Each day messengers go from here yonder.
May our Lord have you in His Holy keeping.
"Done in Seville, December 1.
"Your father who loves you as himself.
.S.
.S.A.S.
XMY Xpo FERENS." The gout from which the Admiral suffered made riding impossible to him, and he had arranged to have himself carried to Court on a litter when he was able to move.

There is a grim and dismal significance in the particular litter that had been chosen: it was no other than the funeral bier which belonged to the Cathedral of Seville and had been built for Cardinal Mendoza.

A minute of the Cathedral Chapter records the granting to Columbus of the use of this strange conveyance; but one is glad to think that he ultimately made his journey in a less grim though more humble method.

But what are we to think of the taste of a man who would rather travel in a bier, so long as it had been associated with the splendid obsequies of a cardinal, than in the ordinary litter of every-day use?
It is but the old passion for state and splendour thus dismally breaking out again.
He speaks of living on borrowed funds and of having devoted all his resources to the payment of his crew; but that may be taken as an exaggeration.

He may have borrowed, but the man who can borrow easily from banks cannot be regarded as a poor man.