Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/507

TREATMENT OF COLUMBUS. 481 a foreigner, without rank, fortune, or powerful chapter friends ; and his high and sudden elevation naturally raised him up a thousand enemies among a proud, punctilious, and intensely national people. Under these multiplied embarrassments, resulting from pe- culiarities of character and situation, the sovereigns might well be excused for not intrusting Columbus, at this delicate crisis, with disentangling the meshes of intrigue and faction, in which the aifairs of the colony were so unhappily involved. I trust these remarks will not be construed into an insensibility to the merits and exalted services of Columbus. " A world," to borrow the words, though not the application of the Greek historian, "is his monument." His virtues shine with too bright a lustre to be dimmed by a few natural blemishes ; but it becomes necessary to notice these, to vindicate the Spanish government from the imputation of perfidy and ingratitude, where it has been most freely urged, and apparently with the least foundation. It is more difficult to excuse the paltry equip- ment with which the admiral was suffered to undertake his fourth and last voyage. The object proposed by this expedition was the discovery of a passage to the great Indian Ocean, which, he inferred sagaciously enough from his premises, 97.) Herrera, who must be ad- that, " with every allowance for mitted to have been in no degree calumny, they must be confessed insensible to the merits of Col urn- not to have jroverned the Castilians bus, closes his account of the vari- with the moderation that they ous accusations urged against him ought to have done." Indias Oc- and his brothers, with the remark, cidentales, lib. 4, cap. 9. VOL. II. ^1