[256-1] This may have been her brother, the Duke of Bejar, afterwards King Manoel.
[256-2] _Espadim_: a Portuguese gold piece coined by João II. Las Casas, I. 466, says: "20 _Espadinos_, a matter of 20 ducats." The Espadim contained 58 to 65 grains of gold. W.C. Hazlitt, _Coinage of European Nations, sub voce_. King João II. gave Columbus's pilot almost exactly the sum which Henry VII. gave to John Cabot, which was £10. In the French translation and the translation in J.B. Thacher's _Christopher Columbus_ the word _espadines_ is erroneously taken to be Spanish and rendered "_Épées_," and "small short swords."
LETTER FROM COLUMBUS TO LUIS DE SANTANGEL
This letter, the earliest published narrative of Columbus's first voyage, was issued in Barcelona in April, 1493, not far from the time when the discoverer was received in state by the King and Queen. The _Escribano de Racion_, to whom it was addressed, was Luis de Santangel, who had deeply interested himself in the project of Columbus and had advanced money to enable Queen Isabella to meet the expenses of the voyage. He, no doubt, placed a copy in the hands of the printer. Only two printed copies of this Spanish letter, as it is called, have come down to us. One is a folio of the first imprint, discovered and reproduced in 1889. Of this the unique copy is in the Lenox Library in New York; its first page is reproduced in facsimile in this volume, by courteous permission of the authorities of the library. The other is a quarto of the second and slightly corrected imprint, first made known in 1852 and first reproduced in 1866. Facsimiles of both are given in Thacher's _Christopher Columbus_, II. 17-20 and 33-40.
Columbus sent a duplicate of this letter with some slight changes to Gabriel Sanxis (Spanish form, Sanchez), the treasurer of Aragon, from whose hands a copy came into the possession of Leander de Cosco, who translated it into Latin, April 29, 1493.
This Latin version was published in Rome, probably in May, 1493, and this issue was rapidly followed by reprints in Rome, Basel, Paris, and Antwerp. It is to this Latin version that the European world outside of Spain was indebted for its first knowledge of the new discoveries.