Gold Is The Most Precious Of

Christopher Columbus wrote this in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella from Jamaica in 1503, where he and his crew were stranded for over a year after their ships became riddled with shipworm during the fourth voyage. Columbus's obsession with gold was both personal and political: he had promised the Spanish crown enormous wealth, and his Book of Prophecies framed the gold of the Indies as the resource that would finance a crusade to recapture Jerusalem. By 1503 his standing with the crown had deteriorated significantly; he died in 1506 still insisting he had reached the coast of Asia.