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The most noted persons who went on this expedition were the commendary Gallegos, and Sebastian de Campo, both of Galicia; the commendary Arroya, Roderick Abarca, Micer Girao, Juan de Luxon, Peter Navarro, and Peter Hernandez Coronel, whom the admiral appointed chief alguazil of Hispaniola; Mozen Peter Margarite, a gentleman of Catalonia, Alonzo Sanchez de Carvajal, alderman of Baeza, Gorbolan, Lewis de Arriaga, Alonzo Perez Martel, Francis de Zuniga, Alonso Ortiz, Francis de Villalobos, Perefan de Ribera, Melchior Maldonado, and Alonso Malaver.
Agapida comforts himself, however, with the reflection that this visitation was meant in mercy to try the Castilian heart, and to extract from its present humiliation the elements of future success, as gold is extracted from amidst the impurities of earth; and in this reflection he is supported by the venerable historian Pedro Abarca of the Society of Jesuits.*
* Zurita, lib. 20, c. 62; Mariana, Hist. de Espana; Abarca, Anales de Aragon. The populace gazed with almost savage triumph at these captive cavaliers and the gory heads of their companions, knowing them to have been part of the formidable garrison of Alhama, so long the scourge of Granada and the terror of the Vega.
Ferdinand sent to the marques of Cadiz the royal raiment which he had worn on that day, and conferred on him and all those who should inherit his title the privilege of wearing royal robes on our Lady's Day in September in commemoration of this victory.* * Mariana, Abarca, Zurita, Pulgar, etc. Queen Isabella was equally mindful of the great services of Don Luis Fernandez Puerto Carrero.
Luis de Ariega, afterward famous as the defender of the fort at Magdalena; Diego Velasquez, the future conqueror of Cuba; Vega, Abarca, Gil Garcia, Marguéz, Maldonado, Beltrán and many other doughty warriors, whose names had been the terror of the Moors during the war in Granada.
Joao Vaz Cortereal was the natural son of a gentleman named Vasco Annes da Costa, who had received the soubriquet of Cortereal from the King of Portugal, on account of the magnificence of his house and followers. Devoted like so many other gentlemen of this period to sea-faring adventure, Joao Vaz had carried off in Gallicia a young girl named Maria de Abarca, who became his wife.
"These keys," said he, "are the last relics of the Arabian empire in Spain: thine, O king, are our trophies, our kingdom, and our person. Such is the will of God! Receive them with the clemency thou hast promised, and which we look for at thy hands."* * Abarca, Anales de Aragon, Rey 30, c. 3. King Ferdinand restrained his exultation into an air of serene magnanimity.
* Mariana, lib. 25, c. 17; Abarca, Zurita, etc. The evening closed as the count arrived in the neighborhood of Moclin. It was the full of the moon and a bright and cloudless night. The count was marching through one of those deep valleys or ravines worn in the Spanish mountains by the brief but tremendous torrents which prevail during the autumnal rains.
These pious sentiments of the truly Catholic Agapida are echoed by Padre Mariana in his history;* but the worthy chronicler Pedro Abarca attributes the interference of the king of Naples not to lack of orthodoxy in religion, but to an excess of worldly policy, he being apprehensive that should Ferdinand conquer the Moors of Granada he might have time and means to assert a claim of the house of Aragon to the crown of Naples.
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