CHEAP NEW WORLD

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 October 1929, Page 12

CHEAP NEW WORLD

£1125 PAID BY SPAIN. Crossing the Atlantic with Columbus cost a little more than an American millionaire pays for a suite-de-luxe on a pleasure trip to Europe. Spain paid £1125 at to-day’s prices for the New’ World. The actual sum worked out at 36,000 pesetas, and a peseta in 1492 would buy more than it would now; 1600 pesetas bought the services of Christopher Columbus for a year. His two captains received 900 pesetas; the crew’ received 12 pesetas a month. They came back richer by about £5 a man. Then there were the food and the equipment, and when Columbus came back he presented Ferdinand and Isabella with a further bill of expenses. Its modest cost was about £687. But Christopher himself, apart from any bonus, was paid only £1 a week. The most remarkable thing about the discovery is perhaps not its cheapness, but its surprise. Columbus was sailing to find not a new country but a better way to the Spice Islands, where he went to find pepper and found the greatest bargain in land know’n to history.