_Second Voyage of Columbus to the West Indies_.


Orders were issued from Barcelona to prepare with all care and expedition
for the return of the admiral to Hispaniola, as well to relieve those
Christians who had been left there as to enlarge the colony and subdue the
island, with the rest that were and should be discovered. To strengthen
and confirm their title to the newly discovered regions, their Catholic
majesties by the advice of the admiral, procured the approbation and
consent of the pope for the conquest of the Indies, which was readily
granted by Alexander VI, who then governed the church; and the bull to
this effect was not only for what was already discovered, but for all that
might be discovered westwards, until they should come to the _East_, where
any Christian prince was then actually in possession, and forbidding all
persons whomsoever to intrude within these bounds. And this concession and
exclusive right was again confirmed in the year following in the most
ample terms. Sensible that all this favourable grant from the pope was due
to the admiral, by whose discovery they had become entitled to the
possession of all these parts, their majesties were pleased, on the
twenty-eighth of May, at Barcelona, to ratify, renew, confirm, and explain
the privileges and prerogatives which they had granted him before, by
granting them of new, so as explicitly to define how far the bounds of his
admiralty and viceroyalty extended, being over all which had been granted
to them by his holiness, of which grant the tenor follows:

_Original Grant to Columbus in 1492, before the Discovery_.

"FERDINAND and ISABELLA, by the grace of God, King and Queen of Castile,
Leon, Arragon, Sicily, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca,