XIX. THE FOURTH VOYAGE…

XIX. THE FOURTH VOYAGE

1502-1504.

[Sidenote: 1502. March. Columbus commanded to sail.]

[Sidenote: May 9-11. Sailed.]

Their Majesties, in March, 1502, were evidently disturbed at Columbus's delays in sailing, since such detentions brought to them nothing but the Admiral's continued importunities. They now instructed him to sail without the least delay. Nevertheless, Columbus, who had given out, as Trivigiano reports, that he expected his discoveries on this voyage to be more surprising and helpful than any yet made, his purpose being, in fact, to circumnavigate the globe, did not sail from Cadiz till May 9 or 11, 1502,--the accounts vary. He had four caravels, from fifty to seventy tons each, and they carried in all not over one hundred and fifty men.

[Sidenote: His instructions.]

Apparently not forgetting the Admiral's convenient reservation respecting the pearls in his third voyage, their Majesties in their instructions particularly enjoined upon him that all gold and other precious commodities which he might find should be committed at once to the keeping of François de Porras, who was sent with him to the end that the sovereigns might have trustworthy evidence in his accounts of the amount received. Equally mindful of earlier defections, their further instructions also forbade the taking of any slaves.

[Sidenote: The physical and mental condition of Columbus.]

Years had begun to rest heavily on the frame of Columbus. His constitution had been strained by long exposures, and his spirits had little elasticity left. Hope, to be sure, had not altogether departed from his ardent nature; but it was a hope that had experienced many reverses, and its pinions were clipped. There was still in him no lack of mental vitality; but his reason had lost equipoise, and his discernment was clouded with illusory visions.

There was the utmost desire at this time on the part of their Majesties that no rupture should break the friendly relations which were sustained with the Portuguese court, and it had been arranged that, in case Columbus should fall in with any Portuguese fleet, there should be the most civil interchange of courtesies. The Spanish monarchs had also given orders, since word had come of the Moors besieging a Portuguese post on the African coast, that Columbus should first go thither and afford the garrison relief.

[Sidenote: Columbus stops on the African coast.]

[Sidenote: 1502. May. At the Canaries.]

It was found, on reaching that African harbor on the 15th, that the Moors had departed. So, with no longer delay than to exchange civilities, he lifted anchor on the same day and put to sea. It was while he was at the Canaries, May 20-25, taking in wood and water, that Columbus wrote to his devoted Gorricio a letter, which Navarrete preserves. "Now my voyage will be made in the name of the Holy Trinity," he says, "and I hope for success."

[Sidenote: 1502. June 15. Reaches Martinico.]

There is little to note on the voyage, which had been a prosperous one, and on June 15 he reached Martinino (Martinico). He himself professes to have been but twenty days between Cadiz and Martinino, but the statement seems to have been confused, with his usual inaccuracy. He thence pushed leisurely along over much the same track which he had pursued on his second voyage, till he steered finally for Santo Domingo.

[Sidenote: Determines to go to Española.]

It will be recollected that the royal orders issued to him before leaving Spain were so far at variance with Columbus's wishes that he was denied the satisfaction of touching at Española. There can be little question as to the wisdom of an injunction which the Admiral now determined to disregard. His excuse was that his principal caravel was a poor sailer, and he thought he could commit no mistake in insuring greater success for his voyage by exchanging at that port this vessel for a better one. He forgot his own treatment of Ojeda when he drove that adventurer from the island, where, to provision a vessel whose crew was starving, Ojeda dared to trench on his government. When we view this pretense for thrusting himself upon an unwilling community in the light of his unusually quick and prosperous voyage and his failure to make any mention of his vessel's defects when he wrote from the Canaries, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that his determination to call at Española was suddenly taken. His whole conduct in the matter looks like an obstinate purpose to carry his own point against the royal commands, just as he had tried to carry it against the injunctions respecting the making of slaves. We must remember this when we come to consider the later neglect on the part of the King. We must remember, also, the considerate language with which the sovereigns had conveyed this injunction: "It is not fit that you should lose so much time; it is much fitter that you should go another way; though if it appears necessary, and God is willing, you may stay there a little while on your return."

Roselly de Lorgues, with his customary disingenuousness, merely says that Columbus came to Santo Domingo, to deliver letters with which he was charged, and to exchange one of his caravels.

[Sidenote: 1502. June 29. Columbus arrives off Santo Domingo.]

[Sidenote: Columbus forbidden to enter the harbor.]

It was the 29th of June when the little fleet of Columbus arrived off the port. He sent in one of his commanders to ask permission to shelter his ships, and the privilege of negotiating for another caravel, since, as he says, "one of his ships had become unseaworthy and could no longer carry sail." His request came to Ovando, who was now in command. This governor had left Spain in February, only a month before Columbus received his final instructions, and there can be little doubt that he had learned from Fonseca that those instructions would enjoin Columbus not to complicate in any way Ovando's assumption of command by approaching his capital. Las Casas seems to imply this. However it may be, Ovando was amply qualified by his own instructions to do what he thought the circumstances required. Columbus represented that a storm was coming on, or rather the Historie tells us that he did. It is to be remarked that Columbus himself makes no such statement. At all events, word was sent back to Columbus by his boat that he could not enter the harbor. Irving calls this an "ungracious refusal," and it turned out that later events have opportunely afforded the apologists for the Admiral the occasion to point a moral to his advantage, particularly since Columbus, if we may believe the doubtful story, confident of his prognostications, had again sent word that the fleet lying in the harbor, ready to sail, would go out at great peril in view of an impending storm. It seems to be quite uncertain if at the time his crew had any knowledge of his reasons for nearing Española, or of his being denied admittance to the port. At least Porras, from the way he describes the events, leaves one to make such an inference.

[Sidenote: Ovando's fleet.]

[Sidenote: Bobadilla, Roldan, and others on the fleet.]

[Sidenote: Columbus's factor had placed his gold on one of the ships.]

This fleet in the harbor was that which had brought Ovando, and was now laden for the return. There was on board of it, as Columbus might have learned from his messengers, the man of all men whom he most hated, Bobadilla, who had gracefully yielded the power to Ovando two months before, and of whom Las Casas, who was then fresh in his inquisitive seeking after knowledge respecting the Indies and on the spot, could not find that any one spoke ill. On the same ship was Columbus's old rebellious and tergiversating companion, Roldan, whose conduct had been in these two months examined, and who was now to be sent to Spain for further investigations. There was also embarked, but in chains, the unfortunate cacique of the Vega, Guarionex, to be made a show of in Seville. The lading of the ships was the most wonderful for wealth that had ever been sent from the island. There was the gold which Bobadilla had collected, including a remarkable nugget which an Indian woman had picked up in a brook, and a large quantity which Roldan and his friends were taking on their own account, as the profit of their separate enterprises. Carvajal, whom Columbus had sent out with Ovando as his factor, to look after his pecuniary interests under the provisions which the royal commands had made, had also placed in one of the caravels four thousand pieces of the same precious metal, the result of the settlement of Ovando with Bobadilla, and the accretions of the Admiral's share of the Crown's profits.

[Sidenote: Ovando's fleet puts to sea and is wrecked;]

Undismayed by the warnings of Columbus, this fleet at once put to sea, the Admiral's little caravels having meanwhile crept under the shore at a distance to find such shelter as they could. The larger fleet stood homeward, and was scarcely off the easterly end of Española when a furious hurricane burst upon it. The ship which carried Bobadilla, Roldan, and Guarionex succumbed and went down.

[Sidenote: but ship with Columbus's gold is saved.]

Others foundered later. Some of the vessels managed to return to Santo Domingo in a shattered condition. A single caravel, it is usually stated, survived the shock, so that it alone could proceed on the voyage; and if the testimony is to be believed, this was the weakest of them all, but she carried the gold of Columbus. Among the caravels which put back to Santo Domingo for repairs was one on which Bastidas was going to Spain for trial. This one arrived at Cadiz in September, 1502.

[Sidenote: Columbus's ships weather the gale.]

The ships of Columbus had weathered the gale. That of the Admiral, by keeping close in to land, had fared best. The others, seeking sea-room, had suffered more. They lost sight of each other, however, during the height of the gale; but when it was over, they met together at Port Hermoso, at the westerly end of the island. The gale is a picture over which the glow of a retributive justice, under the favoring dispensation of chance, is so easily thrown by sympathetic writers that the effusions of the sentimentalists have got to stand at last for historic verity. De Lorgues does not lose the opportunity to make the most of it.

[Sidenote: 1502. July 14. Columbus sails away.]

[Sidenote: July 30. At Guanaja.]

[Sidenote: Meets a strange canoe.]

Columbus, having lingered about the island to repair his ships and refresh his crews, and also to avoid a second storm, did not finally get away till July 14, when he steered directly for Terra Firma. The currents perplexed him, and, as there was little wind, he was swept west further than he expected. He first touched at some islands near Jamaica. Thence he proceeded west a quarter southwest, for four days, without seeing land, as Porras tells us, when, bewildered, he turned to the northwest, and then north. But finding himself (July 24) in the archipelago near Cuba, which on his second voyage he had called The Gardens, he soon after getting a fair wind (July 27) stood southwest, and on July 30 made a small island, off the northern coast of Honduras, called Guanaja by the natives, and Isla de Pinos by himself. He was now in sight of the mountains of the mainland. The natives struck him as of a physical type different from all others whom he had seen. A large canoe, eight feet beam, and of great length, though made of a single log, approached with still stranger people in it.

[Sidenote: On the Honduras coast.]

They had apparently come from a region further north; and under a canopy in the waist of the canoe sat a cacique with his dependents. The boat was propelled by five and twenty men with paddles. It carried various articles to convince Columbus that he had found a people more advanced in arts than those of the regions earlier discovered. They had with them copper implements, including hatchets, bells, and the like. He saw something like a crucible in which metal had been melted. Their wooden swords were jagged with sharp flints, their clothes were carefully made, their utensils were polished and handy. Columbus traded off some trinkets for such specimens as he wanted. If he now had gone in the direction from which this marvelous canoe had come, he might have thus early opened the wondrous world of Yucatan and Mexico, and closed his career with more marvels yet. His beatific visions, which he supposed were leading him under the will of the Deity, led him, however, south. The delusive strait was there. He found an old man among the Indians, whom he kept as a guide, since the savage could draw a sort of chart of the coast. He dismissed the rest with presents, after he had wrested from them what he wanted. Approaching the mainland, near the present Cape of Honduras, the Adelantado landed on Sunday, August 14, and mass was celebrated in a grove near the beach. Again, on the 17th, Bartholomew landed some distance eastward of the first spot, and here, by a river (Rio de la Posesion, now Rio Tinto), he planted the Castilian banner and formally took possession of the country. The Indians were friendly, and there was an interchange of provisions and trinkets. The natives were tattooed, and they had other customs, such as the wearing of cotton jackets, and the distending of their ears by rings, which were new to the Spaniards.

[Sidenote: Seeking a strait.]

[Sidenote: Columbus oppressed with the gout.]

Tracking the coast still eastward, Columbus struggled against the current, apparently without reasoning that he might be thus sailing away from the strait, so engrossed was he with the thought that such a channel must be looked for farther south. His visions had not helped him to comprehend the sweep of waters that would disprove his mock oaths of the Cuban coast. So he wore ship constantly against the tempest and current, and crawled with bewildered expectation along the shore. All this tacking tore his sails, racked his caravels, and wore out his seamen. The men were in despair, and confessed one another. Some made vows of penance, if their lives were preserved. Columbus was himself wrenched with the gout, and from a sort of pavilion, which covered his couch on the quarter deck, he kept a good eye on all they encountered. "The distress of my son," he says, "grieved me to the soul, and the more when I considered his tender age; for he was but thirteen years old, and he enduring so much toil for so long a time." "My brother," he adds further, "was in the ship that was in the worst condition and the most exposed to danger; and my grief on this account was the greater that I brought him with me against his will."

