t how shall we get the time?

Is it possible that Las Casas made a slight mistake in
deciphering the date on Bartholomew's map? Either that mariner
did not give the map to Henry VII., or the king gave it back,
or more likely it was made in duplicate. At any rate Las Casas
had it, along with his many other Columbus documents, and for
aught we know it may still be tumbling about somewhere in the
Spanish archives. It was so badly written (_de muy mala e
corrupta letra_), apparently in abbreviations (_sin
ortografia_), that Las Casas says he found extreme difficulty
in making it out. Now let us observe that date, which is given
in fantastic style, apparently because the inscription is in a
rude doggerel, and the writer seems to have wished to keep his
"verses" tolerably even. (They don't scan much better than Walt
Whitman's.) As it stands, the date reads _anno domini millesimo
quatercentessimo octiesque uno atque insuper anno octavo_, i.
e. "in the year of our Lord the thousandth, four hundredth, AND
EIGHT-TIMES-ONE, and thereafter the eighth year." What business
has this cardinal number _octiesque uno_ in a row of ordinals?
If it were translatable, which it is not, it would give us
1,000 + 400 + 8 + 8 = 1416, an absurd date. The most obvious
way to make the passage readable is to insert the ordinal
_octogesimo primo_ instead of the incongruous _octiesque uno_;
then it will read "in the year of our Lord the
one-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-first, and thereafter the
eighth year," that is to say 1489. Now translate old style into
new style, and February, 1489, becomes February, 1490, which I
believe to be the correct date. This allows sixteen months for
Bartholomew's mishaps; it justifies the statement in which Las
Casas confirms Ferdinand Columbus; and it harmonizes with the
statement of Lord Bacon: "For Christopherus Columbus, refused
by the king of Portugal (who would not embrace at once both
east and west), employed his brother Bartholomew Columbus unto
King Henry to negotiate for his discovery. And it so fortuned
that he was taken by pirates at sea; by which accidental
impediment he was long ere he came to th