Having been well dispatched by their majesties, the admiral set out from Granada for Seville in the year 1501; and so earnestly solicited the fitting out of his squadron, that in a short time he rigged and provisioned four vessels, the largest of 70 tons and the smallest 50, with a complement of 140 men and boys, of whom I was one. [1] Certainly alluding to D. Juan de Fonseca, archdeacon of Castile, and bishop of Burgos, formerly mentioned as obstructing the equipment of the admirals ship, and afterwards as the principal mover of the injurious treatment experienced by the admiral.--E. [2] This article is nowhere explained, but was said on a former occasion to be made of very low or impure gold.--E. [3] This reported produce is prodigious, and must have only been temporary or accidental. Forty ounces of gold a-day, allowing but L.4 the ounce, as perhaps inferior to standard, amount to L.160. The piece of gold, mentioned in the text was worth about L.88. These mines, once so rich, have been long abandoned. The original natives of Hispaniola died out, and negroes have been found unequal to the hardships of mining. Hispaniola long remained a mere depot of adventurers, whence the great conquests of Mexico and Peru were supplied with men and arms.--E. [4] The original, or rather the old translation, is most miserably defective and confused in its dates about this period, bandying 1499 and 1500 backwards and forwards most ridiculously. This error it has been anxiously endeavoured to correct in the present version.--E. [5] This is a most imperfect account of an insurrection which appears to have broke out against the lieutenant, who seems to have been very unfit for his situation.--E. [6] This obviously means trial after condemnation, a procedure which has been long proverbial in Scotland under the name of Jedwarth justice. Some similar expression relative to Spain must have been used in the original, which the translator chose to express by an English proverbial saying of the same import.--E. [7] Upon a former occasion, the author had stated that there were four principal caciques in Hispaniola, each of whom commanded over seventy or eighty inferior chiefs, so that there may have been 300 caciques originally. The particulars of the death or massacre of the eighty caciques here mentioned are nowhere mentioned by our author; who, confining himself to the actions of his illustrious father, says very little more about the affairs of Hispaniola.--E. SECTION XIII. _Account of the Fourth Voyage of Columbus to the West Indies_.