Authentic Letters of Columbus. 123 



III. 



Letter from Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella. Dated 

 Granada, February 6th, 1502. Original in the Archives 

 OF THE Spanish Government. 



t 



Most High and Powerful Queen and King, my Lady and my Lord : 



I wish I could give Your Highnesses pleasure and contentment, 

 instead of burdening and annoying your minds. But as I know how 

 great is the interest which Your Highnesses feel for all new things 

 having some importance, I shall in obedience to your command set 

 forth at this moment all that may come to my memory in regard to 

 this subject, hoping that Your Highnesses will pardon the lack of 

 ornament in my statements, and look only to my good intention. I 

 am bold enough to say that as far as the good service of Your High- 

 nesses is concerned I am not in need of learning from any one what 

 I myself know well how to do ; and if on any occasion it should hap- 

 pen for me to lose my strength, or to be overcome by fatigue, the 

 will to serve Your Highnesses as your most dutiful servant will not 

 nevertheless leave me for an instant. 



Sailors and other people who are conversant with the sea have 

 aiways a better knowledge than all others of the parts of the world 

 which they visit more frequently, or with which they do business 

 oftener. Every one knows best what he sees every day, and what 

 has happened lately is better known than what took place years ago. 

 Hence it is that we hail with delight whatever is said to us by those 

 who were eye witnesses to the facts, and that no teaching proves to 

 be for us more thorough and complete than that which comes to us 

 through our own experience or observation. 



Whether we admit that the shape of the world is spherical, as 

 many writers affirm it to be, or bow to the decision of science if its 

 conclusion is different, the fact of the diversity of climate within the 

 same zone must remain undisturbed. That diversity will be observed 

 on land as well as on the sea. 



The sun exercises its influence on the earth, and the earth 

 receives it in greater or lesser degree, according to the character of 

 its surface, whether moimtainous or depressed. The ancients were 

 well acquainted with this fact and wrote a good deal about it. Pliny 

 went so far as to say that at the region of the north pole, exactly at 

 the same zone, the temperature is so mild that the people who inhabit 

 the spot never die, unless they themselves, getting tired of living, 

 put an end to their existence. 



Here in Spain this diversity of temperature in the same zone is 

 so perceptible that no testimony of ancient writers, or others, is 

 required to prove it. Here in Granada we see the mountains capped 

 with snow, which is a sign of great cold, during the whole year, and 



