DON FERNANDO met me at the door. “He is
wandering —he thinks he is in Cordova with
my mother.” He came from that and said
he would get up and go to mass. Persuaded to
lie quiet, he talked of his will, drawn before his
third voyage, and said that he would have it read
to him, and make a codicil.
This will. It ran at length through preamble
and body.
“In the name of the most Holy Trinity who revealed
it to me that I could sail westward across Ocean-Sea—
“As it pleased God, in the
year one thousand, four hundred
and ninety-two, I discovered the Continent of the
Indies and many islands. I returned to Cadiz
to their Majesties who allowed my going a second voyage,
and in this God gave me victory over the island of
Hispaniola, which covers six hundred leagues, and
I conquered it and made it tributary; and I discovered
many islands dwelled in by Caribals or eaters of men’s
flesh, and also Jamaica which I named Santiago, and
three hundred and thirty leagues of Continent from
south to west—”
He recited his rights, dignities, tithes, emoluments,—
“whereto I have the sacred word of the Sovereigns.”
Then came the heirship. All upon Don Diego and
the heirs of his body, with lavish provision for the
younger son, “having great qualities and most
dear to me,” and for the brothers, but more
especially the Adelantado. Followed gifts to friends
and companions, and then far-flung benefactions.
Son and son’s son must give, year following
year, a tenth of revenue from the Indies to the help
of needy men.
“In the city of Genoa in Italy is to be maintained
a man and his wife of the line of our family of which
he is to be the root in that city, from whence all
good may derive unto her, for I was born there and
came from thence.”
The taking of the Sepulchre. Into the Bank of
Saint George in Genoa, “that noble and potent
city” was to be put what moneys could be saved
and collected for the purpose, “and one day
God will bring the purpose about.”
His heirs must support the Crown of Spain, “seeing
that these Sovereigns, next to God, are responsible
for my achieving the property, though true it is that
I came into this country to invite them to the enterprise,
and that a long while passed before they allowed me
to execute it, but this should not surprise us as
it was an undertaking of which all the world was ignorant
and no one had any faith in it.” And if
schism arose in Christendom, his heirs must to their
uttermost support His Holiness the Pope, and give
all and die, if need be, defending the Church of God.
And, where it was possible and not contrary to the
service and the claims of the Sovereigns of Spain,
“let them give aid and service to that noble
city of Genoa from which we all spring.”
Such and such moneys, accruing, were to be applied
to making fit marriages for the daughters of the line.
