TREATMENT OF COLUMBUS. 483 The great inclination, however, which the admi- chapter ral had to serve the Catholic sovereigns, and es- H is fourth and last voyage. pecially the most serene queen, says Ferdinand and last Columbus, induced him to lay aside his scruples, and encounter the perils and fatigues of another voyage. A few weeks before his departure, he received a gracious letter from Ferdinand and Isabella, the last ever addressed to him by his royal mistress, assuring him of their purpose to maintain inviolate all their engagements with him, and to perpetuate the inheritance of his honors in his fam- ily.^^ Comforted and cheered by these assurances, instead of wilful fabrication on the part of Vespucci ; in which light, indeed, it seems to have been re- garded by the two most ancient and honest historians of the event, Las Casas and Herrera. Mr. Irving's conclusions, how- ever, have since been confirmed, in the fullest manner, by M. de Hum- holdt, in the fifth volume of his " Geographic du Nouveau Conti- nent," published in 1839, a year after the preceding portion of this note was first printed ; in which he has assembled a mass of testimony, suggesting the most favorable im- pressions of Vespucci's innocence of the various charges brought against him. Since the appearance of Mr. Ir- ving's work, Seuor Navarrete has published the third volume of his " Coleccion de Viages y Descubri- mientos," &c., containing, among other things, the original letters re- cording Vespucci's American voy- ages, illustrated by all the author- ities and facts, that could come within the scope of his indefatiga- ble researches. The whole weight of evidence leads irresistibly to the conviction, that Columbus is en- titled to the glory of being the origi- nal discoverer of the southern con- tinent, as well as islands, of the western hemisphere. (Coleccion de Viages, torn. iii. pp. 183-334.) In addition to the preceding wri- ters, the American reader will find the claims of Vespucci discussed, with much ingenuity and careful examination of authorities, by Mr. Cushing, in his "Reminiscences of Spain," Vol. ii. pp. 210 et seq. 39 Fernando Colon, Hist, del Al- mirante, cap. 87. — Herrera notices this letter, written, he says, "con tanta humanidad, que parecia ex- traordinaria de lo que usavan con otros, y no sin razon, pues jamas nadie les hizo tal servicio." Indias Occidentales, lib. 5, cap. 1. Among other instances of the queen's personal regard for (^olum- bus, may be noticed her receiving his two sons, Diego and Fernando, as her own pages, on the death of Prince John, in whose service they had formerly been. (Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, tom. ii., Doc. Dipl.,125.)
