| OCR Text |
Show NO DESCENDANTS OF COLUMBUS - Christopher Columbus had but two sons, who left no children. One rose to distinction as an admiral, the other as a scholar and traveler. He appears to have been a profound scholar and a thoroughly good man. In his will he stipulated that his library, containing twenty thousand volumes, which he gave to the Cathedral of Seville should be free to the people, and it is so to this day. On the tablet which marks the site of his tomb appears this quaint epithet: "What does it profit me to have sprinkled the whole world with my sweat, to have those lines crossed to the new world discovered by my father; to have embellished the shores of the tranquil Guadalquiver, and preferred my simple tastes, rather than riches; or that I have assembled round thee divinities from the source of Castalia, and offered to thee the riches gathered at Ptolemy, if, ‘passing in silence over this stone, thou should'st fail to address a single salutation to my father's memory, or to myself a slight remembrance.'" It was stated that there was scarcely an accessible portion of the world which Fernando Columbus did not penetrate. |
