreeing to turn back in three days in case land was not reached, is only told by Oviedo on the testimony of a pilot hostile to Columbus.