OF GON. FERN. DE OVIEDO.

The prince was then thirteen years of age, for he had been born in June 1478, two months before Gonzalo; and this favorable circumstance, to which were added the open personality and the reverent diligence of the youth, was the reason that Don Juan preferred him among all his servants, with Oviedo assisting and taking part in his lessons during the day, and entertaining him during the leisure of the evening with the reading of historians and moralists.

Gonzalo had been two years in the service of the prince when, the empire of the Granadines having been subdued and broken, that powerful metropolis surrendered to the efforts of Isabella and Ferdinand. The Sovereigns took care that Prince Don Juan should receive instruction, as heir to both crowns, in the examples of governance and war. The conquest of Granada was the most difficult enterprise that Spanish arms had undertaken in many centuries; and the Catholic King, who in the autumn of 1490 had already knighted the prince before the walls of that opulent city, having established the siege and fortified the camps the following year, wished for Queen Isabella to attend the army with all her children, in order to remove the last hope of salvation from the Saracens. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo followed the court, and, still in his adolescence, he had the good fortune to meet there the most illustrious men who were flourishing in Spain at that time, and to witness the most heroic deeds, which he began to collect carefully, thus forming the invaluable treasure of his works 9. He also met Christopher Columbus there, a poor and obscure sailor, whom Providence was guiding to Granada to offer the Queen the greatest occasion that the ages have seen. Oviedo, who was captivated by everything great and extraordinary, did not lose sight of him from that moment; and, having diligently informed himself of his past life, he carefully noted all the setbacks that befell him at court. The surrender of Granada, in which the Catholic Sovereigns made Prince Don Juan participate, put an end to such dangerous delays, and the fortunate expedition finally departed from the island of Saltes on August 3, 1492, not without Oviedo forming the firm purpose of writing its history 10.

"In my time they had 8,000 maravedíes for salary and 12,000 for provisions, which were paid to them every four months, in money, each year." (Off. de la Casa Real de Cast., National Library, Cod. T. 88: Quing., Part III, Est. 23.)

Prescott, Irving, Ticknor, Ternaux, and other foreign writers assert that he was a page, sometimes to Prince Don Juan, sometimes to the Catholic Sovereigns. Such an error, to which perhaps Oviedo himself gave rise by saying that he had been a "boy page" at the conquest of Granada (Hist. gen. de Indias, Part I, lib. II, cap. 7), is entirely dispelled when one notices that this phrase only determines the tender age he had at the time, there being many passages in his works where he makes mention of the office he performed in the chamber of Don Juan (Ad. á los Off. de la Casa Real: Hist. gen. de Ind., lib. VI, cap. 8). It must, however,

be noted that the position of mozo de cámara chamber boy/page was newly created when it was granted to Oviedo, being considered a position of distinction, as nobility was required.

9 When mentioning the taking of Granada, the discovery of the New World, the expulsion of the Jews, and the wounding of the Catholic King, Gonzalo Fernandez writes: "So, I do not speak from hearsay in any of these four things but from sight, although I write them from here, or better said, occurring to my memorials, from the same time described in them" (Hist. Gen. y Nat. de Ind., Part I, book II, cap. 7).

10 In the proem that Oviedo placed in the Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias Summary of the Natural History of the Indies, he said, giving the Caesar news of his literary works: "All of which and many other things of this quality I have written much more copiously and it is in the originals and chronicle that I write from the time I had the age to occupy myself in such matter, as much of what happened in Spain from the year 1490 until here, as outside of it" (Historiad. primit. de las Ind. occid, by Don Andres Gonz. Barcia, vol. I).