they will look upon
my services, and will acknowledge day by day that they are much
profited. They will place everything in the balance, even as Holy
Scripture tells us good and evil will be at the day of judgment.

"If, however, they command that another person do judge me, which I
cannot believe, and that it be by inquisition in the Indies, I very
humbly beseech them to send thither two conscientious and honourable
persons at my expense, who I believe will easily, now that gold is
discovered, find five marks in four hours. In either case it is
needful for them to provide for this matter.

"The Commander on his arrival at San Domingo took up his abode in my
house, and just as he found it so he appropriated everything to
himself. Well and good; perhaps he was in want of it. A pirate
never acted thus towards a merchant. About my papers I have a
greater grievance, for he has so completely deprived me of them that
I have never been able to obtain a single one from him; and those
that would have been most useful in my exculpation are precisely
those which he has kept most concealed. Behold the just and honest
inquisitor! Whatever he may have done, they tell me that there has
been an end to justice, except in an arbitrary form. God, our Lord,
is present with His strength and wisdom, as of old, and always
punishes in the end, especially ingratitude and injuries."

We must keep in mind the circumstances in which this letter was written
if we are to judge it and the writer wisely. It is a sad example of
querulous complaint, in which everything but the writer's personal point
of view is ignored. No one indeed is more terrible in this world than
the Man with a Grievance. How rarely will human nature in such
circumstances retire into the stronghold of silence! Columbus is asking
for pity; but as we read his letter we incline to pity him on grounds
quite different from those which he represented. He complains that the
people he was sent to govern have waged war against him as against a
Moor; he complains of Ojeda and of Vincenti Yanez Pinzon; of Adrian de
Moxeca, and of every other person whom it was his business to govern and
hold in restraint. He complains of the colonists--the very people, some
of them, whom he himself took and impressed from the gaols and purlieus
of Cadiz; and then he mingles pious talk abou