hand, he was re-animated by the favors which God had shown him in
granting to him so great a triumph as that which he had achieved, in
all his discoveries, in fulfilling all his wishes, and in granting that,
after having experienced in Castile so many rebuffs and disappointments,
all his hopes should at last be more than surpassed. In one word, as the
sovereign master of the universe, had, in the outset, distinguished him
in granting all his requests, before he had carried out his expedition
for God's greatest glory, and before it had succeeded, he was compelled
to believe now that God would preserve him to complete the work which he
had begun." Such is Las Casas's abridgment of Columbus's words.

"For which reasons he said he ought to have had no fear of the tempest
that was raging. But his weakness and anguish did not leave him a
moment's calm. He also said that his greatest grief was the thought of
leaving his two boys orphans. They were at Cordova, at their studies.
What would become of them in a strange land, without father or mother?
for the king and queen, being ignorant of the services he had rendered
them in this voyage, and of the good news which he was bringing to them,
would not be bound by any consideration to serve as their protectors.

"Full of this thought, he sought, even in the storm, some means of
apprising their highnesses of the victory which the Lord had granted
him, in permitting him to discover in the Indies all which he had sought
in his voyage, and to let them know that these coasts were free from
storms, which is proved, he said, by the growth of herbage and trees
even to the edge of the sea. With this purpose, that, if he perished in
this tempest, the king and queen might have some news of his voyage, he
took a parchment and wrote on it all that he could of his discoveries,
and urgently begged that whoever found it would carry it to the king
and queen. He rolled up this parchment in a piece of waxed linen, closed
this parcel tightly, and tied it up securely; he had brought to him
a large wooden barrel, within which he placed it, without anybody's
knowing what it was. Everybody thought the proceeding was some act of
devotion. He then caused it to be thrown into the sea."(*)

(*) Within a few months, in the summer of 1890, a well known
English publisher has issued an interesting and ingenious
edition, of what pretended to be a facsimile of this
document. The reader is aske