[Sidenote: 1502. September. Cape Gracios à Dios.]

[Sidenote: Loses a boat's crew.]

[Sidenote: 1502. September 25. The Garden.]

It was no easy work to make the seventy leagues from Cape Honduras to Cape Gracios à Dios, and the bestowal of this name denoted his thankfulness to God, when, after forty days of this strenuous endeavor, his caravels were at last able to round the cape, on September 12 (or 14). A seaboard stretching away to the south lay open before him,--now known as the Mosquito Coast. The current which sets west so persistently here splits and sends a branch down this coast. So with a "fair wind and tide," as he says, they followed its varied scenery of crag and lowland for more than sixty leagues, till they discovered a great flow of water coming out of a river. It seemed to offer an opportunity to replenish their casks and get some store of wood. On the 16th of September, they anchored, and sent their boats to explore. A meeting of the tide and the river's flow raised later a tumultuous sea at the bar, just as the boats were coming out. The men were unable to surmount the difficulty, and one of the boats was lost, with all on board. Columbus recorded their misfortune in the name which he gave to the river, El Rio del Desastre. Still coasting onward, on September 25 they came to an alluring roadstead between an island and the main, where there was everything to enchant that verdure and fragrance could produce. He named the spot The Garden (La Huerta). Here, at anchor, they had enough to occupy them for a day or two in restoring the damage of the tempest, and in drying their stores, which had been drenched by the unceasing downpour of the clouds. The natives watched them from the shore, and made a show of their weapons. The Spaniards remaining inactive, the savages grew more confident of the pacific intent of their visitors, and soon began swimming off to the caravels. Columbus tried the effect of largesses, refusing to barter, and made gifts of the Spanish baubles. Such gratuities, however, created distrust, and every trinket was returned.

[Sidenote: Character of the natives.]

Two young girls had been sent on board as hostages, while the Spaniards were on shore getting water; but even they were stripped of their Spanish finery when restored to their friends, and every bit of it was returned to the givers. There seem to be discordant statements by Columbus and in the Historie respecting these young women, and Columbus gives them a worse character than his chronicler. When the Adelantado went ashore with a notary, and this official displayed his paper and inkhorn, it seemed to strike the wondering natives as a spell. They fled, and returned with something like a censer, from which they scattered the smoke as if to disperse all baleful spirits.

These unaccustomed traits of the natives worked on the superstitions of the Spaniards. They began to fancy they had got within an atmosphere of sorceries, and Columbus, thinking of the two Indian maiden hostages, was certain there was a spell of witchcraft about them, and he never quite freed his mind of this necromantic ghost.

The old Indian whom Columbus had taken for a guide when first he touched the coast, having been set ashore at Cape Gracios à Dios, enriched with presents, Columbus now seized seven of this new tribe, and selecting two of the most intelligent as other guides, he let the rest go. The seizure was greatly resented by the tribe, and they sent emissaries to negotiate for the release of the captives, but to no effect.

[Sidenote: 1502. October. Cariari.]

[Sidenote: Gold sought at Veragua.]

Departing on October 5 from the region which the natives called Cariari, and where the fame of Columbus is still preserved in the Bahia del Almirante, the explorers soon found the coast trending once more towards the east. They were tracking what is now known as the shore of Costa Rica. They soon entered the large and island-studded Caribaro Bay. Here the Spaniards were delighted to find the natives wearing plates of gold as ornaments. They tried to traffic for them, but the Indians were loath to part with their treasures. The natives intimated that there was much more of this metal farther on at a place called Veragua. So the ships sailed on, October 17, and reached that coast. The Spaniards came to a river; but the natives sent defiance to them in the blasts of their conch-shells, while they shook at them their lances. Entering the tide, they splashed the water towards their enemies, in token of contempt. Columbus's Indian guides soon pacified them, and a round of barter followed, by which seventeen of their gold disks were secured for three hawks' bells. The intercourse ended, however, in a little hostile bout, during which the Spanish crossbows and lombards soon brought the savages to obedience.

[Sidenote: Ciguare.]

[Sidenote: At the isthmus.]

Still the caravels went on. The same scene of startled natives, in defiant attitude, soon soothed by the trinkets was repeated everywhere. In one place the Spaniards found what they had never seen before, a wall laid of stone and lime, and Columbus began to think of the civilized East again. Coast peoples are always barbarous, as he says; but it is the inland people who are rich. As he passed along this coast of Veragua, as the name has got to be written, though his notary at the time caught the Indian pronunciation as Cobraba, his interpreters pointed out its villages, and the chief one of all; and when they had passed on a little farther they told him he was sailing beyond the gold country. Columbus was not sure but they were trying to induce him to open communication again with the shore, to offer chances for their escape. The seeker of the strait could not stop for gold. His vision led him on to that marvelous land of Ciguare, of which these successive native tribes told him, situated ten days inland, and where the people reveled in gold, sailed in ships, and conducted commerce in spices and other precious commodities. The women there were decked, so they said, with corals and pearls. "I should be content," he says, "if a tithe of this which I hear is true." He even fancied, from all he could understand of their signs and language, that these Ciguare people were as terrible in war as the Spaniards, and rode on beasts. "They also say that the sea surrounds Ciguare, and that ten days' journey from thence is the river Ganges." Humboldt seems to think that in all this Columbus got a conception of that great western ocean which was lying so much nearer to him than he supposed. It may be doubted if it was quite so clear to Columbus as Humboldt thinks; but there is good reason to believe that Columbus imagined this wonderful region of Ciguare was half-way to the Ganges. If, as his canonizers fondly suppose, he had not mistaken in his visions an isthmus for a strait, he might have been prompted to cross the slender barrier which now separated him from his goal.

[Sidenote: 1502. November 2.]

[Sidenote: Porto Bello.]

[Sidenote: Nombre de Dios.]

On the 2d of November, the ships again anchored in a spacious harbor, so beautiful in its groves and fruits, and with such deep water close to the shore, that Columbus gave it the name of Puerto Bello (Porto Bello),--an appellation which has never left it. It rained for seven days while they lay here, doing nothing but trading a little with the natives for provisions. The Indians offered no gold, and hardly any was seen. Starting once more, the Spaniards came in sight of the cape known since as Nombre de Dios, but they were thwarted for a while in their attempts to pass it. They soon found a harbor, where they stayed till November 23; then going on again, they secured anchorage in a basin so small that the caravels were placed almost beside the shore. Columbus was kept here by the weather for nine days. The basking alligators reminded him of the crocodiles of the Nile. The natives were uncommonly gentle and gracious, and provisions were plenty. The ease with which the seamen could steal ashore at night began to be demoralizing, leading to indignities at the native houses. The savage temper was at last aroused, and the Spanish revelries were brought to an end by an attack on the ships. It ceased, as usual, after a few discharges of the ships' guns.

[Sidenote: Bastidas's exploration of this coast.]

Columbus had not yet found any deflection of that current which sweeps in this region towards the Gulf of Mexico. He had struggled against its powerful flow in every stage of his progress along the coast. Whether this had brought him to believe that his vision of a strait was delusive does not appear. Whether he really knew that he had actually joined his own explorations, going east, to those which Bastidas had made from the west is equally unknown, though it is possible he may have got an intimation of celestial and winged monsters from the natives. If he comprehended it, he saw that there could be no strait, this way at least. Bastidas, as we have seen, was on board Bobadilla's fleet when Columbus lay off Santo Domingo. There is a chance that Columbus's messenger who went ashore may have seen him and his charts, and may have communicated some notes of the maps to the Admiral. Some of the companions of Bastidas on his voyage had reached Spain before Columbus sailed, and there may have been some knowledge imparted in that way. If Columbus knew the truth, he did not disclose it.

Porras, possibly at a later day, seems to have been better informed, or at least he imparts more in his narrative than Columbus does. He says he saw in the people of these parts many of the traits of those of the pearl coast at Paria, and that the maps, which they possessed, showed that it was to this point that the explorations of Ojeda and Bastidas had been pushed.

[Sidenote: Columbus turns back.]

[Sidenote: 1502. December 5.]

[Sidenote: A gale.]

There were other things that might readily have made him turn back, as well as this despair of finding a strait. His crew were dissatisfied with leaving the gold of Veragua. His ships were badly bored by the worms, and they had become, from this cause and by reason of the heavy weather which had so mercilessly followed them, more and more unseaworthy. So on December 5, 1502, when he passed out of the little harbor of El Retrete, he began a backward course. Pretty soon the wind, which had all along faced him from the east, blew strongly from the west, checking him as much going backward as it had in his onward course. It seemed as if the elements were turned against him. The gale was making sport of him, as it veered in all directions. It was indeed a Coast of Contrasts (La Costa de los Contrastes), as Columbus called it. The lightning streaked the skies continually. The thunder was appalling. For nine days the little ships, strained at every seam, leaking at every point where the tropical sea worm had pierced them, writhed in a struggle of death. At one time a gigantic waterspout formed within sight. The sea surged around its base. The clouds stooped to give it force. It came staggering and lunging towards the fragile barks. The crews exorcised the watery spirit by repeating the Gospel of St. John the Evangelist, and the crazy column passed on the other side of them.

Added to their peril through it all were the horrors of an impending famine. Their biscuit were revolting because of the worms. They caught sharks for food.

[Sidenote: 1502. December 17.]

[Sidenote: Bethlehem River.]

[Sidenote: 1503. January 24.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew seeks the mines.]

At last, on December 17, the fleet reunited,--for they had, during the gales, lost sight of each other,--and entered a harbor, where they found the native cabins built in the tree tops, to be out of the way of griffins, or some other beasts. After further buffeting of the tempests, they finally made a harbor on the coast of Veragua, in a river which Columbus named Santa Maria de Belen (Bethlehem), it being Epiphany Day; and here at last they anchored two of the caravels on January 9, and the other two on the 10th (1503). Columbus had been nearly a month in passing thirty leagues of coast. The Indians were at first quieted in the usual way, and some gold was obtained by barter. The Spaniards had not been here long, however, when they found themselves (January 24, 1503) in as much danger by the sudden swelling of the river as they had been at sea. It was evidently occasioned by continued falls of rain in distant mountains, which they could see. The caravels were knocked about like cockboats. The Admiral's ship snapped a mast. "It rained without ceasing," says the Admiral, recording his miseries, "until the 14th of February;" and during the continuance of the storm the Adelantado was sent on a boat expedition to ascend the Veragua River, three miles along the coast, where he was to search for mines. The party proceeded on February 6 as far as they could in the boats, and then, leaving part of the men for a guard, and taking guides, which the Quibian--that being the name, as he says, which they gave to the lord of the country--had provided, they reached a country where the soil to their eyes seemed full of particles of gold. Columbus says that he afterwards learned that it was a device of the crafty Quibian to conduct them to the mines of a rival chief, while his own were richer and nearer, all of which, nevertheless, did not escape the keen Spanish scent for gold. Bartholomew made other excursions along the coast; but nowhere did it seem to him that gold was as plenty as at Veragua.

[Sidenote: Mines of Aurea.]

