of these facts are related.[503]

[Footnote 503: My account of these proceedings at La Rabida
differs in some particulars from any heretofore given, and I
think gets the events into an order of sequence that is at once
more logical and more in harmony with the sources of
information than any other. The error of Ferdinand Columbus--a
very easy one to commit, and not in the least damaging to his
general character as biographer--lay in confusing his father's
two real visits (in 1484 and 1491) to Huelva with two visits
(one imaginary in 1484 and one real in 1491) to La Rabida,
which was close by, between Huelva and Palos. The visits were
all the more likely to get mixed up in recollection because in
each case their object was little Diego and in each case he was
left in charge of somebody in that neighbourhood. The confusion
has been helped by another for which Ferdinand is not
responsible, viz.: the friar Juan Perez has been confounded
with another friar Antonio de Marchena, who Columbus says was
the only person who from the time of his first arrival in Spain
had always befriended him and never mocked at him. These worthy
friars twain have been made into one (e. g. "the prior of the
convent, Juan Perez de Marchena," Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i.
p. 128), and it has often been supposed that Marchena's
acquaintance began with Columbus at La Rabida in 1484, and that
Diego was left at the convent at that time. But some modern
sources of information have served at first to bemuddle, and
then when more carefully sifted, to clear up the story. In 1508
Diego Columbus brought suit against the Spanish crown to
vindicate his claim to certain territories discovered by his
father, and there was a long investigation in which many
witnesses were summoned and past events were busily raked over
the coals. Among these witnesses were Rodriguez Cabejudo and
the physician Garcia Fernandez, who gave from personal
recollection a very lucid account of the affairs at La Rabida.
These proceedings are printed in Navarrete, _Coleccion de
viages_, tom. iii. pp. 238-591. More recently the publication
of the great book of Las Casas has furnished