Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/533

507 SPANISH COLONIAL POLICY. 507 While the colonial empire of Spain was thus every day enlarging, the man to whom it was all due was never permitted to know the extent, or the value of it. He died in the conviction in which he lived, that the land he had reached was the long- sought Indies. But it was a country far richer than the Indies ; and, had he on quitting Cuba struck CHAPTER IX. conception of its importance. Pub- lic attention was promptly and eagerly directed to this momentous event, so that few facts worthy of note, during the whole progress of discovery from its earliest epoch, es- caped contemporary record. Many of these notices have, indeed, per- ished through neglect, in the va- rious repositories in which they were scattered. The researches of Navarrete have rescued many, and will, it is to be hoped, many more from their progress to obliv- ion. The first two volumes of his compilation, containing the jour- nals and letters of Columbus, the correspondence of the sovereigns with him, and a vast quantity of public and private documents, form, as I have elsewhere remarked, the most authentic basis for a history of that great man. Next to these in importance is the "History of the Admiral," by his son Ferdinand, whose own experience and oppor- tunities, combined with uncommon literary attainments, eminently qual- ified him for recording his father's extraordinary life. It must be al- lowed, that he has done this with a candor and good faith seldom warped by any overweening, though natural, partiality for his subject. His work met with a whimsical fate. The original was early lost, but happily not before it had been translated into the Italian, from which a Spanish version was after- wards made ; and from this latter, thus reproduced in the same tongue in which it originally appeared, are derived the various translations of it into the other languages of Eu- rope. The Spanish version, which is incorporated into Barcia's col- lection, is executed in a slovenly manner, and is replete with chro- nological inaccuracies ; a circum- stance not very wonderful, consid- ering the curious transmigration it has undergone. Another contemporary author of peter Mar- great value is Peter Martyr, who tyr- took so deep an interest in the nau- tical enterprise of his day, as to make it, independently of the abun- dant notices scattered through his correspondence, the subject of a separate work. His history, " De Rebus Oceanicis et Novo Orbe," has all the value which extensive learning, a reflecting, philosophical mind, and intimate familiarity with the principal actors in the scenes he describes, can give. Indeed, that no source of information might be wanting to him, the sovereigns au- thorized nim to be present at the council of the Indies, whenever any communication was made to that body, respecting the progress of discovery. The principal defects of his work arise from the precipi- tate manner in which the greater part of it was put together, and the consequently imperfect and occa- sionally contradictory statements which appear in it. But the hon- est intentions of the author, who