ABSTRACT
"It may be that Your Highness and all others who know me and to whom this writing may be shown will publically reprehend me with reprehensions of every kind, that I am not learned in letters, that I am a lay sailor, a man of the world, etc.; to these I answer what St. Matthew says, 'O Father, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'"—Columbus to his Sovereigns, 1502. 1
