Yesterday, after sunset, she went on her course with little wind, and at sunrise she was off Saltes. At noon, with the tide rising, they crossed the bar of Saltes, and reached the port which they had left on the 3rd of August of the year before.[257-1] The Admiral says that so ends this journal, unless it becomes necessary to go to Barcelona by sea, having received news that their Highnesses are in that city, to give an account of all his voyage which our Lord had permitted him to make, and saw fit to set forth in him. For, assuredly, he held with a firm and strong knowledge that His High Majesty made all things good, and that all is good except sin. Nor can he value or think of anything being done without His consent. “I know respecting this voyage,” says the Admiral, “that he has miraculously shown his will, as may be seen from this journal, setting forth the numerous miracles that have been displayed in the voyage, and in me who was so long at the court of your Highnesses, working in opposition to and against the opinions of so many chief persons of your household, who were all against me, looking upon this enterprise as folly. But I hope in our Lord, that it will be a great benefit to Christianity, for so it has ever appeared.” These are the final words of the Admiral Don Cristoval Colon respecting his first voyage to the Indies and their discovery.
[89-1] The Alhambra.
[89-2] This information Columbus is ordinarily supposed to have derived from Toscanelli’s letter which may be found in Fiske, Discovery of America, I. 356 ff. and II. App. The original source of the information, however, is Marco Polo, and Columbus summarized the passage on the margin in his copy of Marco Polo, Lib. I., ch. IV., as follows: “Magnus Kam misit legatos ad pontificem:” Raccolta Colombiana, Part I, Tomo 2, p. 446. That he read and annotated these passages before 1492 seems most probable. See Bourne, Spain in America, pp. 10-15, and Vignaud, Toscanelli and Columbus, p. 284.
[90-1] It is interesting to notice the emphasis of the missionary motive in this preamble. Nothing is said in regard to the search for a new route to the Indies for commercial reasons. Nor is reference made to the expectation of new discoveries which is prominent in the royal patent granted to Columbus, see above [p. 78].
[90-2] The edict of expulsion bears the date of March 30.
[91-1] Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, four of which make a league. (Navarrete.)
[93-1] On June 30, 1484, King John II. of Portugal granted to Fernam Domimguez do Arco, “resident in the island of Madeyra, if he finds it, an island which he is now going in search of.” Alguns Documentos do Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, p. 56.
[94-1] Tres horas de noche means three hours after sunset.
[94-2] “On this day [Sunday, Sept. 9] they lost sight of land; and many, fearful of not being able to return for a long time to see it, sighed and shed tears. But the admiral, after he had comforted all with big offers of much land and wealth to keep them in hope and to lessen their fear which they had of the long way, when that day the sailors reckoned the distance 18 leagues, said he had counted only 15, having decided to lessen the record so that the crew would not think they were as far from Spain as in fact they were.” Historie del Signor Don Fernando Colombo (London ed., 1867), pp. 61-62.
[95-1] Las Casas in his Historia, I. 267, says “on that day at nightfall the needles northwested that is to say the fleur de lis which marks the north was not pointing directly at it but verged somewhat to the left of north and in the morning northeasted that is to say the fleur de lis pointed to right of the north until sunset.”