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For this purpose, he gave orders to make all necessary preparations for building a fortress and church at the port of Mina. All the requisite materials, even to stones and tiles, were accordingly shipped from Lisbon in a squadron of ten caravels and two transports, with 500 soldiers and 200 labourers or workmen of various kinds.
Among those who went with him were Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus's old pilot, Juan de la Cosa, as well as some of the sailors who had been with the Admiral on the coast of Paria and had returned in the caravels which had brought his account of it back to Spain.
But I've taken to you, and will never think ill of you any way; only do as you said you would." "I will try," said Mrs. Lopez. In the meantime Lopez had received from Mr. Wharton an answer to his letter about the missing caravels, which did not please him. Here is the letter:
"Why, the queer little ships with the high sides and prows! On my soul, George, they're the caravels of Spain! Look, they're stopping! Now they lower something in black over the side of the first caravel. I see a man in a black robe like a priest, holding a cross in his hand and standing at the ship's edge saying something. I think he's praying, boys.
How can he live if he deceives not? Strange indeed is the thought that, three hundred years before the caravels of Portuguese conquerors ever sailed these waters, the law of the Indian ruler of that very part of the country read: "Judges who receive bribes from their clients are to be considered as thieves meriting death." Has the interior of South America gone forward or backward since then?
Thomas, Concepcion, and San Cristoval. Weeks months. July, and Pedro Alonzo Nino with three caravels filled with strong new men and with provisions. How always we welcomed these incoming ships and the throng they brought that stood and listened and thought at first, after the sea tossing and crowding, that they were come to heaven!
Taking the dates, which are established by the official documents now produced, of the fitting out of the fleet in Normandy by Verrazzano and the actual capture of the two caravels, it is easy to see that the real purpose of those preparations from the first, might have been to effect the capture of the treasure. Chron. de Dieppe.
And on the 3d of August, 1492, the little fleet of caravels sailed from the mouth of the same river whence had once sailed the "ships of Tarshish," laden with treasure for King Solomon and "Hiram, King of Tyre." A union with Portugal the land of the Lusitanians and of Sertorius was all that was now required to make of the Spanish Peninsula one kingdom.
Not only was foreign trade changed from the south and east of Europe to the west, from the city-states to nations, from land-routes to ocean- routes; but the vessels which sailed the Atlantic were larger, stronger, and more numerous, and they sailed with amazing confidence and safety, as compared with the fragile caravels and galleys of a few centuries before.
The royal intention was, no doubt, to use the boats against Naples and Sicily, which they hoped to conquer after finishing the Moorish war. But when they decided finally to help Columbus, they remembered the punishment due Palos, and called upon it to give the two caravels to "Cristobal Colon, our captain, going into certain parts of the Ocean Sea on matters pertaining to our service."
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