HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



427 



4th of January, they were employed in getting the 

 wood and timbers of the veffel up from the <fand, to 

 erecT: a little fortrefs, in which he left forty men, and 

 embarked that fame day with the reft of his people for 

 Spain, to bear the news of the difcovery of that new 

 world. All the circumftances of their arrival in that 

 ifland do not allow us to fufpe&, that the Spaniards had 

 opportunity to have fuch commerce with any of the 

 American women as to depart infe&ed by them. Their 

 mutual admiration of each other, the fight of fo many 

 new objects, and the very fhort ftay of only eleven days, 

 which were employed in the great fatigue of getting up 

 the wreck, and erecting that fort in fo much ha fie, after 

 the inconveniencies of the longefl: and the moft dangerous 

 voyage which had ever been performed, make a con- 

 jecture of this kind entirely improbable. It is not lefs 

 improbable, from the file nee of Columbus himfelf, his 

 fon D. Ferdinand^ and of Peter Martyr d' Angheira, who 

 in defcribing the fufferings of that voyage, fay nothing of 

 fuch a diftemper. 



But although we fliould grant, that thofe Spaniards 

 who returned from the firft voyage were infected by the 

 French evil, we fhould ftill fay, that the contagion of 

 Europe did not proceed from them, according to the tes- 

 timony of fome refpectable authors then living. Gafpare 

 Tprrella, a learned phyfician above mentioned, fays, in 

 his work, entitled, AphrodyCiacum {r J, that the French 

 evil began in Alverne, a province of France, very dis- 

 tant from Spain, in 1493. B« Fulgofio or Fregofo, 

 doge of Genoa, in 1478, in his curious work, entitled, 



Dicta 



(r) Incepit hsec maligna aegritudo in Alvernia anno M.CCCCXCM. & fic 

 per contagionem pervenit, &c. 



