me of the
Florentine merchant then living obscurely in Cadiz or Seville.

"The foreign intercourse of the country," says the renowned author of
_Ferdinand and Isabella_, "was every day more widely extended. Her
agents and consuls were to be found in all the ports of the
Mediterranean and the Baltic. The Spanish mariner, instead of creeping
along the beaten track of inland navigation, now struck boldly across
the great Western Ocean. The new discoveries had converted the land
trade with India into a sea trade, and the nations of the peninsula,
which had hitherto lain remote from the great highways of commerce,
now became the factors and carriers of Europe.

"The flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and
population of its cities, the revenue of which, augmented in all to a
surprising extent, had increased in some forty and even fifty fold
beyond what they were at the commencement of Ferdinand and Isabella's
reign: the ancient and lordly Toledo; Burgos, with its bustling
industrious traders; Valladolid, sending forth thirty thousand
warriors from its gates; Cordova, in the south, and the magnificent
Granada, naturalizing in Europe the arts and luxuries of the East;
Saragossa, 'the abundant,' as she was called from her fruitful
territory; Valencia, 'the beautiful'; Barcelona, rivalling in
independence and maritime enterprise the proudest of the Italian
republics; Medina del Campo, whose fairs were already the great mart
for the commercial exchanges of the peninsula; and Seville, the golden
gate of the Indies, whose quays began to be thronged with merchants
from the most distant countries of Europe."

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _The Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius_, by C. Edwards
Lester, 1845.

[8] Article, "China," in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

V

CONVERSATIONS WITH COLUMBUS

1492 OR 1493

While we cannot affirm that Christopher Columbus and Vespucci were
acquainted previous to the voyage which made America known to Europe,
it is well established that Amerigo was in Spain when his favored
rival sailed from Palos, in August, 1492, and also when he returned,
in March, 1493. In the very month of January, 1492, in which Vespucci
wrote the letter quoted in the previous chapter, Columbus and the
Spanish sovereigns signed the "capitulation" that set forth the
demands of the discoverer and the concessions of the king and queen.
That paper was signed and sealed in the palace of the Alham