Columbus now reverted to his old fancies. He remembered that Josephus has described the getting of gold for the Temple of Jerusalem from the Golden Chersonesus, and was not this the very spot? "Josephus thinks that this gold of the Chronicles and the Book of Kings was found in the Aurea," he says. "If it were so, I contend that these mines of the Aurea are identical with those of Veragua. David in his will left 3,000 quintals of Indian gold to Solomon, to assist in building the Temple, and according to Josephus it came from these lands." He had seen, as he says, more promise of gold here in two days than in Española in four years. It was very easy now to dwarf his Ophir at Hayna! Those other riches were left to those who had wronged him. The pearls of the Paria coast might be the game of the common adventurer. Here was the princely domain of the divinely led discoverer, who was rewarded at last!

[Sidenote: Columbus seeks to make a settlement.]

A plan was soon made of founding a settlement to hold the region and gain information, while Columbus returned to Spain for supplies. Eighty men were to stay. They began to build houses. They divided the stock of provisions and munitions, and transferred that intended for the colony to one of the caravels, which was to be left with them. Particular pains were taken to propitiate the natives by presents, and the Quibian was regaled with delicacies and gifts. When this was done, it was found that a dry season had come on, and there was not water enough on the bar to float the returning caravels.

[Sidenote: Diego Mendez's exploits.]

[Sidenote: The Quibian taken,]

[Sidenote: but escapes.]

Meanwhile the Quibian had formed a league to exterminate the intruders. Columbus sent a brave fellow, Diego Mendez, to see what he could learn. He found a force of savages advancing to the attack; but this single Spaniard disconcerted them, and they put off the plan. Again, with but a single companion, one Rodrigo de Escobar, Mendez boldly went into the Quibian's village, and came back alive to tell the Admiral of all the preparations for war which he had seen, or which were inferred at least. The news excited the quick spirits of the Adelantado, and, following a plan of Mendez, he at once started (March 30) with an armed force. He came with such celerity to the cacique's village that the savages were not prepared for their intrusion, and by a rapid artifice he surrounded the lodge of the Quibian, and captured him with fifty of his followers. The Adelantado sent him, bound hand and foot, and under escort, down the river, in charge of Juan Sanchez, who rather resented any intimation of the Adelantado to be careful of his prisoner. As the boat neared the mouth of the river, her commander yielded to the Quibian's importunities to loosen his bonds, when the chief, watching his opportunity, slipped overboard and dove to the bottom. The night was dark, and he was not seen when he came to the surface, and was not pursued. The other prisoners were delivered to the Admiral. The Adelantado meanwhile had sacked the cacique's cabin, and brought away its golden treasures.

[Sidenote: 1503. April 6.]

[Sidenote: The settlement attacked.]

Columbus, confident that the Quibian had been drowned, and that the chastisement which had been given his tribe was a wholesome lesson, began again to arrange for his departure. As the river had risen a little, he succeeded in getting his lightened caravels over the bar, and anchored them outside, where their lading was again put on board. To offer some last injunctions and to get water, Columbus, on April 6, sent a boat, in command of Diego Tristan, to the Adelantado, who was to be left in command. When the boat got in, Tristan found the settlement in great peril. The Quibian, who had reached the shore in safety after his adventure, had quickly organized an attacking party, and had fallen upon the settlement. The savages were fast getting their revenge, for the unequal contest had lasted nearly three hours, when the Adelantado and Mendez, rallying a small force, rushed so impetuously upon them that, with the aid of a fierce bloodhound, the native host was scattered in a trice. Only one Spaniard had been killed and eight wounded, including the Adelantado; but the rout of the Indians was complete.

[Sidenote: Tristan murdered.]

It was while these scenes were going on that Tristan arrived in his boat opposite the settlement. He dallied till the affair was ended, and then proceeded up the river to get some water. Those on shore warned him of the danger of ambuscade; but he persisted. When he had got well beyond the support of the settlement, his boat was beset with a shower of javelins from the overhanging banks on both sides, while a cloud of canoes attacked him front and rear. But a single Spaniard escaped by diving, and brought the tale of disaster to his countrymen.

The condition of the settlement was now alarming. The Indians, encouraged by their success in overcoming the boat, once more gathered to attack the little group of "encroaching Spaniards," as Columbus could but call them. The houses which sheltered them were so near the thick forest that the savages approached them on all sides under shelter. The woods rang with their yells and with the blasts of their conch-shells. The Spaniards got, in their panic, beyond the control of the Adelantado. They prepared to take the caravel and leave the river; but it was found she would not float over the bar. They then sought to send a boat to the Admiral, lying outside, to prevent his sailing without them; but the current and tide commingling made such a commotion on the bar that no boat could live in the sea. The bodies of Tristan and his men came floating down stream, with carrion crows perched upon them at their ghastly feast. It seemed as if nature visited them with premonitions. At last the Adelantado brought a sufficient number of men into such a steady mood that they finally constructed out of whatever they could get some sort of a breastwork near the shore, where the ground was open. Here they could use their matchlocks and have a clear sweep about them. They placed behind this bulwark two small falconets, and prepared to defend themselves. They were in this condition for four days. Their provisions, however, began to run short, and every Spaniard who dared to forage was sure to be cut off. Their ammunition, too, was not abundant.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Columbus at anchor outside the bar.]

Meanwhile Columbus was in a similar state of anxiety. "The Admiral was suffering from a severe fever," he says, "and worn with fatigue." His ships were lying at anchor outside the bar, with the risk of being obliged to put to sea at any moment, to work off a lee shore. Tristan's prolonged absence harassed him. Another incident was not less ominous. The companions of the Quibian were confined on board in the forecastle; and it was the intention to take them to Spain as hostages, as it was felt they would be, for the colony left behind. Those in charge of them had become careless about securing the hatchway, and one night they failed to chain it, trusting probably to the watchfulness of certain sailors who slept upon the hatch. The savages, finding a footing upon some ballast which they piled up beneath, suddenly threw off the cover, casting the sleeping sailors violently aside, and before the guard could be called the greater part of the prisoners had jumped into the sea and escaped. Such as were secured were thrust back, but the next morning it was found that they all had strangled themselves.

[Sidenote: Ledesma's exploit.]

After such manifestations of ferocious determination, Columbus began to be further alarmed for the safety of his brother's companions and of Tristan's. For days a tossing surf had made an impassable barrier between him and the shore. He had but one boat, and he did not dare to risk it in an attempt to land. Finally, his Sevillian pilot, Pedro Ledesma, offered to brave the dangers by swimming, if the boat would take him close to the surf. The trial was made; the man committed himself to the surf, and by his strength and skill so surmounted wave after wave that he at length reached stiller water, and was seen to mount the shore. In due time he was again seen on the beach, and plunging in once more, was equally successful in passing the raging waters, and was picked up by the boat. He had a sad tale to tell the Admiral. It was a story of insubordination, a powerless Adelantado, and a frantic eagerness to escape somehow. Ledesma said that the men were preparing canoes to come off to the ships, since their caravel was unable to pass the bar.

[Sidenote: Resolve to abandon the region.]

There was long consideration in these hours of disheartenment; but the end of it was a decision to rescue the colony and abandon the coast. The winds never ceased to be high, and Columbus's ships, in their weakened condition, were only kept afloat by care and vigilance. The loss of the boat's crew threw greater burdens and strains upon those who were left. It was impossible while the surf lasted to send in his only boat, and quite as impossible for the fragile canoes of his colony to brave the dangers of the bar in coming out. There was nothing for Columbus to do but to hold to his anchor as long as he could, and wait.

[Sidenote: Columbus in delirium hears a voice.]

Our pity for the man is sometimes likely to unfit us to judge his own record. Let us try to believe what he says of himself, and watch him in his delirium. "Groaning with exhaustion," he says, "I fell asleep in the highest part of the ship, and heard a compassionate voice address me." It bade him be of good cheer, and take courage in the service of God! What the God of all had done for Moses and David would be done for him! As we read the long report of this divine utterance, as Columbus is careful to record it, we learn that the Creator was aware of his servant's name resounding marvelously throughout the earth. We find, however, that the divine belief curiously reflected the confidence of Columbus that it was India, and not America, that had been revealed. "Remember David," said the Voice, "how he was a shepherd, and was made a king. Remember Abraham, how he was a hundred when he begat Isaac, and that there is youth still for the aged." Columbus adds that when the Voice chided him he wept for his errors, and that he heard it all as in a trance.

The obvious interpretation of all this is either that by the record Columbus intended a fable to impress the sovereigns, for whom he was writing, or that he was so moved to hallucinations that he believed what he wrote. The hero worship of Irving decides the question easily. "Such an idea," says Irving, referring to the argument of deceit, and forgetting the Admiral's partiality for such practices, "is inconsistent with the character of Columbus. In recalling a dream, one is unconsciously apt to give it a little coherency." Irving's plea is that it was a mere dream, which was mistaken by Columbus, in his feverish excitement, for a revelation. "The artless manner," adds that biographer, "in which he mingles the rhapsodies and dreams of his imagination with simple facts and sound practical observations, pouring them forth with a kind of Scriptural solemnity and poetry of language, is one of the most striking illustrations of a character richly compounded of extraordinary and apparently contradictory elements." We may perhaps ask, Was Irving's hero a deceiver, or was he mad? The chances seem to be that the whole vision was simply the product of one of those fits of aberration which in these later years were no strangers to Columbus's existence. His mind was not infrequently, amid disappointments and distractions, in no fit condition to ward off hallucination.

Humboldt speaks of Columbus's letter describing this vision as showing the disordered mind of a proud soul weighed down with dead hopes. He has no fear that the strange mixture of force and weakness, of pride and touching humility, which accompanies these secret contortions will ever impress the world with other feelings than those of commiseration.

It is a hard thing for any one, seeking to do justice to the agonies of such spirits, to measure them in the calmness of better days. "Let those who are accustomed to slander and aspersion ask, while they sit in security at home, Why dost thou not do so and so under such circumstances?" says Columbus himself. It is far easier to let one's self loose into the vortex and be tossed with sympathy. But if four centuries have done anything for us, they ought to have cleared the air of its mirages. What is pitiable may not be noble.

[Sidenote: The colony embark.]

The Voice was, of course, associated in Columbus's mind with the good weather which followed. During this a raft was made of two canoes lashed together beneath a platform, and, using this for ferrying, all the stores were floated off safely to the ships, so that in the end nothing was left behind but the decaying and stranded caravel. This labor was done under the direction of Diego Mendez, whom the Admiral rewarded by kissing him on the cheek, and by giving him command of Tristan's caravel, which was the Admiral's flagship.

[Sidenote: 1503. April, Columbus sails away.]

It is a strange commentary on the career and fame of Columbus that the name of this disastrous coast should represent him to this day in the title of his descendant, the Duke of Veragua. Never a man turned the prow of his ship from scenes which he would sooner forget, with more sorrow and relief, than Columbus, in the latter days of April, 1503, with his enfeebled crews and his crazy hulks, stood away, as he thought, for Española. And yet three months later, and almost in the same breath with which he had rehearsed these miseries, with that obliviousness which so often caught his errant mind, he wrote to his sovereigns that "there is not in the world a country, whose inhabitants are more timid; added to which there is a good harbor, a beautiful river, and the whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of defense. Your people that may come here, if they should wish to become masters of the products of other lands, will have to take them by force, or retire empty-handed. In this country they will simply have to trust their persons in the hands of a savage." The man was mad.

It was easterly that Columbus steered when his ships swung round to their destined course. It was not without fear and even indignation that his crews saw what they thought a purpose to sail directly for Spain in the sorry plight of the ships. Mendez, indeed, who commanded the Admiral's own ship, says "they thought to reach Spain." The Admiral, however, seems to have had two purposes. He intended to run eastward far enough to allow for the currents, when he should finally head for Santo Domingo. He intended also to disguise as much as he could the route back, for fear that others would avail themselves of his crew's knowledge to rediscover these golden coasts. He remembered how the companions of his Paria voyage had led other expeditions to that region of pearls. He is said also to have taken from his crew all their memoranda of the voyage, so that there would be no such aid available to guide others. "None of them can explain whither I went, nor whence I came," he says. "They do not know the way to return thither."

