queen of the Indies, where his rank, as well as his alliance, gave him precedence over all the officers[1] of the illustrious widow, Doña Maria de Toledo. The nobility of Beatrix Enriquez is equally made evident by the necrological notice of her son Fernando, published by the annalist of Seville.[2] Her purity of descent was, in later times, pleaded even by the descendants of the first marriage of Columbus. In 1671, Don Pedro Columbus, in the interest of his cause, reminded the Queen of Spain that the two sons of the grand Admiral of the Ocean had for mothers ladies of the most ancient nobility.[3]
Let us now see whether the passion of Columbus for "the beautiful lady of Cordova" was the true cause of his remaining in Spain, notwithstanding the offers of the King of Portugal. So much the worse for the illustrious Humboldt, if he receives from the facts a contradiction somewhat rude. Who would not have verified the accusations of Navarrete before taking them under his shield?
In the first place, when the letter of King John II. came to Columbus, towards the last of April, 1488, the pregnancy of Beatrix no longer existed, since her accouchement had taken place the twenty-ninth of August of the preceding year. Fernando Columbus, born in Cordova the twenty-ninth of August, 1487[4] (and not the fifteenth of August, 1488, as falsely stated by Navarrete, and reasserted without verification by Humboldt), was then eight months old when the letter of the King of Portugal came to his father. It was not, then, the delicate state of Beatrix that caused him to reject the offers of that sovereign.
The Protestant historians agree in withholding from Columbus the merit of his patience, — to attribute it to the
