A momentious prayer as wuz ever riz up on earth.

But the stun walls didn’t give no heed to it, and I dare say that Alonzo and the rest wuz sick a-waitin’ for him, and wanted to cut it short.

Yes, Columbus must have had emotions in this convent as hefty and as soarin’ as they make, and truly they must have been immense to gone ahead of mine, as I stood there and thought on him, what he had done and what he had suffered.

Why, I had more’n a hundred and twenty-five or thirty a minute right along, and I don’t know but more.

When I see them relics of that noble creeter, paper that he had had his own hand on, that his own eyes had looked at, his own brain had dictated, every one of ’em full of the ardentcy and earnestness of his religion—­why, they increased the number and frequency of my emotions to a almost alarmin’ extent.

[Illustration:  Manuscripts]

Here are twenty-nine manuscripts all in his own hand.

They are truly worth more than their weight in gold—­they are worth their weight in diamonds.

Amongst the most priceless manuscripts and documents is the original of the contract made with the Soverigns of Spain before his first voyage, under which Columbus made his first voyage to America.

The most remarkable contract that wuz ever drawn, in which the Soverigns of Spain guaranteed to Columbus and his heirs forever one eighth of all that might be produced of any character whatever in any land he might discover, and appinted him and his descendants perpetual rulers over such lands, with the title of Viceroy.

I looked at the contract, and then thought of how Columbus died in poverty and disgrace, and now, four hundred years after his death, the world a-spendin’ twenty million to honor his memory.

A sense of the folly and the strangeness of all things come over me like a flood, and I bent my head in shame to think I belonged to a race of bein’s so ongrateful, and so lyin’, and everything else.

I thought of that humble grave where a broken heart hid itself four hundred years ago, and then I looked out towards that matchless White City of gorgeous palaces riz up to his honor four hundred years too late; and a sense of the futility of all things, the pity of it, the vanity of all things here below, swept over me, and instinctively I lay holt of my pardner’s arm, and thought for a minute I must leave the buildin’; but I thought better on’t, and he thought I laid holt of his arm as a mark of affection.  And I didn’t ondeceive him in it.

Then there is Columbuses commission as Admiral of the Ocean Seas.

His correspondence with Ferdinand and Isabella before and after his discovery, and a host of other invaluable papers loaned by the Spanish Goverment and the living descendants of Columbus in Spain.  And there is pieces of the house his father-in-law built for him—­a cane made from one of the jistes, and the shutters of one of the windows.  Columbuses own hand may have opened them shutters!  O my heart! think on’t.