[Sidenote: At Puerto Bello.]

[Sidenote: At the Gulf of Darien.]

[Sidenote: 1503. May 10.]

[Sidenote: May 30. On the Cuban coast.]

[Sidenote: 1503. June 23. Reaches Jamaica.]

By the time he reached Puerto Bello, one of his caravels had become so weakened by the boring worms that he had to abandon her and crowd his men into the two remaining vessels. His crews became clamorous when he reached the Gulf of Darien, where he thought it prudent to abandon his easterly course and steer to the north. It was now May 1. He hugged the wind to overcome the currents, but when he sighted some islands to the westward of Española, on the 10th, it was evident that the currents had been bearing him westerly all the while. They were still drifting him westerly, when he found himself, on May 30, among the islands on the Cuban coast which he had called The Gardens. "I had reached," he says in his old delusion, "the province of Mago, which is contiguous to that of Cathay." Here the ships anchored to give the men refreshment. The labor of keeping the vessels free from water had been excessive, and in a secure roadstead it could now be carried on with some respite of toil, if the weather would only hold good. This was not to be, however. A gale ensued in which they lost their anchors. The two caravels, moreover, sustained serious damage by collision. All the anchors of the Admiral's ship had gone but one, and though that held, the cable nearly wore asunder. After six days of this stormy weather, he dared at last to crawl along the coast. Fortunately, he got some native provisions at one place, which enabled him to feed his famished men. The currents and adverse winds, however, proved too much for the power of his ships to work to windward. They were all the while in danger of foundering. "With three pumps and the use of pots and kettles," he says, "we could scarcely clear the water that came into the ship, there being no remedy but this for the mischief done by the ship worm." He reluctantly, therefore, bore away for Jamaica, where, on June 23, he put into Puerto Buono (Dry Harbor).

[Sidenote: 1503. July, August. His ships stranded].

Finding neither water nor food here, he went on the next day to Port San Gloria, known in later days as Don Christopher's Cove. Here he found it necessary, a little later (July 23 and August 12), to run his sinking ships, one after the other, aground, but he managed to place them side by side, so that they could be lashed together. They soon filled with the tide. Cabins were built on the forecastles and sterns to live in, and bulwarks of defense were reared as best they could be along the vessels' waists. Columbus now took the strictest precautions to prevent his men wandering ashore, for it was of the utmost importance that no indignity should be offered the natives while they were in such hazardous and almost defenseless straits.

It became at once a serious question how to feed his men. Whatever scant provisions remained on board the stranded caravels were spoiled. His immediate savage neighbors supplied them with cassava bread and other food for a while, but they had no reserved stores to draw upon, and these sources were soon exhausted.

[Sidenote: Mendez seeks food for the company.]

Diego Mendez now offered, with three men, carrying goods to barter, to make a circuit of the island, so that he could reach different caciques, with whom he could bargain for the preparation and carriage of food to the Spaniards. As he concluded his successive impromptu agreements with cacique after cacique, he sent a man back loaded with what he could carry, to acquaint the Admiral, and let him prepare for a further exchange of trinkets. Finally, Mendez, left without a companion, still went on, getting some Indian porters to help him from place to place. In this way he reached the eastern end of the island, where he ingratiated himself with a powerful cacique, and was soon on excellent terms with him. From this chieftain he got a canoe with natives to paddle, and loading it with provisions, he skirted westerly along the coast, until he reached the Spaniards' harbor. His mission bade fair to have accomplished its purpose, and provisions came in plentifully for a while under the arrangements which he had made.

[Sidenote: Mendez prepares to go to Española.]

Columbus's next thought was to get word, if possible, to Ovando, at Española, so that the governor could send a vessel to rescue them. Columbus proposed to Mendez that he should attempt the passage with the canoe in which he had returned from his expedition. Mendez pictured the risks of going forty leagues in these treacherous seas in a frail canoe, and intimated that the Admiral had better make trial of the courage of the whole company first. He said that if no one else offered to go he would shame them by his courage, as he had more than once done before. So the company were assembled, and Columbus made public the proposition. Every one hung back from the hazards, and Mendez won his new triumph, as he had supposed he would. He then set to work fitting the canoe for the voyage. He put a keel to her. He built up her sides so that she could better ward off the seas, and rigged a mast and sail. She was soon loaded with the necessary provisions for himself, one other Spaniard, and the six Indians who were to ply the paddles.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: 1503. July 7. Letter of Columbus to the sovereigns.]

The Admiral, while the preparations were making, drew up a letter to his sovereigns, which it was intended that Mendez, after arranging with Ovando for the rescue, should bear himself to Spain by the first opportunity. At least it is the reasonable assumption of Humboldt that this is the letter which has come down to us dated July 7, 1503.

[Sidenote: Lettera rarissima.]

It is not known that this epistle was printed at the time, though manuscript copies seem to have circulated. An Italian version of it was, however, printed at Venice a year before Columbus died. The original Spanish text was not known to scholars till Navarrete, having discovered in the king's library at Madrid an early transcript of it, printed it in the first volume of his Coleccion. It is the document usually referred to, from the title of Morelli's reprint (1810) of the Italian text, as the Lettera rarissima di Cristoforo Colombo. This letter is even more than his treatise on the prophets a sorrowful index of his wandering reason. In parts it is the merest jumble of hurrying thoughts, with no plan or steady purpose in view. It is in places well calculated to arouse the deepest pity. It was, of course, avowedly written at a venture, inasmuch as the chance of its reaching the hands of his sovereigns was a very small one. "I send this letter," he says, "by means of and by the hands of Indians; it will be a miracle if it reaches its destination."

He not only goes back over the adventures of the present expedition, in a recital which has been not infrequently quoted in previous pages, but he reverts gloomily to the more distant past. He lingers on the discouragements of his first years in Spain. "Every one to whom the enterprise was mentioned," he says of those days, "treated it as ridiculous, but now there is not a man, down to the very tailors, who does not beg to be allowed to become a discoverer." He remembers the neglect which followed upon the first flush of indignation when he returned to Spain in chains. "The twenty years' service through which I have passed with so much toil and danger have profited me nothing, and at this very day I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own. If I wish to eat or sleep I have nowhere to go but to a low tavern, and most times lack wherewith to pay the bill. Another anxiety wrings my very heartstrings, when I think of my son Diego, whom I have left an orphan in Spain, stripped of the house and property which is due to him on my account, although I had looked upon it as a certainty that your Majesties, as just and grateful princes, would restore it to him in all respects with increase."

"I was twenty-eight years old," he says again, "when I came into your Highnesses' services, and now I have not a hair upon me that is not gray, my body is infirm, and all that was left to me, as well as to my brother, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor."

And then, referring to his present condition, he adds: "Solitary in my trouble, sick, and in daily expectation of death, I am surrounded by millions of hostile savages, full of cruelty. Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth, and justice!"

He next works over in his mind the old geographical problems. He recalls his calculation of an eclipse in 1494, when he supposed, in his error, that he had "sailed twenty-four degrees westward in nine hours." He recalls the stories that he had heard on the Veragua coast, and thinks that he had known it all before from books. Marinus had come near the truth, he gives out, and the Portuguese have proved that the Indies in Ethiopia is, as Marinus had said, four and twenty degrees from the equinoctial line. "The world is but small," he sums up; "out of seven divisions of it, the dry part occupies six, and the seventh is entirely covered by water. I say that the world is not so large as vulgar opinion makes it, and that one degree from the equinoctial line measures fifty-six miles and two thirds, and this may be proved to a nicety."

[Sidenote: Columbus on gold.]

And then, in his thoughts, he turns back to his quest for gold, just as he had done in action at Darien, when in despair he gave up the search for a strait. It was gold, to his mind, that could draw souls from purgatory. He exclaims: "Gold is the most precious of all commodities. Gold constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it has all he needs in this world, as also the means of rescuing souls from purgatory, and restoring them to the enjoyment of paradise."

Then his hopes swell with the vision of that wealth which he thought he had found, and would yet return to. He alone had the clues to it, which he had concealed from others. "I can safely assert that to my mind my people returning to Spain are the bearers of the best news that ever was carried to Spain.... I had certainly foreseen how things would be. I think more of this opening for commerce than of all that has been done in the Indies. This is not a child to be left to the care of a stepmother."

These were some of the thoughts, in large part tumultuous, incoherent, dispirited, harrowing, weakening, and sad, penned within sound of the noise of Mendez's preparations, and disclosing an exultant and bewildered being, singularly compounded.

This script was committed to Mendez, beside one addressed to Ovando, and another to his friend in Spain, Father Gorricio, to whom he imparts some of the same frantic expectations. "If my voyage will turn out as favorable to my health," he says, "and to the tranquillity of my house, as it is likely to be for the glory of my royal masters, I shall live long."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mendez starts.]

Mendez started bravely. He worked along the coast of the island towards its eastern end; not without peril, however, both from the sea and from the Indians. Finally, his party fell captives to a startled cacique; but while the savages were disputing over a division of the spoils, Mendez succeeded in slipping back to the canoe, and, putting off alone, paddled it back to the stranded ships.

[Sidenote: Mendez starts again.]

Another trial was made at once, with larger preparation. A second canoe was added to the expedition, and the charge of this was given to Bartholomew Fiesco, a Genoese, who had commanded one of the caravels. The daring adventurers started again with an armed party under the Adelantado following them along the shore.

The land and boat forces reached the end of the island without molestation, and then, bidding each other farewell, the canoes headed boldly away from land, and were soon lost to the sight of the Adelantado in the deepening twilight. The land party returned to the Admiral without adventure. There was little now for the poor company to do but to await the return of Fiesco, who had been directed to come back at once and satisfy the Admiral that Mendez had safely accomplished his mission.

[Sidenote: The revolt of Porras.]

Many days passed, and straining eyes were directed along the shore to catch a glimpse of Fiesco's canoe; but it came not. There was not much left to allay fear or stifle disheartenment. The cramped quarters of the tenements on the hulks, the bad food which the men were forced to depend upon, and the vain watchings soon produced murmurs of discontent, which it needed but the captious spirit of a leader to convert into the turmoil of revolt. Such a gatherer of sedition soon appeared. There were in the company two brothers, Francisco de Porras, who had commanded one of the vessels, and Diego de Porras, who had, as we have seen, been joined to the expedition to check off the Admiral's accounts of treasures acquired. The very espionage of his office was an offense to the Admiral. It was through the caballing of these two men that the alien spirits of the colony found in one of them at last a determined actor. It is not easy to discover how far the accusations against the Admiral, which these men now began to dwell upon, were generally believed. It served the leaders' purposes to have it appear that Columbus was in reality banished from Spain, and had no intention of returning thither till Mendez and Fiesco had succeeded in making favor for him at Court; and that it was upon such a mission that these lieutenants had been sent. It was therefore necessary, if those who were thus cruelly confined in Jamaica wished to escape a lingering death, to put on a bold front, and demand to be led away to Española in such canoes as could be got of the Indians.

[Sidenote: 1504. January 2. Demands of Porras.]

[Sidenote: The flotilla of Porras sails.]

