APPENDIX.
346
and spirit of Martin Alonzo Pinzon.
It was the interest of the crown to
do so, to justify itself in withholding from the heirs of Columbus the extent of his stipulated reward.
T h e examinations of witnesses in this trial were
made at various times and places, and upon a set of interrogatories for mally drawn up by order of the fiscal.
T h e y took place upwards of
twenty years after the first voyage of Columbus, and the witnesses testi fied from recollection. In reply to one of the interrogatories, Arias Perez Pinzon, son of Mar tin Alonzo, declared, that, being once in Rome with his father on com mercial affairs, before the time of the discovery, they had frequent conver sations with a person learned in cosmography who was in the service of Pope Innocent V I I I , and that being in the library of the pope, this person showed them many manuscripts, from one of which his father gathered intimation of these new lands ; for there was a passage by an historian as old as the time of Solomon, which said, " Navigate the Mediterranean Sea to the end of Spain and thence towards the setting sun, in a direction between north and south, until ninety-five degrees of longitude, and you will find the land of Cipango, fertile and abundant, and equal in greatness to Africa and Europe." - A copy of this writing, he added, his father brought
from
R o m e with
an intention of
going
in
search of that
land, and frequently expressed such determination ; and that, when Co lumbus came to Palos with his project of discovery, Martin Alonzo Pin zon showed him the manuscript, and ultimately gave it to him just before they sailed. It is extremely probable that this manuscript, of which Arias Perez gives so vague an account from recollection, but which he appears to think the main thing that prompted Columbus to his undertaking, was no other than the work of Marco Polo, which, at that time, existed in manu script in most of the Italian libraries.
Martin Alonzo was evidently ac
quainted with the work of the Venetian, and it would appear, from various circumstances, that Columbus had a copy of it with him in his voyages, which may have been the manuscript above mentioned.
Columbus had
long before, however, had a knowledge of the work, if not by actual in spection, at least through his correspondence with Toscanelli in 1 4 7 4 , and had derived from it all the light it was capable of furnishing, before he ever came to Palos.
It is questionable, also, whether the visit of Martin
Alonzo to Rome, was not after his mind had been heated by conversations with Columbus in the convent of L a Rabida.
T h e testimony of Arias
Perez is so worded as to leave it in doubt whether the visit was not in the