Note 485 — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.
Reading edition
Footnote 485: The Portuguese have never been able to forgive Columbus for discovering a new world for Spain, and their chagrin sometimes vents itself in amusing ways. After all, says Cordeiro, Columbus was no such great man as some people think, for he did not discover what he promised to discover; and, moreover, the Portuguese geographers were right in condemning his scheme, because it really is not so far by sea from Lisbon around Africa to Hindustan as from Lisbon by any practicable route westward to Japan! See Luciano Cordeiro, De la part prise par les Portugais dans la découverte d'Amérique, Lisbon, 1876, pp. 23, 24, 29, 30. Well, I don't know that there is any answer to be made to this argument. Logic is logic, says the wise Autocrat:—