Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

i. e. "To Castile-and-Leon Columbus gave a New World;" and we are further told that, when the "Nuevo Mundo." Admiral's bones were removed to Seville, this motto was, by order of King Ferdinand, inscribed upon his tomb.[617] This tradition crumbles under the touch of historical criticism. The Admiral's coat-of-arms, as finally emblazoned under his own inspection at Seville in 1502, quarters the royal Castle-and-Lion of the kingdom of Castile with his own devices of five anchors, and a group of golden islands with a bit of Terra Firma, upon a blue sea. But there is no legend of any sort, nor is anything of the kind mentioned by Las Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr. The first allusion to such a motto is by Oviedo, in 1535, who gives it a somewhat different turn:—