304
LIFE A N D VOYAGES, ETC.
[BOOK
XIV.
intended for the relief of the poor of his native city. These two sets of documents he sent by different individuals to his friend, Doctor Nicolo Oderigo, formerly ambassador from Genoa to the court of Spain, requesting him to preserve them in some safe deposit, and to apprise his son Diego of the same. His dissatis faction at the conduct of the Spanish court may have been the cause of this precautionary measure, that an appeal to the world, or to posterity, might be in the power of his descendants, in case he should perish in the course of his voyage.* * These documents lay unknown in the Oderigo family until 1670, when Lorenzo Oderigo presented them to the government of Genoa, and they were deposited in the archives.
In the disturbances and revolutions of after times,
one of these copies was taken to Paris, and the other disappeared.
In 1816
the latter was discovered in the library of the deceased Count Michel Angelo Cambiaso, a senator of Genoa.
It was procured by the King of Sardinia, then
sovereign of Genoa, and given up by him to the city of Genoa in 1821.
A
custodia, or monument, was erected in that city for its preservation, consisting of a marble column supporting an urn, surmounted by a bust of Columbus. The documents were deposited in the urn.
These papers have been published,
together with an historical memoir of Columbus, by D. Gio. Battista Spotorno, Professor of Eloquence, & c , in the University of Genoa.
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