It was on the 2d of January, 1504, that, with a crowd of sympathizers watching within easy call, Francisco de Porras suddenly presented himself in the cabin of the weary and bedridden Admiral. An altercation ensued, in which the Admiral, propped in his couch, endeavored to assuage the bursting violence of his accuser, and to bring him to a sense of the patient duty which the conditions demanded. It was one of the times when desperate straits seemed to restore the manhood of Columbus. It was, however, of little use. The crisis was not one that, in the present temper of the mutineers, could be avoided. Porras, finding that the Admiral could not be swayed, called out in a loud voice, "I am for Castile! Those who will may come with me!" This signal was expected, and a shout rang in the air among those who were awaiting it. It aroused Columbus from his couch, and he staggered into sight; but his presence caused no cessation of the tumult. Some of his loyal companions, fearing violence, took him back to his bed. The Adelantado braced himself with his lance for an encounter, and was pacified only by the persuasions of the Admiral's friends. They loyally said, "Let the mutineers go. We will remain." The angry faction seized ten canoes, which the Admiral had secured from the Indians, and putting in them what they could get, they embarked for their perilous voyage. Some others who had not joined in their plot being allured by the flattering hope of release, there were forty-eight in all, and the little flotilla, amid the mingled execrations and murmurs of despair among the weak and the downcast who stayed behind, paddled out of that fateful harbor.

The greater part of all who were vigorous had now gone. There were a few strong souls, with some vitality left in them, among the small company which remained to the Admiral; but the most of them were sorry objects, with dejected minds and bodies more or less prostrate from disease and privation. The conviction soon settled upon this deserted community that nothing could save them but a brotherly and confident determination to help one another, and to arouse to the utmost whatever of cheer and good will was latent in their spirits. They could hardly have met an attack of the natives, and they knew it. This made them more considerate in their treatment of their neighbors, and the supply of provisions which they could get from those who visited the ship was plentiful for a while. But the habits of the savages were not to accumulate much beyond present needs, and when the baubles which the Spaniards could distribute began to lose their strange attractiveness, the incentive was gone to induce exertion, and supplies were brought in less and less frequently. It was soon found that hawks' bells had diminished in value. It took several to appease the native cupidity where one had formerly done it.

[Sidenote: Porras's men still on the island.]

There was another difficulty. There were failures on the part of the more distant villages to send in their customary contributions, and it soon came to be known that Porras and his crew, instead of having left the island, were wandering about, exacting provisions and committing indignities against the inhabitants wherever they went.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: His voyage a failure.]

It seems that the ten canoes had followed the coast to the nearest point to Española, at the eastern end of the island, and here, waiting for a calm sea, and securing some Indians to paddle, the mutineers had finally pushed off for their voyage. The boats had scarcely gone four leagues from land, when the wind rose and the sea began to alarm them. So they turned back. The men were little used to the management of the canoes, and they soon found themselves in great peril. It seemed necessary to lighten the canoes, which were now taking in water to a dangerous extent. They threw over much of their provisions; but this was not enough. They then sacrificed one after another the natives. If these resisted, a swoop of the sword ended their miseries. Once in the water, the poor Indians began to seize the gunwales; but the sword chopped off their hands. So all but a few of them, who were absolutely necessary to manage the canoes, were thrown into the sea. Such were the perils through which the mutineers passed in reaching the land.

A long month was now passed waiting for another calm sea; but when they tempted it once more, it rose as before, and they again sought the land. All hope of success was now abandoned. From that time Porras and his band gave themselves up to a lawless, wandering life, during which they created new jealousies among the tribes. As we have seen, by their exactions they began at last to tap the distant sources of supplies for the Admiral and his loyal adherents.

[Sidenote: 1504. February 29. Eclipse of the moon.]

Columbus now resorted to an expedient characteristic of the ingenious fertility of his mind. His astronomical tables enabled him to expect the approach of a lunar eclipse (February 29, 1504), and finding it close at hand he hastily summoned some of the neighboring caciques. He told them that the God of the Spaniards was displeased at their neglect to feed his people, and that He was about to manifest that displeasure by withdrawing the moon and leaving them to such baleful influences as they had provoked. When night fell and the shadow began to steal over the moon, a long howl of horror arose, and promises of supplies were made by the stricken caciques. They hurled themselves for protection at the feet of the Admiral. Columbus retired for an ostensible communion with this potent Spirit, and just as the hour came for the shadow to withdraw he appeared, and announced that their contrition had appeased the Deity, and a sign would be given of his content. Gradually the moon passed out of the shadow, and when in the clear heavens the luminary was again swimming unobstructed in her light, the work of astonishment had been done. After that, Columbus was never much in fear of famine.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The canoe voyage of Mendez.]

[Sidenote: At Navasa Island.]

It is time now to see how much more successful Mendez and Fiesco had been than Porras and his crew. They had accomplished the voyage to Española, it is true, but under such perils and sufferings that Fiesco could not induce a crew sufficient to man the canoe to return with him to the Admiral. The passage had been made under the most violent conditions of tropical heat and unprotected endurance. Their supply of water had given out, and the tortures of thirst came on. They looked out for the little island of Navasa, which lay in their track, where they thought that in the crevices of the rocks they might find some water. They looked in vain. The day when they had hoped to see it passed, and night came on. One of the Indians died, and was dropped overboard. Others lay panting and exhausted in the bottom of the canoes. Mendez sat watching a glimmer of light in the eastern horizon that betokened the coming of the moon.

[Sidenote: They see Española.]

[Sidenote: Mendez lands at Española.]

Presently a faint glisten of the real orb grew into a segment. He could see the water line as the illumination increased. There was a black stretch of something jagging the lower edge of the segment. It was land! Navasa had been found. By morning they had reached the island. Water was discovered among the rocks; but some drank too freely, and paid the penalty of their lives. Mussels were picked up along the shore; they built a fire and boiled them. All day long they gazed longingly on the distant mountains of Española, which were in full sight. Refreshed by the day's rest, they embarked again at nightfall, and on the following day arrived at Cape Tiburon, the southwestern peninsula of Española, having been four days on the voyage from Jamaica. They landed among hospitable natives, and having waited two days to recuperate, Mendez took some savages in a canoe, and started to go along the coast to Santo Domingo, one hundred and thirty leagues distant. He had gone nearly two thirds of the distance when, communicating with the shore, he learned that Ovando was not in Santo Domingo, but at Xaragua. So Mendez abandoned his canoe, and started alone through the forests to seek the governor.

[Sidenote: Ovando delays sending relief to Columbus.]

Ovando received him cordially, but made excuses for not sending relief to Columbus at once. He was himself occupied with the wars which he was conducting against the natives. There was no ship in Santo Domingo of sufficient burden to be dispatched for such a rescue. So excuse after excuse, and promises of attention unfulfilled, kept Mendez in the camp of Ovando for seven months. The governor always had reasons for denying him permission to go to Santo Domingo, where Mendez had hopes of procuring a vessel. This procrastinating conduct has naturally given rise to the suspicion that Ovando was not over-anxious to deliver Columbus from his perils; and there can be little question that for the Admiral to have sunk into oblivion and leave no trace would have relieved both the governor and his royal master of some embarrassments.

At length Ovando consented to the departure of Mendez to Santo Domingo. There was a fleet of caravels expected there, and Mendez was anxious to see if he could not procure one of them on the Admiral's own account to undertake the voyage of rescue. His importunities became so pressing that Ovando at last consented to his starting for that port, seventy leagues distant.

[Sidenote: Ovando sends Escobar to observe Columbus.]

No sooner was Mendez gone than Ovando determined to ascertain the condition of the party at Jamaica without helping them, and so he dispatched a caravel to reconnoitre. He purposely sent a small craft, that there might be no excuse for attempting to bring off the company; and to prevent seizure of the vessel by Columbus, her commander was instructed to lie off the harbor, and only send in a boat, to communicate with no one but Columbus; and he was particularly enjoined to avoid being enticed on board the stranded caravels. The command of this little craft of espionage was given to one of Columbus's enemies, Diego de Escobar, who had been active as Roldan's lieutenant in his revolt.

When the vessel appeared off the harbor where Columbus was, eight months had passed since Mendez and Fiesco had departed. All hopes of hearing of them had been abandoned. A rumor had come in from the natives that a vessel, bottom upwards, had been seen near the island, drifting with the current. It is said to have been a story started by Porras that its effect might be distressing to Columbus's adherents. It seems to have had the effect to hasten further discontent in that stricken band, and a new revolt was almost ready to make itself known when Escobar's tiny caravel was descried standing in towards shore.

The vessel was seen to lie to, when a boat soon left her side. As it came within hailing, the figure of Escobar was recognized. Columbus knew that he had once condemned the man to death. Bobadilla had pardoned him. The boat bumped against the side of one of the stranded caravels; the crew brought it sidewise against the hulk, when a letter for the Admiral was handed up. Columbus's men made ready to receive a cask of wine and side of bacon, which Escobar's companions lifted on board. All at once a quick motion pushed the boat from the hulks, and Escobar stopped her when she had got out of reach. He now addressed Columbus, and gave him the assurances of Ovando's regret that he had no suitable vessel to send to him, but that he hoped before long to have such. He added that if Columbus desired to reply to Ovando's letter, he would wait a brief interval for him to prepare an answer.

The Admiral hastily made his reply in as courteous terms as possible, commending the purposes of Mendez and Fiesco to the governor's kind attention, and closed with saying that he reposed full confidence in Ovando's expressed intention to rescue his people, and that he would stay on the wrecks in patience till the ships came. Escobar received the letter, and returned to his caravel, which at once disappeared in the falling gloom of night.

Columbus was not without apprehension that Escobar had come simply to make sure that the Admiral and his company still survived, and Las Casas, who was then at Santo Domingo, seems to have been of the opinion that Ovando had at this time no purpose to do more. The selection of Escobar to carry a kindly message gave certainly a dubious ostentation to all expressions of friendly interest. The transaction may possibly admit of other interpretations. Ovando may reasonably have desired that Columbus and his faithful adherents should not abide long in Española, as in the absence of vessels returning to Spain the Admiral might be obliged to do. There were rumors that Columbus, indignant at the wrongs which he felt he had received at the hands of his sovereigns, had determined to hold his new discoveries for Genoa, and the Admiral had referred to such reports in his recent letter to the Spanish monarchs. Such reports easily put Ovando on his guard, and he may have desired time to get instructions from Spain. At all events, it was very palpable that Ovando was cautious and perhaps inhuman, and Columbus was to be left till Escobar's report should decide what action was best.

[Sidenote: Columbus communicates with Porras.]

Columbus endeavored to make use of the letter which Escobar had brought from Ovando to win Porras and his vagabonds back to loyalty and duty. He dispatched messengers to their camp to say that Ovando had notified him of his purpose to send a vessel to take them off the island. The Admiral was ready to promise forgiveness and forgetfulness, if the mutineers would come in and submit to the requirements of the orderly life of his people. He accompanied the message with a part of the bacon which Escobar had delivered as a present from the governor. The lure, however, was not effective. Porras met the ambassadors, and declined the proffers. He said his followers were quite content with the freedom of the island. The fact seemed to be that the mutineers were not quite sure of the Admiral's sincerity, and feared to put themselves in his power. They were ready to come in when the vessels came, if transportation would be allowed them so that their band should not be divided; and until then they would cause the Admiral's party no trouble, unless Columbus refused to share with them his stores and trinkets, which they must have, peacefully or forcibly, since they had lost all their supplies in the gales which had driven them back.

It was evident that Porras and his company were not reduced to such straits that they could be reasoned with, and the messengers returned.

[Sidenote: Bartholomew and his men confront the Porras mutineers.]

