ation of innumerable people who
previously had been going to their ruin. That, if Columbus also
asks of Ferdinand and Isabella to permit only Catholic Christians
to go to the New World, there to accelerate trade with the natives,
he supports this motive by the fact that by his enterprise and
efforts he has not sought for anything else than the glory and the
development of the Christian religion.

This was what was perfectly known to Isabella, who, better than any
other person, had penetrated the mind of such a great man; much
more, it appears that this same plan was fully adopted by this very
pious woman of great heart and manly mind. She bore witness, in
effect, of Columbus, that in courageously giving himself up to the
vast ocean, he realized, for the divine glory, a most signal
enterprise; and to Columbus himself, when he had happily returned,
she wrote that she esteemed as having been highly employed the
resources which she had consecrated and which she would still
consecrate to the expeditions in the Indies, in view of the fact
that the propagation of Catholicism would result from them.

Also, if he had not inspired himself from a cause superior to human
interests, where then would he have drawn the constancy and the
strength of soul to support what he was obliged to the end to
endure and to submit to; that is to say, the unpropitious advice of
the learned people, the repulses of princes, the tempests of the
furious ocean, the continual watches, during which he more than
once risked losing his sight.

To that add the combats sustained against the barbarians; the
infidelities of his friends, of his companions; the villainous
conspiracies, the perfidiousness of the envious, the calumnies of
the traducers, the chains with which, after all, though innocent,
he was loaded. It was inevitable that a man overwhelmed with a
burden of trials so great and so intense would have succumbed had
he not sustained himself by the consciousness of fulfilling a very
noble enterprise, which he conjectured would be glorious for the
Christian name and salutary for an infinite multitude.

And the enterprise so carried out is admirably illustrated by the
events of that time. In effect, Columbus discovered America at
about the period when a great tempest was goi