Xpo FERENS."

"I say further that if our affairs are to be settled according to
conscience, that the chapter of the letter which their Highnesses wrote
me when I departed, in which they say they will order you placed in
possession, must be shown; and the writing must also be shown which is in
the Book of Privileges, which shows how in reason and in justice the
third and eighth and the tenth are mine. There will always be
opportunity to make reductions from this amount."

Columbus's requests were not all for himself; nothing could be more
sincere or generous than the spirit in which he always strove to secure
the just payment of his mariners.

Otherwise he is still concerned with the favour shown to those who were
treasonable to him. Camacho was still hiding in a church, probably from
the wrath of Bartholomew Columbus; but Christopher has more subtle ways
of punishment. A legal document, he considers, will be better than a
rod; "it will not be so much against the conscience of the chastiser, and
will injure him (the chastised) more."

Letter written by CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS to DON DIEGO, his Son,
January 18, 1505.

"VERY DEAR SON,--I wrote you at length by the courier who will
arrive there to-day, and sent you a letter for the Lord Chamberlain.
I intended to inclose in it a copy of that chapter of the letter
from their Highnesses in which they say they will order you placed
in possession; but I forgot to do it here. Zamora, the courier,
came. I read your letter and also those of your uncle and brother
and Carbajal, and felt great pleasure in learning that they had
arrived well, as I had been very anxious about them. Diego Mendez
will leave here in three or four days with the order of payment
prepared. He will take a long statement of everything and I will
write to Juan Velasquez. I desire his friendship and service. I
believe that he is a very honourable gentleman. If the Lord Bishop
of Palencia has come, or comes, tell him how much pleased I have
been with his prosperity, and that if I go there I must stop with
his Worship even if he does not wish it, and that we must return to
our first fraternal love. And that he could not refuse it because
my service will force him to have it thus. I said that the letter
for the Holy Father was sent that his Worship might see it i