ries as to the soil, productions, and people of the newly-discovered countries, and the route taken in the voyage; to all which Columbus gave the fullest replies, endeavoring to show in the clearest manner, that these were regions heretofore undiscovered and unappropriated by any Christian power. Still the king was uneasy lest this vast and undefined discovery should in some way interfere with his own newly-acquired territories. He doubted whether Columbus had not found a short way to those very countries which were the object of his own expeditions, and which were comprehended in the papal bull, granting to the crown of Portugal all the lands which it should discover from Cape Non to the Indies.

On suggesting these doubts to his councillors, they eagerly confirmed them. Some of these were the very persons who had once derided this enterprise, and scoffed at Columbus as a dreamer. To them, its success was a source of confusion; and the return of Columbus, covered with glory, a deep humiliation. Incapable of conceiving the high and generous thoughts which elevated him at that moment above all mean considerations, they attributed to all his actions the most petty and ignoble motives His rational exultation was construed into an insulting triumph, and they accused him of assuming a boastful and vainglorious tone, when talking with the king of his discovery, as if he would revenge himself upon the monarch for having rejected his propositions.* With the greatest

Vasconcelos, Vida de D. Juan II., lib. vi. The Portuguese historians in general charge Columbus with having conducted himself loftily, and talked in vaunting terms of his discoveries, in his conversations with the king. It is evident their information must have been derived from prejudiced courtiers. Faria y Souza, in his Europa Portuguesa (Parte lii, cap. 4), goes so far as to say that Columbus entered into the port of

foster the doubts which Some who had seen the

eagerness, therefore, they sought to had sprung up in the royal mind. natives brought in the caravel, declared that their color, hair, and manners, agreed with the descriptions of the people of that part of India which lay within the route of the Portuguese discoveries, and which had been included in the papal bull. Others observed that there was but little distance between the Tercera Islands, and those which Columbus had discovered, and that the latter, therefore, clearly appertained to Portugal. Seeing the king much perturbed in spirit, some even went so far as to propose, as a means of impeding the prosecution of these enterprises, that Columbus should be assassinated; declaring that he deserved death for attempting to deceive and embroil the two nations, by his pretended discoveries. It was suggested that his assassination might easily be accomplished without incurring any odium; advantage might be taken of his lofty deportment to pique his pride, provoke him into an altercation, and then dispatch him as if in casual and honorable encounter.

It is difficult to believe that such wicked and dastardly counsel could have been proposed to a monarch so upright as John II. but the fact is asserted by various historians, Portuguese as well as Spanish,* and it accords with the perfidious advice formerly given to the monarch in respect to Columbus. There is a spurious loyalty about courts, which is often prone to prove its zeal by its baseness; and it is the weakness of

Rastello merely to make Portugal sensible, by the sight of the trophies of his discovery, how much she had lost by not accepting his propositions.

* Vasconcelos, Vida del Rei, Don Juan II., lib. vi. Garcia de Resende, vida do Dom Joam II. Las Casas, Hist. Ind. lib. i. cap. 74, MS.

kings to tolerate the grossest faults when they appear to arise from personal devotion.

Happily, the king had too much magnanimity to adopt the iniquitous measure proposed. He did justice to the great merit of Columbus, and honored him as a distinguished benefactor of mankind; and he felt it his duty, as a generous prince, to protect all strangers driven by adverse fortune to his ports. Others of his council suggested a more bold and martial line of policy. They advised that Columbus should be permitted to return to Spain; but that, before he could fit out a second expedition, a powerful armament should be dispatched, under the guidance of two Portuguese mariners, who had sailed with the admiral, to take possession of the newly-discovered country; possession being after all the best title, and an appeal to arms the clearest mode of settling so doubtful a question.

This counsel, in which there was a mixture of courage and craft, was more relished by the king, and he resolved privately, but promptly, to put it in execution, fixing upon Don Francisco de Almeida, one of the most distinguished captains of the age, to command the expedition.*

In the mean time, Columbus, after being treated with distinguished attention, was escorted back to his ship by Don Martin de Noroña, and a numerous train of cavaliers of the court, a mule being provided for himself, and another for his pilot, to whom the king made a present of twenty espadinas, or ducats of gold. On his way, Columbus stopped at the

* Vasconcelos, lib. vi.

Twenty-eight dollars in gold of the present day, and equivalent to seventy-four dollars, considering the depreciation of the precious metals.

VOL. I.-12*

monastery of San Antonio, at Villa Franca, to visit the queen, who had expressed an earnest wish to see this extraordinary and enterprising man, whose achievement was the theme of every tongue. He found her attended by a few of her favorite ladies, and experienced the most flattering reception. Her majesty made him relate the principal events of his voyage, and describe the countries he had found; and she and her ladies hung with eager curiosity upon his narration. That night he slept at Llandra, and being on the point of departing. in the morning, a servant of the king arrived, to attend him to the frontier, if he preferred to return to Spain by land, and to provide horses, lodgings, and every thing he might stand in need of, at the royal expense. The weather, however, having moderated, he preferred returning in his caravel. Putting to sea, therefore, on the 13th of March, he arrived safely at the bar of Saltes on sunrise of the 15th, and at mid-day entered the harbor of Palos; whence he had sailed on the 3d of August in the preceding year, having taken not quite seven months and a half to accomplish this most momentous of all maritime enterprises.*

* Works generally consulted in this chapter:-Las Casas, Hist. Ind. lib. cap. 17; Hist. del Almirante, cap. 39, 40, 41; Journal of Columb. Navarrete, tom. i.

CHAPTER V.

RECEPTION OF COLUMBUS AT PALOS.

[1493.]

THE triumphant return of Columbus was a prodigious event

in the history of the little port of Palos, where everybody was more or less interested in the fate of his expedition. The most important and wealthy sea-captains of the place had engaged in it, and scarcely a family but had some relative or friend among the navigators. The departure of the ships, upon what appeared a chimerical and desperate cruise, had spread gloom and dismay over the place; and the storms which had raged throughout the winter had heightened the public despondency. Many lamented their friends as lost, while imagination lent mysterious horrors to their fate, picturing them as driven about over wild and desert wastes of water without a shore, or as perishing amidst rocks, and quicksands, and whirlpools; or a prey to those monsters of the deep, with which credulity peopled every distant and unfrequented sea. There was something more awful in such a mysterious fate than in death itself, under any defined and ordinary form.*

* In the maps and charts of those times, and even in those of a much later date, the variety of formidable and hideous monsters depicted in