The interposition of Cardinal Mendoza, by which Columbus secured the royal ear, has usually been placed in 1486. Oviedo seems to have been the source of subsequent writers on the point; but Oviedo does not fix the date, and the critic now undertakes to show (p. 380) that it was rather in the closing months of 1491. Las Casas charges Talavera with opposing the projects of Columbus: we have here (p. 383) the contrary assertion; and the testimony of Peter Martyr seems to sustain this view. So again the new biographer measurably defends, on other contemporary evidence, Fonseca (p. 386) as not deserving the castigations of modern writers; and all this objurgation is considered to have been conveniently derived from the luckless _Historie_ of 1571. The close student of Columbus is not unaware of the unsteady character of much of the discoverer’s own testimony on various points. His imagination was his powerful faculty; and it was as wild at times as it was powerful, and nothing could stand in the way of it. No one has emphasized the doleful story of his trials and repressions more than himself, making the whole world, except two monks, bent on producing his ignominy; and yet his biographer can pick (p. 388) from the Admiral’s own admissions enough to show that during all this time he had much encouragement from high quarters. The critic is not slow to take advantage of this weakness of Columbus’ character, and more than once makes him the strongest witness against himself. It is now denied that the money advanced by Santangel was from the treasury of Aragon. On the contrary, the critic contends that the venture was from Santangel’s private resources; and he dismisses peremptorily the evidence of the document which Argensola, in his _Anales de Aragon_ (Saragossa, 1630), says was preserved in the archives of the treasury of Aragon. He says a friend who searched at Barcelona in 1871, among the “Archivo general de la Corona de Aragon,” could not find it. Las Casas had first told—guardedly, to be sure—the story of the Pinzons’ contributing the money which enabled Columbus to assume an eighth part of the expense of the first voyage; but it is now claimed that the assistance of that family was confined to exerting its influence to get Columbus a crew. It is judged that the evidence is conclusive that the Pinzons did not take pecuniary risk in the voyage of 1492, because only their advances of this sort for the voyage of 1499 are mentioned in the royal grant respecting their arms. But such evidence is certainly inconclusive; and without the evidence of Las Casas it must remain uncertain whence Columbus got the five hundred thousand maravedis which he contributed to the cost of that momentous voyage.