side; the
requisitions are made with good sense and a grasp of the economic
situation; but they have a deeper significance than that. All this talk
about little ewe lambs, wine and bacon (better than the last lot, if it
please your Highnesses), little yearling calves, and fifty casks of
molasses that can be bought a ducat or two cheaper in Madeira in the
months of April and May than at any other time or place, is only half
real. Columbus fills his Sovereigns' ears with this clamour so that he
shall not hear those embarrassing questions that will inevitably be asked
about the gold and the spices. He boldly begins his letter with the old
story about "indications of spices" and gold "in incredible quantities,"
with a great deal of "moreover" and "besides," and a bold, pompous,
pathetic "I will undertake"; and then he gets away from that subject by
wordy deviations, so that to one reading his letter it really might seem
as though the true business of the expedition was to provide Coronel,
Mosen Pedro, Gaspar, Beltran, Gil Garcia, and the rest of them with work
and wages. Everything that occurs to him, great or little, that makes it
seem as though things were humming in the new settlement, he stuffs into
this document, shovelling words into the empty hulls of the ships, and
trying to fill those bottomless pits with a stream of talk. A system of
slavery is boldly and bluntly sketched; the writer, in the hurry and
stress of the moment, giving to its economic advantages rather greater
prominence than to its religious glories. The memorandum, for all its
courageous attempt to be very cool and orderly and practical, gives us,
if ever a human document did, a picture of a man struggling with an
impossible situation which he will not squarely face, like one who should
try to dig up the sea-shore and keep his eyes shut the while.

In the royal comments written against the document one seems to trace the
hand of Isabella rather than of Ferdinand. Their tone is matter-of-fact,
cool, and comforting, like the coolness of a woman's hand placed on a
feverish brow. Isabella believed in him; perhaps she read between the
lines of this document, and saw, as we can see, how much anxiety and
distress were written there; and her comments are steadying and
encouraging. He has done well; what he asks is being attended to; their
Highnesses are well informed in regard to this and that matter; suitable
provision will be made for everything; bu