Jesus Christ

Because, O most Christian, and very high, very excellent, and puissant
Princes, King and Queen of the Spains and of the islands of the Sea, our
Lords, in this present year of 1492, after your Highnesses had given an
end to the war with the Moors who reigned in Europe, and had finished it
in the very great city of Granada, where in this present year, on the
second day of the month of January, by force of arms, I saw the royal
banners of your Highnesses placed on the towers of Alfambra,[89-1] which
is the fortress of that city, and I saw the Moorish King come forth from
the gates of the city and kiss the royal hands of your Highnesses, and of
the Prince my Lord, and presently in that same month, acting on the
information that I had given to your Highnesses touching the lands of
India, and respecting a Prince who is called Gran Can, which means in our
language King of Kings, how he and his ancestors had sent to Rome many
times to ask for learned men[89-2] of our holy faith to teach him, and
how the Holy Father had never complied, insomuch that many people
believing in idolatries were lost by receiving doctrine of perdition:
YOUR HIGHNESSES, as Catholic Christians and Princes who love the holy
Christian faith, and the propagation of it, and who are enemies to the
sect of Mahoma and to all idolatries and heresies, resolved to send me,
Cristobal Colon, to the said parts of India to see the said princes, and
the cities and lands, and their disposition, with a view that they might
be converted to our holy faith;[90-1] and ordered that I should not go by
land to the eastward, as had been customary, but that I should go by way
of the west, whither up to this day, we do not know for certain that any
one has gone.

Thus, after having turned out all the Jews from all your kingdoms and
lordships, in the same month of January,[90-2] your Highnesses gave
orders to me that with a sufficient fleet I should go to the said parts
of India, and for this they made great concessions to me, and ennobled
me, so that henceforward I should be called Don, and should be Chief
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, perpetual Viceroy and Governor of all the
islands and continents that I should discover and gain, and that I might
hereafter discover and gain in the Ocean Sea, and that my eldest son
should succeed, and so on from generation to generation for ever.

I left the city of Granada on the 12th day of May, in the same year of
1492, being Satu