Note 241-4 — JOURNAL OF THE FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS (continued 4)

Ferdinand Columbus has preserved in his life of his father the exact words of the Journal for the last two pages of the entry for February 14. The extract is given here to illustrate the character of the work of the epitomizer who prepared the text of the Journal as it has come down to us. “I should have borne this fortune with less distress if my life alone had been in peril, since I am aware that I am in debt to the Most High Creator for my life and because at other times I have found myself so near to death that almost nothing remained but to suffer it. But what caused me boundless grief and trouble was the reflection that, now that Our Lord had been pleased to enlighten me with the faith and with the certainty of this undertaking in which he had already given me the victory, that just now, when our gainsayers were to be convinced and your Highnesses were to receive from me glory and enlargement of your high estate, the Divine Majesty should will to block it with my death. This last would have been more endurable if it did not involve that of the people I brought with me with the promise of a very prosperous issue. They seeing themselves in such a plight not only cursed their coming but even the fear or the restraint which after my persuasions prevented them from turning back from the way as many times they were resolved to do. And above all this my grief was redoubled at the vision before my eyes and at the recollection of two little sons that I had left at their studies in Cordova without succor in a strange land and without my having rendered (or at least without its being made manifest) the service for which one might trust that your Highnesses would remember them.

“And although on the one hand I was comforted by the faith that I had that Our Lord would never suffer a work which would highly exalt his Church, which at length after so much opposition and such labors I had brought to the last stage, to remain unaccomplished and that I should be broken; on the other hand, I thought that, either on account of my demerits or to prevent my enjoying so much glory in this world, it was his pleasure to take it away from me, and so while thus in perplexity I bethought myself of the venture of your Highnesses who even if I should die and the ship be lost, might find means of not losing a victory already achieved and that it might be possible in some way for the news of the success of my voyage to come to your ears; wherefore I wrote on a parchment with the brevity that the time demanded how I had discovered the lands that I had promised to, and in how many days; and the route I had followed; and the goodness of the countries, and the quality of their inhabitants and how they were the vassals of your Highnesses who had possession of all that had been found by me. This writing folded and sealed I directed to your Highnesses with the superscription or promise of a thousand ducats to him who should deliver it unopened, in order that, if some foreigners should find it, the truth of superscription might prevent them from disposing of the information which was inside. And I straightway had a large cask brought and having wrapped the writing in a waxed cloth and put it into a kind of tart or cake of wax I placed it in the barrel which, stoutly hooped, I then threw into the sea. All believed that it was some act of devotion. Then because I thought it might not arrive safely and the ships were all the while approaching Castile I made another package like that and placed it on the upper part of the poop in order that if the ship should sink the barrel might float at the will of fate.”