The author of the Historie, and others who follow his statements, represent that the body of the mutineers was far from being as arrogant as their leaders, was much more tractable in spirit, and was inclined to catch at the chance of rescue. The leaders labored with the men to keep them steady in their revolt. Porras and his abettors did what they could to picture the cruelties of the Admiral, and even accused him of necromancy in summoning the ghost of a caravel by which to make his people believe that Escobar had really been there. Then, to give some activity to their courage, the whole body of the mutineers was led towards the harbor on pretense of capturing stores. The Adelantado went out to meet them with fifty armed followers, the best he could collect from the wearied companions of the Admiral. Porras refused all offers of conference, and led his band to the attack. There was a plan laid among them that six of the stoutest should attack the Adelantado simultaneously, thinking that if their leader should be overpowered the rest would flee. The Adelantado's courage rose with the exigency, as it was wont to do. He swung his sword with vigor, and one after another the assailants fell. At last Porras struck him such a blow that the Adelantado's buckler was cleft and his hand wounded. The blow was too powerful for the giver of it. His sword remained wedged in the buckler, affording his enemy a chance to close, while an attempt was made to extricate the weapon. Others came to the loyal leader's assistance, and Porras was secured and bound.

[Sidenote: Porras taken.]

[Sidenote: Sanchez killed.]

[Sidenote: Ledesma wounded.]

This turned the current of the fight. The rebels, seeing their leader a prisoner, fled in confusion, leaving the field to the party of the Adelantado. The fight had been a fierce one. They found among the rebel dead Juan Sanchez, who had let slip the captured Quibian, and among the wounded Pedro Ledesma, who had braved the breakers at Veragua. Las Casas, who knew the latter at a later day, deriving some help from him in telling the story of these eventful months, speaks of the many and fearful wounds which he bore in evidence of his rebellion and courage, and of the sturdy activity of his assailants. We owe also to Ledesma and to some of his companions, who, with himself, were witnesses in the later lawsuit of Diego Colon with the Crown, certain details which the principal narrators fail to give us.

A charm had seemed throughout the conflict to protect the Admiral's friends. None were killed outright, and but one other beside their leader was wounded. This man, the Admiral's steward, subsequently died.

[Sidenote: 1504. March 20. The rebels propose to submit.]

The victors returned to the ships with their prisoners; and in the midst of the gratulations which followed on the next day, March 20, 1504, the fugitives sent in an address to the Admiral, begging to be pardoned and received back to his care and fortunes. They acknowledged their errors in the most abject professions, and called upon Heaven to show no mercy, and upon man to know no sympathy, in dealing retribution, if they failed in their fidelity thereafter. The proposition of surrender was not without embarrassment. The Admiral was fearful of the trial of their constancy when they might gather about him with all the chances of further cabaling. He also knew that his provisions were fast running out. Accordingly, in accepting their surrender, he placed them under officers whom he could trust, and supplying them with articles of barter, he let them wander about the island under suitable discipline, hoping that they would find food where they could. He promised, however, to recall them when the expected ships arrived.

[Sidenote: Ships come to rescue them.]

It was not long they had to wait. One day two ships were seen standing in towards the harbor. One of them proved to be a caravel which Mendez had bought on the Admiral's account, out of a fleet of three, just then arrived from Spain, and had victualed for the occasion. Having seen it depart from Santo Domingo, Mendez, in the other ships of this opportune fleet, sailed directly for Spain, to carry out the further instructions of the Admiral.

The other of the approaching ships was in command of Diego de Salcedo, the Admiral's factor, and had been dispatched by Ovando. Las Casas tells us that the governor was really forced to this action by public sentiment, which had grown in consequence of the stories of the trials of Columbus which Mendez had told. It is said that even the priests did not hesitate to point a moral in their pulpits with the governor's dilatory sympathy.

[Sidenote: 1504. June 28. Columbus leaves Jamaica.]

Finally, on June 28, everything was ready for departure, and Columbus turned away from the scene of so much trouble. "Columbus informed me afterwards, in Spain," says Mendez, recording the events, "that in no part of his life did he ever experience so joyful a day, for he had never hoped to have left that place alive." Four years later, under authority from the Admiral's son Diego, the town of Sevilla Nueva, later known as Sevilla d'Oro, was founded on the very spot.

[Sidenote: Events at Española during the absence of Columbus.]

[Sidenote: Ovando's rule.]

The Admiral now committed himself once more to the treacherous currents and adverse winds of these seas. We have seen that Mendez urged his canoe across the gap between Jamaica and the nearest point of Española in four days; but it took the ships of Columbus about seven weeks to reach the haven of Santo Domingo. There was much time during this long and vexatious voyage for Columbus to learn from Salcedo the direful history of the colony which had been wrested from him, and which even under the enlarged powers of Ovando had not been without manifold tribulations. We must rehearse rapidly the occurrences, as Columbus heard of them. He could have got but the scantiest inkling of what had happened during the earliest months of Ovando's rule, when he applied by messenger, in vain, for admission to the harbor, now more than two years ago. The historian of this period must depend mainly upon Las Casas, who had come out with Ovando, and we must sketch an outline of the tale, as Columbus heard it, from that writer's Historia. It was the old sad story of misguided aspirants for wealth in their first experiences with the hazards and toils of mining,--much labor, disappointed hopes, failing provisions, no gold, sickness, disgust, and a desponding return of the toilers from the scene of their infatuation. It took but eight days for the crowds from Ovando's fleet, who trudged off manfully to the mountains on their landing, to come trooping back, dispirited and diseased.

[Sidenote: Columbus and slavery.]

[Sidenote: 1503. December 20. Forced labor of the natives.]

Columbus could hardly have listened to what was said of suffering among the natives during these two years of his absence without a vivid consciousness of the baleful system which he had introduced when he assigned crowds of the poor Indians to be put to inhuman tasks by Roldan's crew. The institution of this kind of distribution of labor had grown naturally, but it had become so appalling under Bobadilla that, when Ovando was sent out, he was instructed to put an end to it. It was not long before the governor had to confront the exasperated throngs coming back from the mines, dejected and empty-handed. It was apparent that nothing of the expected revenue to the Crown was likely to be produced from half the yield of metal when there was no yield at all. So, to induce greater industry, Ovando reduced the share of the Crown to a third, and next to a fifth, but without success. It was too apparent that the Spaniards would not persist in labors which brought them so little. At a period when Columbus was flattering himself that he was laying claim to far richer gold fields at Veragua, Ovando was devising a renewal of the Admiral's old slave-driving methods to make the mines of Hayna yield what they could. He sent messages to the sovereigns informing them that their kindness to the natives was really inconsiderate; that the poor creatures, released from labor, were giving themselves up to mischief; and that, to make good Christians of them, there was needed the appetizing effect of healthful work upon the native soul. The appeal and the frugal returns to the treasury were quite sufficient to gain the sovereigns to Ovando's views; and while bewailing any cruelty to the poor natives, and expressing hopes for their spiritual relief, their Majesties were not averse, as they said (December 20, 1503), to these Indians being made to labor as much as was needful to their health. This was sufficient. The fatal system of Columbus was revived with increased enormities. Six or eight months of unremitting labor, with insufficient food, were cruelly exacted of every native. They were torn from their families, carried to distant parts of the island, kept to their work by the lash, and, if they dared to escape, almost surely recaptured, to work out their period under the burden of chains. At last, when they were dismissed till their labor was again required, Las Casas tells us that the passage through the island of these miserable creatures could be traced by their fallen and decaying bodies. This was a story that, if Columbus possessed any of the tendernesses that glowed in the heart of Las Casas, could not have been a pleasant one for his contemplation.

[Sidenote: Anacaona treacherously treated.]

[Sidenote: The Indians slaughtered.]

There was another story to which Columbus may have listened. It is very likely that Salcedo may have got all the particulars from Diego Mendez, who was a witness of the foul deeds which had indeed occurred during those seven months when Ovando, then on an expedition in Xaragua, kept that messenger of Columbus waiting his pleasure. Anacaona, the sister of Behechio, had succeeded to that cacique in the rule of Xaragua. The licentious conduct and the capricious demands of the Spaniards settled in this region had increased the natural distrust and indignation of the Indians, and some signs of discontent which they manifested had been recounted to Ovando as indications of a revolt which it was necessary to nip in the bud. So the governor had marched into the country with three hundred foot and seventy horse. The chieftainess, Anacaona, came forth to meet him with much native parade, and gave all the honor which her savage ceremonials could signify to her distinguished guest. She lodged him as well as she could, and caused many games to be played for his divertisement. In return, Ovando prepared a tournament calculated to raise the expectation of his simple hosts, and horseman and foot came to the lists in full armor and adornment for the heralded show. On a signal from Ovando, the innocent parade was converted in an instant into a fanatical onslaught. The assembled caciques were hedged about with armed men, and all were burned in their cabins. The general populace were transfixed and trampled by the charging mounted spearmen, and only those who could elude the obstinate and headlong dashes of the cavalry escaped. Anacaona was seized and conveyed in chains to Santo Domingo, where, with the merest pretense of a trial for conspiracy, she was soon hanged.

[Sidenote: Xaragua and Higuey over-run.]

[Sidenote: Esquibel's campaign.]

And this was the pacification of Xaragua. That of Higuey, the most eastern of the provinces, and which had not yet acknowledged the sway of the Spaniards, followed, with the same resorts to cruelty. A cacique of this region had been slain by a fierce Spanish dog which had been set upon him. This impelled some of the natives living on the coast to seize a canoe having eight Spaniards in it, and to slaughter them; whereupon Juan de Esquibel was sent with four hundred men on a campaign against Cotabanama, the chief cacique of Higuey. The invaders met more heroism in the defenders of this country than they had been accustomed to, but the Spanish armor and weapons enabled Esquibel to raid through the land with almost constant success. The Indians at last sued for peace, and agreed to furnish a tribute of provisions. Esquibel built a small fortress, and putting some men in it, he returned to Santo Domingo; not, however, until he had received Cotabanama in his camp. The Spanish leader brought back to Ovando a story of the splendid physical power of this native chief, whose stature, proportions, and strength excited the admiration of the Spaniards.

[Sidenote: New revolt in Higuey.]

The peace was not of long duration. The reckless habits of the garrison had once more aroused the courage of the Indians, and some of the latest occurrences which Salcedo could tell of as having been reported at Santo Domingo just before his sailing for Jamaica were the events of a new revolt in Higuey.

[Sidenote: 1504. August 3. Columbus at Beata.]

[Sidenote: 1504. August 15. At Santo Domingo.]

Such were the stories which Columbus may have listened to during the tedious voyage which was now, on August 3, approaching an end. On that day his ships sailed under the lea of the little island of Beata, which lies midway of the southern coast of Española. Here he landed a messenger, and ordered him to convey a letter to Ovando, warning the governor of his approach. Salcedo had told Columbus that the governor was not without apprehension that his coming might raise some factious disturbances among the people, and in this letter the Admiral sought to disabuse Ovando's mind of such suspicions, and to express his own purpose to avoid every act of irritation which might possibly embarrass the administration of the island. The letter dispatched, Columbus again set sail, and on August 15 his ship entered the harbor of Santo Domingo. Ovando received him with every outward token of respect, and lodged him in his own house. Columbus, however, never believed that this officious kindness was other than a cloak to Ovando's dislike, if not hatred. There was no little popular sympathy for the misfortunes which Columbus had experienced, but his relations with the governor were not such as to lighten the anxieties of his sojourn. It is known that Cortes was at this time only recently arrived at Santo Domingo; but we can only conjecture what may have been his interest in Columbus's recitals.

[Sidenote: Columbus and Ovando.]

