The life of Columbus has been written by hundreds of men, both in this country and abroad, but the foregoing facts are distilled from this great biographical mass by skilful hands, and, like the succeeding pages, will stand for centuries unshaken by the bombardment of the critic, while succeeding years shall try them with frost and thaw, and the tide of time dash high against their massive front, only to recede, quelled and defeated.[1]
[Footnote 1: The author acknowledges especially the courtesy of San Diego Colon Columbus, a son of the great navigator, whose book "Historiadores Primitivos" was so generously loaned the author by relatives of young Columbus.
I have refrained from announcing in the foregoing chapter the death of Columbus, which occurred May 20, 1506, at Valladolid, the funeral taking place from his late residence, because I dislike to give needless pain.
B. N.]