employment he fell back on visionary speculations. He made great friends
at this time with a monk named Gaspar Gorricio, with whose assistance he
began to make some kind of a study of such utterances of the Prophets and
the Fathers as he conceived to have a bearing on his own career.

Columbus was in fact in a very queer way at this time; and what with his
readings and his meditatings and his grievances, and his visits to his
monkish friend in the convent of Las Cuevas, he fell into a kind of
intellectual stupor, of which the work called 'Libro de las Profecias,'
or Book of the Prophecies, in which he wrote down such considerations as
occurred to him in his stupor, was the result. The manuscript of this
work is in existence, although no human being has ever ventured to
reprint the whole of it; and we would willingly abstain from mentioning
it here if it were not an undeniable act of Columbus's life. The
Admiral, fallen into theological stupor, puts down certain figures upon
paper; discovers that St. Augustine said that the world would only last
for 7000 years; finds that some other genius had calculated that before
the birth of Christ it had existed for 5343 years and 318 days; adds 1501
years from the birth of Christ to his own time; adds up, and finds that
the total is 6844 years; subtracts, and discovers that this earthly globe
can only last 155 years longer. He remembers also that, still according
to the Prophets, certain things must happen before the end of the world;
Holy Sepulchre restored to Christianity, heathen converted, second coming
of Christ; and decides that he himself is the man appointed by God and
promised by the Prophets to perform these works. Good Heavens! in what
an entirely dark and sordid stupor is our Christopher now sunk--a
veritable slough and quag of stupor out of which, if he does not manage
to flounder himself, no human hand can pull him.