Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/498

470 470 FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. PART eries,^'^^ and the culture of the sugar-cane, intro- 1!: duced from the Canaries,^°^ yielded large returns under the same inhuman system. Ferdinand, who enjoyed, by the queen's testa- ment, half the amount of the Indian revenues, was now fully awakened to their importan-ce. It would be unjust, however, to suppose his views limited to immediate pecuniary profits ; for the measures he pursued were, in many respects, well contrived to promote the nobler ends of discovery and coloniza- tion. He invited the persons most eminent for nautical science and enterprise, as Pinzon, Solis, Vespucci, to his court, where they constituted a sort of board of navigation, constructing charts, and tracing out new routes for projected voyages.^"^ The conduct of this department was intrusted to the last-mentioned navigator, who had the glory, the greatest which accident and caprice ever granted to man, of giving his name to the new hemisphere. Fleets were now fitted out on a more extended scale, which might vie, indeed, with the splendid equipments of the Portuguese, whose brilliant sue cesses in the east excited the envy of their Castilian rivals. The king occasionally took a share in the voyage, independently of the interest which of right belonged to the crown. ^*^ gold annually. De Rebus Oceani- ^^5 Navarretc, Coleccion de Vi cis, dec. 1, lib. 10. ages, torn. iii. documentos 1-13, 103 The pearl fisheries of Cuba- — Herrura, Indias Occideutales, gua were worth 75,000 ducats a dec. 1, lib. 7, cap. 1. year. Ilerrera, Indias Occiden- ^^^ Navarrete, Coleccion de Via tales, dec. 1, lib. 7, cap. 9. ges, torn. iii. pp. 48, 134. 10'' Oviedo, Ilistoria Natural de las Indias, lib. 4, cap. 8. — Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 165.