o reunite
the family. He clearly did not know at the outset whether he
should stay in Spain or not.]

[Footnote 489: It rests upon an improbable statement of
Ramusio, who places the event as early as 1470. The first
Genoese writer to allude to it is Casoni, _Annali della
Republica di Genova_, Genoa, 1708, pp. 26-31. Such testimony is
of small value.]

[Footnote 490: First mentioned in 1800 by Marin, _Storia del
commercio de Veneziani_, Venice, 1798-1808, tom. vii. p. 236.]

[Footnote 491: The description usually given of this conference
rests upon the authority of Remesal, _Historia de la prouincia
de Chyapa_, Madrid, 1619, lib. ii. cap. vii. p. 52. Las Casas
merely says that the question was referred to certain persons
at the court, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 228. It is
probably not true that the project of Columbus was officially
condemned by the university of Salamanca as a corporate body.
See Camara, _Religion y Ciencia_, Valladolid, 1880, p. 261.]

[Sidenote: Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, Aug. 15, 1488.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope, Dec,
1487.]

[Sidenote: Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. Sept., 1488;]

[Sidenote: and sends him to England.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. Feb., 1490;]

[Sidenote: and goes thence to France before 1492.]

After the surrender of Malaga in August, 1487, Columbus visited the
court in that city. For a year or more after that time silken chains
seem to have bound him to Cordova. He had formed a connection with a
lady of noble family, Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, who gave birth to his
son Ferdinand on the 15th of August, 1488.[492] Shortly after this
event, Columbus made a visit to Lisbon, in all probability for the
purpose of meeting his brother Bartholomew, who had returned in the last
week of December, 1487, in the Dias expedition, with the proud news of
the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope,[493] which was rightly
believed to be the extremity of Africa; and we can well understand how
Christopher, on seeing the success of Prince Henry's method of reaching
the Indies so nearly vindicated, must have become more impatient than
ever to prove the superiority of his own method. It was probably not
long after Bartholomew's return that Christopher