There soon arose questions of jurisdiction. Ovando ordered the release of Porras, and arranged for sending him to Spain for trial. The governor also attempted to interfere with the Admiral's control of his own crew, on the ground that his commission gave him command over all the regions of the new islands and the main. Columbus cited the instructions, which gave him power to rule and judge his own followers. Ovando did not push his claims to extremities, but the irritation never subsided; and Columbus seems to have lost no opportunity, if we may judge from his later letters, to pick up every scandalous story and tale of maladministration of which he could learn, and which could be charged against Ovando in later appeals to the sovereigns for a restitution of his own rights. The Admiral also inquired into his pecuniary interests in the island, and found, as he thought, that Ovando had obstructed his factor in the gathering of his share. Indeed, there may have been some truth in this; for Carvajal, Columbus's first factor, had complained of such acts to the sovereigns, which elicited an admonishment from them to Ovando.

[Sidenote: 1504. September 12. Columbus sails for Spain.]

[Sidenote: 1504. November 7. Reaches San Lucar.]

Such money as Columbus could now collect he used in refitting the ship which had brought him from Jamaica, and he put her under the order of the Adelantado. Securing also another caravel for his own conveyance, he embarked on her with his son, and on September 12 both ships started on their homeward voyage. They were scarcely at sea, when the ship which bore the Admiral lost her mast in a gale. He transferred himself and his immediate dependents to the other vessel, and sent the disabled caravel back to Santo Domingo. His solitary vessel now went forward, amid all the adversities that seemed to cling inevitably to this last of Columbus's expeditions. Tempest after tempest pursued him. The masts were sprung, and again sprung; and in a forlorn and disabled condition the little hapless bark finally entered the port of San Lucar on November 7, 1504. He had been absent from Spain for two years and a half.

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XX. COLUMBUS'S LAST YEARS.--DEATH AND CHARACTER

1504-1506.

[Sidenote: Columbus in Seville till May, 1505.]

[Sidenote: Letters to his son.]

From San Lucar, Columbus, a sick man in search of quiet and rest, was conveyed to Seville. Unhappily, there was neither repose nor peace of mind in store for him. He remained in that city till May, 1505, broken in spirits and almost helpless of limb. Fortunately, we can trace his varying mental moods during these few months in a series of letters, most of which are addressed by him to his son Diego, then closely attached to the Court. These writings have fortunately come down to us, and they constitute the only series of Columbus's letters which we have, showing the habits of his mind consecutively for a confined period, so that we get a close watch upon his thoughts. They are the wails of a neglected soul, and the cries of one whose hope is cruelly deferred. They have in their entirety a good deal of that haphazard jerkiness tiresome to read, and not easily made evident in abstract. They are, however, not so deficient in mental equipoise as, for instance, the letter sent from Jamaica. This is perhaps owing to the one absorbing burden of them, his hope of recovering possession of his suspended authority.

[Sidenote: 1504. November 21.]

He writes on November 21, 1504, a fortnight after his landing at San Lucar, telling his son how he has engaged his old friend, the Dominican Deza, now the Bishop of Palencia, to intercede with the sovereigns, that justice may be done to him with respect to his income, the payment of which Ovando had all along, as he contends, obstructed at Española. He tries to argue that if their Highnesses but knew it, they would, in ordering restitution to him, increase their own share. He hopes they have no doubt that his zeal for their interests has been quite as much as he could manifest if he had paradise to gain, and hopes they will remember, respecting any errors he may have committed, that the Lord of all judges such things by the intention rather than by the outcome. He seems to have a suspicion that Porras, now at liberty and about the Court, might be insidiously at work to his old commander's disadvantage, and he represents that neither Porras nor his brother had been suitable persons for their offices, and that what had been done respecting them would be approved on inquiry. "Their revolt," he says, "surprised me, considering all that I had done for them, as much as the sun would have alarmed me if it had shot shadows instead of light." He complains of Ovando's taking the prisoners, who had been companions of Porras, from his hands, and that, made free, they had even dared to present themselves at Court. "I have written," he adds, "to their Highnesses about it, and I have told them that it can't be possible that they would tolerate such an offense." He says further that he has written to the royal treasurer, begging him to come to no decision of the representations of such detractors until the other side could be heard, and he adds that he has sent to the treasurer a copy of the oath which the mutineers sent in after Porras had been taken. "Recall to all these people," he writes to his son, "my infirmities, and the recompense due to me for my services."

Diego was naturally, from his residence at Court, a convenient medium to bring all Columbus's wishes to the notice of those about the sovereigns. The Admiral writes to Diego again that he hopes their Highnesses will see to the paying of his men who had come home. "They are poor, and have been gone three years," he says. "They bring home evidences of the greatest of expectations in the new gold fields of Veragua;" and then he advises his son to bring this fact to the attention of all who are concerned, and to urge the colonizing of the new country as the best way to profit from its gold mines. For a while he harbored the hope that he might at once go on to the Court, and a litter which had served in the obsequies of Cardinal Mendoza was put at his disposal; but this plan was soon given up.

[Sidenote: 1504. November 28.]

A week later, having in the interim received a letter of the 15th, from Diego, Columbus writes again, under date of November 28. In this epistle he speaks of the severity of his disease, which keeps him in Seville, from which, however, he hopes to depart the coming week, and of his disappointment that the sovereigns had not replied to his inquiries. He sends his love to Diego Mendez, hoping that his friend's zeal and love of truth will enable him to overcome the deceits and intrigues of Porras.

[Sidenote: 1504. November 26. Queen Isabella dies.]

[Sidenote: Isabella's character.]

Columbus was not at this time aware that the impending death of the Queen had something to do with the delays in his own affairs at Court. Two days (November 26) before the Admiral wrote this note, Isabella had died, worn out by her labors, and depressed by the afflictions which she had experienced in her domestic circle. She was an unlovely woman at the best, an obstructor of Christian charity, but in her wiles she had allured Columbus to a belief in her countenance of him. The conventional estimate of her character, which is enforced in the rather cloying descriptions of Prescott, is such as her flatterers drew in her own times; but the revelations of historical research hardly confirm it. It was with her much as with Columbus,--she was too largely a creature of her own age to be solely judged by the criteria of all ages, as lofty characters can be.

The loss of her influence on the king removed, as it proved, even the chance of a flattering delusiveness in the hopes of Columbus. As the compiler of the Historie expresses it, "Columbus had always enjoyed her favor and protection, while the King had always been indifferent, or rather inimical." She had indeed, during the Admiral's absence on his last voyage, manifested some new appreciation of his services, which cost her little, however, when she made his eldest son one of her bodyguard and naturalized his brother Diego, to fit him for ecclesiastical preferment.

[Sidenote: 1504. December 1.]

On December 1, ignorant of the sad occurrences at Court, Columbus writes again, chiding Diego that he had not in his dutifulness written to his poor father. "You ought to know," he says, "that I have no pleasure now but in a letter from you." Columbus by this time had become, by the constant arrival of couriers, aware of the anxiety at Court over the Queen's health, and he prays that the Holy Trinity will restore her to health, to the end that all that has been begun may be happily finished. He reiterates what he had previously written about the increasing severity of his malady, his inability to travel, his want of money, and how he had used all he could get in Española to bring home his poor companions. He commends anew to Diego his brother Ferdinand, and speaks of this younger son's character as beyond his years. "Ten brothers would not be too many for you," he adds; "in good as in bad fortune, I have never found better friends than my brothers."

Nothing troubles him more than the delays in hearing from Court. A rumor had reached him that it was intended to send some bishops to the Indies, and that the Bishop of Palencia was charged with the matter. He begs Diego to say to the bishop that it was worth while, in the interests of all, to confer with the Admiral first. In explaining why he does not write to Diego Mendez, he says that he is obliged to write by night, since by day his hands are weak and painful. He adds that the vessel which put back to Santo Domingo had arrived, bringing the papers in Porras's case, the result of the inquest which had been taken at Jamaica, so that he could now be able to present an indictment to the Council of the Indies. His indignation is aroused at the mention of it. "What can be so foul and brutal! If their Highnesses pass it by, who is going again to lead men upon their service!"

[Sidenote: 1504. December 3.]

Two days later (December 3), he writes again to Diego about the neglect which he is experiencing from him and from others at Court. "Everybody except myself is receiving letters," he says. He incloses a memoir expressing what he thought it was necessary to do in the present conjunction of his affairs. This document opens with calling upon Diego zealously to pray to God for the soul of the Queen. "One must believe she is now clothed with a sainted glory, no longer regretting the bitterness and weariness of this life." The King, he adds, "deserves all our sympathy and devotion." He then informs Diego that he has directed his brother, his uncle, and Carvajal to add all their importunities to his son's, and to the written prayers which he himself has sent, that consideration should be given to the affairs of the Indies. Nothing, he says, can be more urgent than to remedy the abuses there. In all this he curiously takes on the tone of his own accusers a few years before. He represents that pecuniary returns from Española are delayed; that the governor is detested by all; that a suitable person sent there could restore harmony in less than three months; and that other fortresses, which are much needed, should be built, "all of which I can do in his Highness's service," he exclaims, "and any other, not having my personal interests at stake, could not do it so well!" Then he repeats how, immediately after his arrival at San Lucar, he had written to the King a very long letter, advising action in the matter, to which no reply had been returned.

[Sidenote: 1503. January 20. The Casa de Contratacion established.]

It was during Columbus's absence on this last voyage that, by an ordinance made at Alcalá, January 20, 1503, the famous Casa de Contratacion was established, with authority over the affairs of the Indies, having the power to grant licenses, to dispatch fleets, to dispose of the results of trade or exploration, and to exercise certain judicial prerogatives. This council was to consist of a treasurer, a factor, and a comptroller, to whom two persons learned in the law were given as advisers. Alexander VI. had already, by a bull of November 16, 1501, authorized the payment to the constituted Spanish officials of all the tithes of the colonies, which went a long way in giving Spain ecclesiastical supremacy in the Indies, in addition to her political control.

It was to this council that Columbus refers, when he says he had told the gentlemen of the Contratacion that they ought to abide by the verbal and written orders which the King had given, and that, above all, they should watch lest people should sail to the Indies without permission. He reminded them of the sorry character of the people already in the New World, and of the way in which treasure was stored there without protection.

[Sidenote: 1504. December 13.]

Ten days later (December 13), he writes again to Diego, recurring to his bitter memories of Ovando, charging him with diverting the revenues, and with bearing himself so haughtily that no one dared remonstrate. "Everybody says that I have as much as 11,000 or 12,000 castellanos in Española, and I have not received a quarter. Since I came away he must have received 5,000." He then urges Diego to sue the King for a mandatory letter to be sent to Ovando, forcing immediate payment. "Carvajal knows very well that this ought to be done. Show him this letter," he adds. Then referring to his denied rights, and to the best way to make the King sensible of his earlier promises, he next advises Diego to lessen his expenses; to treat his uncle with the respect which is due to him; and to bear himself towards his younger brother as an older brother should. "You have no other brother," he says; "and thank God this one is all you could desire. He was born with a good nature." Then he reverts to the Queen's death. "People tell me," he writes, "that on her death-bed she expressed a wish that my possession of the Indies should be restored to me."

[Sidenote: 1504. December 21.]

A week later (December 21), he once more bewails the way in which he is left without tidings. He recounts the exertions he had made to send money to his advocates at Court, and tells Diego how he must somehow continue to get on as best he can till their Highnesses are content to give them back their power. He repeats that to bring his companions home from Santo Domingo he had spent twelve hundred castellanos, and that he had represented to the King the royal indebtedness for this, but it produced no reimbursement. He asks Diego to find out if the Queen, "now with God, no doubt," had spoken of him in her will; and perhaps the Bishop of Palencia, "who was the cause of their Majesties' acquiring the Indies, and of my returning to the Court when I had departed," or the chamberlain of the King could find this out. Columbus may have lived to learn that the only item of the Queen's will in which he could possibly have been in mind was the one in which she showed that she was aroused to the enormities which Columbus had imposed on the Indians, and which had come to such results that, as Las Casas says, it had been endeavored to keep the knowledge of it from the Queen's ears. She earnestly enjoined upon her successors a change of attitude towards the poor Indians.

