[4] Among the provisions of the sovereigns enacted previous to the present date, may be noted those for regulating the coin and weights; for opening a free trade between Castile and Aragon; for security to Genoese and Venetian trading vessels; for safe conduct to mariners and fishermen; for privileges to the seamen of Palos; for prohibiting the plunder of vessels wrecked on the coast; and an ordinance of the very last year, requiring foreigners to take their return cargoes in the products of the country. See these laws as extracted from the Ordenanças Reales and the various public archives, in Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. Ilust. 11.
[5] Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, pp. 373, 374, 398.—Zurita, Anales, tom. iv. lib. 20, cap. 30, 34.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages.
[6] Spotorno, Memorials of Columbus, (London, 1823,) p. 14.—Senarega, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiv. p. 535.—Antonio Gallo, De Navigatione Columbi, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., tom. xxiii. p. 202.
It is very generally agreed that the father of Columbus exercised the craft of a wool-carder, or weaver. The admiral's son Ferdinand, after some speculation on the genealogy of his illustrious parent, concludes with remarking, that, after all, a noble descent would confer less lustre on him than to have sprung from such a father; a philosophical sentiment, indicating pretty strongly that he had no great ancestry to boast of. Ferdinand finds something extremely mysterious and typical in his father's name of Columbus, signifying a dove, in token of his being ordained to "carry the olive-branch and oil of baptism over the ocean, like Noah's dove, to denote the peace and union of the heathen people with the church, after they had been shut up in the ark of darkness and confusion." Fernando Colon, Historia del Almirante, cap. 1, 2, apud Barcia, Historiadores Primitivos de las Indian Occidentals, (Madrid, 1749,) tom. i., tom. i. Introd., sec. 21, 24.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. vii. p. 548.
[7] Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 131.—Muñoz, Historia del Nuevo- Mundo, (Madrid, 1793,) lib. 2, sec. 13.
There are no sufficient data for determining the period of Columbus's birth. The learned Muñoz places it in 1446. (Hist. del Nuevo-Mundo, lib. 2, sec. 12.) Navarrete, who has weighed the various authorities with caution, seems inclined to remove it back eight or ten years further, resting chiefly on a remark of Bernaldez, that he died in 1506, "in a good old age, at the age of seventy, a little more or less." (Cap. 131.) The expression is somewhat vague. In order to reconcile the facts with this hypothesis, Navarrete is compelled to reject, as a chirographical blunder, a passage in a letter of the admiral, placing his birth in 1456, and to distort another passage in his book of "Prophecies," which, if literally taken, would seem to establish his birth near the time assigned by Muñoz. Incidental allusions in some other authorities, speaking of Columbus's old age at or near the time of his death, strongly corroborate Navarrete's inference. (See Coleccion de Viages, tom. i. Introd., sec. 54.)—Mr. Irving seems willing to rely exclusively on the authority of Bernaldez.
[8] Antonio de Herrera, Historia General de las Indias Occidentales,
(Amberes, 1728,) tom. i. dec. 1, lib. 1, cap. 7.—Gomara, Historia de las
Indias, cap. 14, apud Barcia, Hist. Primitivos, tom. ii.—Bernaldez, Reyes
Católicos, MS., cap. 118.—Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. i.
Introd., sec. 30.
Ferdinand Columbus enumerates three grounds on which his father's conviction of land in the west was founded. First, natural reason,—or conclusions drawn from science; secondly, authority of writers,—amounting to little more than vague speculations of the ancients; thirdly, testimony of sailors, comprehending, in addition to popular rumors of land described in western voyages, such relics as appeared to have floated to the European shores from the other side of the Atlantic. Hist. del Almirante, cap. 6-8.
[9] None of the intimations are so precise as that contained in the well- known lines of Seneca's Medea,
"Venient annuis saecula," etc.,