Valles, attributes the discovery of the New World, not to a man, but to a caravel;[1] he makes an allusion to the fable of the pilot who died at the house of Columbus. This carelessness, which was the natural consequence of so many mistakes, followed as a matter of course, from the great disrepute in which the career of the grand Admiral of the Ocean had terminated. The indifference of the public for his glory may be judged from the fact, that a cotemporary of the Discovery, Lucio Marineo, an elegant writer, who came from Sicily to Castile to create a taste for Latin letters, in writing his "History of Memorable Affairs of Spain," had already caused confusion on the subject of the Discovery, by disfiguring the singularly symbolic name of Christopher Columbus, and not blushing to call him Peter Columbus.[2] He thus rendered himself the accomplice of the Teuton, Jobst Ruchamer, who, in his first German book in which the New World is spoken of, does not once mention the name of Columbus, and perseveres in calling him Christopher Dawber,[3] which means Christopher Cock-dove.
These men were not aware of the enormity of their profanation.
After his third voyage, Columbus had fallen so low in public estimation that nobody deigned to trouble himself about him. For many he was no longer of this world. Others, attaching no importance to what concerned him, took no pains to verify the dates. We see that this depreciation of his glory was general at the time when the first three "Oceanic Decades" of Peter Martyr appeared at Alcala de Henares in 1516, ten years before the first edition of the first books of the "History of the Indies," by Oviedo, published at Toledo, and when the Venetian, Ramusio, had
