This document is extremely curious as containing all the passages of Scripture and of the works of the fathers which had so powerful an influence on the enthusiastic mind of Columbus, and were construed by him into mysterious prophecies and revelations. The volume is in good preservation, excepting that a few pages have been cut out. The writing, though of the beginning of the fifteenth century, is very distinct and legible. The library-mark of the book is Estante Z. Tab. 138, No. 25.
[113]: Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. ii. cap. 4.
[114]: These documents lay unknown in the Oderigo family until 1670, when Lorenzo Oderigo presented them to the government of Genoa, and they were deposited in the archives. In the disturbances and revolutions of after times, one of these copies was taken to Paris, and the other disappeared. In 1816 the latter was discovered in the library of the deceased Count Michel Angelo Cambiaso, a senator of Genoa. It was procured by the king of Sardinia, then sovereign of Genoa, and given up by him to the city of Genoa in 1821. A custodia, or monument, was erected in that city for its preservation, consisting of a marble column supporting an urn, surmounted by a bust of Columbus. The documents were deposited in the urn. These papers have been published, together with an historical memoir of Columbus, by D. Gio. Battista Spotorno, Professor of Eloquence, etc. in the University of Genoa.
[115]: Hist. del Almirante, cap. 88.
[116]: Señor Navarrete supposes this island to be the same at present called Santa Lucia. From the distance between it and Dominica, as stated by Fernando Columbus, it was more probably the present Martinica.
[117]: Hist. del Almirante, cap. 88.
[118]: Letter of Columbus from Jamaica. Journal of Porras, Navarrete, tom. i.
[119]: Hist. del Almirante, cap. 88. Las Casas, lib. ii. cap. 5.
[120]: Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. ii. cap. 3.
[121]: Las Casas, cap. 5.