Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/506

480 480 PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY. PART address, and acknowledged personal authority. His
 * — sublime enthusiasm, which carried him victorious

over every obstacle, involved him also in numerous embarrassments, which men of more phlegmatic temperament would have escaped. It led him to count too readily on a similar spirit in others, — and to be disappointed. It gave an exaggerated coloring to his views and descriptions, that inevitably led to a reaction in the minds of such as embarked their all on the splendid dreams of a fairy land, which they were never to realize.^^ Hence a fruitful source of discontent and disajffection in his follow- ers. It led him, in his eagerness for the achieve- ment of his great enterprises, to be less scrupulous and politic as to the means, than a less ardent spirit would have been. His pertinacious adherence to the scheme of Indian slavery, and his impolitic regulation compelling the labor of the hidalgos, are pertinent examples of this.^^ He was, moreover, 35 The high devotional feeling actual provieion for it in his testa- of Columbus, led him to trace out ment. This was a flight, however, allusions in Scripture to the various beyond the spirit even of this ro- circumstances and scenes of his ad- mantic age, and probably received venturous life. Thus he believed as little serious attention from the his great discovery announced in queen, as from her more cool and the Apocalypse, and in Isaiah ; he calculating husband. Peter Mar- identified, as I have before stated, tyr, De Eebus Oceanicis, dec. 1, the mines of Hispaniola with those lib. 6. — Tercer Viage de Colon, which furnished Solomon with ma- apud Navarrete, Coleccion de Via- terials for his temple; he fancied ges, torn. i. p.259. — tom.ii.,Doc. that he had determined the actual Dipl., no. 140. — Herrera, Indias locality of the garden of Eden in Occidentales, lib. 6, cap. 15. the newly discovered region of ^G Another example was the in- Paria. But his greatest extrava- judicious punishment of delinquents gance was his project of a crusade by diminishing their regular allow- ibr the recovery of the Jloly Sep- ance of food, a measure so obnox- ulchre. This he cherisliod from ions as to call for the interference the first liour of liis discovery, of the sovereigns, wiio prohibited pressing it in the most urgent man- it altogether. (Navarrete, Colec- ner on the sovereigns, and making cion de Viages, tom.ii., Doc. Dipl ,