At Length It
Pleased God To Reward Him With The Sight Of Land In The Morning, According
To His Promise The Preceding Evening; For Which He Was Ever Afterwards
Considered By The Seamen As Most Expert And Almost Prophetical In Maritime
Affairs.
Having landed in Spain the admiral went to Burgos, where he was very
favourably received by their Catholic majesties, who were then at that
place celebrating the marriage of their son Prince John with Margaret of
Austria, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian.
That princess was conducted
into Spain with great splendour, and received by most of the nobility and
by the greatest concourse of persons of quality that ever had been seen
together in Spain. But though I was present on the occasion as page to
prince John, I shall not enter into the particulars of this solemnity,
since it does not belong to the history I have undertaken to write, and
because the royal historiographers will have doubtless taken care to
record this event.
On his arrival at Burgos, the admiral presented their majesties, with many
curious specimens of the productions of the Indies, as birds, beasts,
trees, plants, instruments, and other things used by the Indians in their
employments and amusements; also girdles, and masks, having ears and eyes
made of gold plates; likewise with much gold dust, small and gross as
produced by nature, some of the grains as big as vetches, some like beans,
and others as large as pigeons eggs. These latter, then so much admired,
were not afterwards so much valued, as in progress of time lumps of gold
have been found which weighed above thirty pounds; but they were then held
in high estimation in prospect of great future hopes, and were received in
good part by their majesties. When the admiral had given them an account
of all that seemed to him necessary for improving and peopling the Indies,
he was very desirous to return thither with all speed, lest some disaster
might happen during his absence, considering that he had left the colony
in great want of necessaries; and though he strongly solicited and pressed
the necessity of speedy succours, such was the tediousness and delay of
business in that court, that ten or twelve months elapsed before he could
procure the equipment of two ships, which were sent out in February 1498,
under the command of Pedro Fernandez Coronel.
The admiral remained at court to solicit the appointment of such a fleet
as he considered to be necessary for his return to the Indies. But he was
forced to remain above a year at Burgos and Medina del Campo, where in the
year 1497 their majesties granted him many favours, and gave the necessary
orders for expediting his affairs, and for the settlement and government
of the Indies. These I here mention to shew that their Catholic majesties
were, still ready to acknowledge and reward his services and merit; though
they afterwards altered greatly in this respect, through the false
information and scandalous insinuations of malicious and envious persons,
so as to permit gross wrongs to be done him, as will afterwards appear.
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