ess at
Seville sufficient proof of their being the next of kin, receive payment
in conformity with the royal order to that purpose, issued at Burgos on
December 20, 1507.]

[Footnote 22: Dominica.]

[Footnote 23: Martinique.]

[Footnote 24: Of Genoa. The Island of Chios belonged to the Genoese
Republic from 1346 to 1566.]

[Footnote 25: This prayer of Columbus, which is printed by Padre Claudio
Clementi in the "Tablas Chronologicas de los Descubridores" (Valencia,
1689), was afterward repeated, by order of the Sovereigns of Castille,
in subsequent discoveries. Hernando Cortez, Vasco Nunez de Balboa,
Pizarro, and others, had to use it officially.]

[Footnote 26: It is very much to be regretted that Christopher Columbus'
intentions in this respect were not carried out because the Protectors
would have certainly decreed that a marble statue should be erected to
commemorate so great a gift, and we would then possess an authentic
portrait of the discoverer of America, which does not exist anywhere.
Nor do I believe that the portrait of Columbus ever was drawn, carved,
or painted from the life.

There were doubtless painters already in Spain at the close of the
fifteenth century, such, for instance, as Juan Sanchez de Castro, Pedro
Berruguette, Juan de Borgona, Antonio del Rincon, and the five artists
whom Cardinal Ximenes intrusted with the task of adorning the paranymph
of the University of Alcala, but they painted only religious subjects.
It is at a later period that portrait painting commenced in Spain. One
of those artists may have thought of painting a portrait of Columbus,
but there is no trace of any such intention in the writings of the time,
nor of the existence of an authentic effigy of the great navigator in
Spain or any other country.

We must recollect that the enthusiasm created by the news of the
discovery of America was far from being as great as people now imagine,
and if we may judge from the silence of Spanish poets and historians of
the fifteenth century, it produced less effect in Spain than anywhere
else. At all events, the popularity of Columbus lasted scarcely six
months, as deceptions commenced with the first letters that were sent
from Hispaniola, and they never ceased whilst he was living. In fact, it
is only between April 20, 1493, which is the date of his arrival in
Barcelona, and the 20th of May following, when he left that city to
embark for the second expedition (during the short spac