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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
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