CHAPTER X.-- THE THIRD VOYAGE.
LETTER TO THE KING AND QUEEN--DISCOVERY OF TRINIDAD AND PARIA--CURIOUS SPECULATION AS TO THE EARTHLY PARADISE--ARRIVAL AT SAN DOMINGO--REBELLIONS AND MUTINIES IN THAT ISLAND--ROLDAN AND HIS FOLLOWERS--OJEDA AND HIS EXPEDITION--ARRIVAL OF BOBADILLA--COLUMBUS A PRISONER.
For the narrative of the third voyage, we are fortunate in having once more a contemporary account by Columbus himself.

The more important part of his expedition was partly over when he was able to write a careful letter to the king and queen, which is still preserved.

It is lighted up by bursts of the religious enthusiasm which governed him from the beginning.

All the more does it show the character of the man, and it impresses upon us, what is never to be forgotten, the mixture in his motive of the enthusiasm of a discoverer, the eager religious feeling which might have quickened a crusader, and the prospects of what we should call business adventure, by which he tries to conciliate persons whose views are less exalted than his own.
In addressing the king and queen, who are called "very high and very powerful princes," he reminds them that his undertaking to discover the West Indies began in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which appointed him as a messenger for this enterprise.

He asks them to remember that he has always addressed them as with that intention.
He reminds them of the seven or eight years in which he was urging his cause and that it was not enough that he should have showed the religious side of it, that he was obliged to argue for the temporal view as well.