The originals of the letters-patent, and other evidences of privileges granted by the Spanish monarchs to Columbus, were preserved by him, and now constitute a part of the collection of the Duke of Veraguas, in Madrid. In 1502 Columbus caused several attested copies of them and of a few other documents to be made, raising the number of papers from thirty-six to forty-four. His care in causing these copies to be distributed among different custodians evinces the high importance which he held them to have, as testimonials to his fame and his prominence in the world’s history. One wishes he could have had a like solicitude for the exactness of his own statements. Before setting out on his fourth voyage, he intrusted one of these copies to Francesco di Rivarolo, for delivery to Nicoló Odérigo, the ambassador of Genoa, in Madrid. From Cadiz shortly afterwards he sent a second copy to the same Odérigo. In 1670 both of these copies were given, by a descendant of Odérigo, to the Republic of Genoa. They subsequently disappeared from the archives of the State, and Harrisse[15] has recently found one of them in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Paris. The other was bought in 1816 by the Sardinian Government, at a sale of the effects of Count Michael-Angelo Cambiasi. After a copy had been made and deposited in the archives at Turin, this second copy was deposited in a marble custodia, surmounted by a bust of Columbus, and placed in the palace of the Doges in Genoa.[16] These documents, with two of the letters addressed (March 21, 1502, and Dec. 27, 1504)[17] to Odérigo, were published in Genoa in 1823 in the _Codice diplomatico Colombo-Americano_, edited with a biographical introduction by Giovanni Battista Spotorno.[18] A third letter (April 2, 1502), addressed to the governors of the Bank of St. George, was not printed by Spotorno, but was given in English in 1851 in the _Memorials of Columbus_ by Robert Dodge, published by the Maryland Historical Society.[19] The State Archives of Genoa were transferred from the Ducal Palace, in 1817, to the Palazzetto, where they now are; and Harrisse’s account[20] of them tells us what they do not contain respecting Columbus, rather than what they do. We also learn from him something of the “Archives du Notariat Génois,” and of the collections formed by the Senator Federico Federici (d. 1647), by Gian Battista Richeri (_circa_ 1724), and by others; but they seem to have afforded Harrisse little more than stray notices of early members of the Colombo family.