[Sidenote: Columbus writes to the Pope.]

Columbus further says that the Pope had complained that no account of his voyage had been sent to Rome, and that accordingly he had prepared one, and he desired Diego to read it, and to let the King and the bishop also peruse it before it was forwarded to Rome. It is possible that the Adelantado was dispatched with the letter. The canonizers say that the mission to Rome had also a secret purpose, which was to counteract the schemes of Fonseca to create bishoprics in Española, and that the advice of Columbus in the end prevailed over the "cunning of diplomacy."

[Sidenote: 1505. February 23. Columbus allowed to ride a mule.]

There had been some time before, owing to the difficulty which had been experienced in mounting the royal cavalry, an order promulgated forbidding the use of mules in travel, since it was thought that the preference for this animal had brought about the deterioration and scarcity of horses. It was to this injunction that Columbus now referred when he asked Diego to get a dispensation from the King to allow him to enjoy the easier seat of a mule when he should venture on his journey towards the Court, which, with this help, he hoped to be able to begin within a few weeks. Such an order was in due time issued on February 23, 1505.

[Sidenote: 1504. December 29.]

On December 29, Columbus wrote again. The letter was full of the same pitiful suspense. He had received no letters. He could but repeat the old story of the letters of credit which he had sent and which had not been acknowledged. No one of his people had been paid, he said, neither the faithful nor the mutineers. "They are all poor. They are going to Court," he adds, "to press their claims. Aid them in it." He excepts, however, from the kind interest of his friends two fellows who had been with him on his last voyage, one Camacho and Master Bernal, the latter the physician of the flagship. Bernal was the instigator of the revolt of Porras, he says, "and I pardoned him at the prayer of my brother."

[Sidenote: Columbus and the Bank of St. George.]

It will be remembered that, previous to starting on his last voyage, Columbus had written to the Bank of St. George in Genoa, proposing a gift of a tenth of his income for the benefit of his native town. The letter was long in reaching its destination, but a reply was duly sent through his son Diego. It never reached Columbus, and this apparent spurning of his gift by Genoa caused not a small part of his present disgust with the world.

[Sidenote: 1504. December 27.]

On December 27, 1504, he wrote to Nicolo Oderigo, reminding him of the letter, and complaining that while he had expected to be met on his return by some confidential agent of the bank, he had not even had a letter in response. "It was uncourteous in these gentlemen of St. George not to have favored me with an answer." The intention was, in fact, far from being unappreciated, and at a later day the promise became so far magnified as to be regarded as an actual gift, in which the Genoese were not without pride. The purpose never, however, had a fulfillment.

[Sidenote: 1505. January 4.]

On January 4, 1505, the Admiral wrote to his friend Father Gorricio, telling him that Diego Mendez had arrived from the Court, and asking the friar to encase in wax the documentary privileges of the Admiral which had been intrusted to him, and to send them to him. "My disease grows better day by day," he adds.

[Sidenote: 1505. January 18.]

On January 18, 1505, he again wrote. The epistle was in some small degree cheery. He had heard at last from Diego. "Zamora the courier has arrived, and I have looked with great delight upon thy letter, thy uncle's, thy brother's, and Carvajal's." Diego Mendez, he says, sets out in three or four days with an order for payment. He refers with some playfulness, even, to Fonseca, who had just been raised to the bishopric of Placentia, and had not yet returned from Flanders to take possession of the seat. "If the Bishop of Placentia has arrived, or when he comes, tell him how much pleased I am at his elevation; and that when I come to Court I shall depend on lodging with his Grace, whether he wishes it or not, that we may renew our old fraternal bonds." His biographers have been in some little uncertainty whether he really meant here Fonseca or his old friend Deza, who had just left that bishopric vacant for the higher post of Archbishop of Seville. A strict application of dates makes the reference to Fonseca. One may imagine, however, that Columbus was not accurately informed. It is indeed hard to understand the pleasantry, if Fonseca was the bitter enemy of Columbus that he is pictured by Irving.

Some ships from Española had put into the Tagus. "They have not arrived here from Lisbon," he adds. "They bring much gold, but none for me."

[Sidenote: Conference with Vespucius.]

[Sidenote: Vespucius's account of his voyage.]

We next find Columbus in close communion with a contemporary with whose fame his own is sadly conjoined. Some account of the events of the voyage which Vespucius had made along the coast of South America with Coelho, from which he had returned to Lisbon in September, 1502, has been given on an earlier page. Those events and his descriptions had already brought the name of Vespucius into prominence throughout Europe, but hardly before he had started on another voyage in the spring or early summer of 1503, just at the time when Columbus was endeavoring to work his way from the Veragua coast to Española. The authorities are not quite agreed whether it was on May 10, 1503, or a month later, on June 10, that the little Portuguese fleet in which Vespucius sailed left the Tagus, to find a way, if possible, to the Moluccas somewhere along the same great coast. This expedition had started under the command of Coelho, but meeting with mishaps, by which the fleet was separated, Vespucius, with his own vessel, joined later by another with which he fell in, proceeded to Bahia, where a factory for storing Brazil-wood was erected; thence, after a stay there, they sailed for Lisbon, arriving there after an absence of seventy-seven days, on June 18, 1504. It was later, on September 4, that Vespucius wrote, or rather dated, that account of his voyage which was to work such marvels, as we shall see, in the reputation of himself and of Columbus. There is no reason to suppose that Columbus ever knew of this letter of September 4, so subversive as it turned out of his just fame; nor, judging from the account of their interview which Columbus records, is there any reason to suppose that Vespucius himself had any conception of the work which that fateful letter was already accomplishing, and to which reference will be made later.

[Sidenote: 1505. February 5.]

On February 5, 1505, Columbus wrote to Diego: "Within two days I have talked with Americus Vespucius, who will bear this to you, and who is summoned to Court on matters of navigation. He has always manifested a disposition to be friendly to me. Fortune has not always favored him, and in this he is not different from many others. His ventures have not always been as successful as he would wish. He left me full of the kindliest purposes towards me, and will do anything for me which is in his power. I hardly knew what to tell him would be helpful in him to do for me, because I did not know what purpose there was in calling him to Court. Find out what he can do, and he will do it; only let it be so managed that he will not be suspected of rendering me aid. I have told him all that it is possible to tell him as to my own affairs, including what I have done and what recompense I have had. Show this letter to the Adelantado, so that he may advise how Vespucius can be made serviceable to us."

[Sidenote: 1505. April 24. Vespucius naturalized.]

We soon after this find Vespucius installed as an agent of the Spanish government, naturalized on April 24 as a Castilian, and occupied at the seaports in superintending the fitting out of ships for the Indies, with an annual salary of thirty thousand maravedis. We can find no trace of any assistance that he afforded the cause of Columbus.

[Sidenote: Columbus's effects sold.]

Meanwhile events were taking place which Columbus might well perhaps have arrested, could he have got the royal ear. An order had been sent in February to Española to sell the effects of Columbus, and in April other property of the Admiral had been seized to satisfy his creditors.

[Sidenote: 1505. May. Columbus goes to Segovia.]

[Sidenote: August 25. Attests his will.]

[Sidenote: Columbus and Ferdinand.]

In May, 1505, Columbus, with the friendly care of his brother Bartholomew, set out on his journey to Segovia, where the Court then was. This is the statement of Las Casas, but Harrisse can find no evidence of his being near the Court till August, when, on the 25th, he attested, as will appear, his will before a notary. The change bringing him into the presence of his royal master only made his mortification more poignant. His personal suit to the King was quite as ineffective as his letters had been. The sovereign was outwardly beneficent, and inwardly uncompliant. The Admiral's recitals respecting his last voyage, both of promised wealth and of saddened toil, made little impression. Las Casas suspects that the insinuations of Porras had preoccupied the royal mind. To rid himself of the importunities of Columbus, the King proposed an arbiter, and readily consented to the choice which Columbus made of his old friend Deza, now Archbishop of Seville; but Columbus was too immovably fixed upon his own rights to consent that more than the question of revenue should be considered by such an arbiter. His recorded privileges and the pledged word of the sovereign were not matters to be reconsidered. Such was not, however, the opinion of the King. He evaded the point in his talk with bland countenance, and did nothing in his acts beyond referring the question anew to a body of counselors convened to determine the fulfillment of the Queen's will. They did nothing quite as easily as the King. Las Casas tells us that the King was only restrained by motives of outward decency from a public rejection of all the binding obligations towards the Admiral into which he had entered jointly with the Queen.

[Sidenote: 1505. August 25. His will.]

[Sidenote: Columbus pleads for his son.]

[Sidenote: Rejects offers of estates.]

Columbus found in all this nothing to comfort a sick and desponding man, and sank in despair upon his couch. He roused enough to have a will drafted August 25, which confirmed a testament made in 1502, before starting on his last voyage. His disease renewed its attacks. An old wound had reopened. From a bed of pain he began again his written appeals. He now gave up all hopes for himself, but he pleaded for his son, that upon him the honors which he himself had so laboriously won should be bestowed. Diego at the same time, in seconding the petition, promised, if the reinstatement took place, that he would count those among his counselors whom the royal will should designate. Nothing of protest or appeal came opportunely to the determined King. "The more he was petitioned," says Las Casas, "the more bland he was in avoiding any conclusion." He hoped by exhausting the patience of the Admiral to induce him to accept some estates in Castile in lieu of such powers in the Indies. Columbus rejected all such intimations with indignation. He would have nothing but his bonded rights. "I have done all that I can do," he said in a pitiful, despairing letter to Deza. "I must leave the issue to God. He has always sustained me in extremities."

"It argued," says Prescott, in commenting on this, "less knowledge of character than the King usually showed, that he should have thought the man who had broken off all negotiations on the threshold of a dubious enterprise, rather than abate one tittle of his demands, would consent to such abatement, when the success of that enterprise was so gloriously established."

[Sidenote: Columbus at Salamanca.]

[Sidenote: Mendez and Columbus.]

The Admiral was, during this part of his suit, apparently at Salamanca, for Mendez speaks of him as being there confined to his bed with the gout, while he himself was doing all he could to press his master's claims to have Diego recognized in his rights. In return for this service, Mendez asked to be appointed principal Alguazil of Española for life, and he says the Admiral acknowledged that such an appointment was but a trifling remuneration for his great services, but the requital never came.

[Sidenote: Columbus unable to leave Valladolid to greet Philip and Juana.]

There broke a glimmer of hope. The death of the Queen had left the throne of Castile to her daughter Juana, the wife of Philip of Austria, and they had arrived from Flanders to be installed in their inheritance. Columbus, who had followed the Court from Segovia to Salamanca, thence to Valladolid, was now unable to move further in his decrepitude, and sent the Adelantado to propitiate the daughter of Isabella, with the trust that something of her mother's sympathy might be vouchsafed to his entreaties. Bartholomew never saw his brother again, and was not privileged to communicate to him the gracious hopes which the benignity of his reception raised.

[Sidenote: Negroes sent to Española.]

A year had passed since the Admiral had come to the neighborhood of the Court, wherever it was, and nothing had been accomplished in respect to his personal interests. Indeed, little touching the Indies at all seems to have been done. There had been trial made of sending negro slaves to Española as indicating that the native bondage needed reinforcement; but Ovando had reported that the experiment was a failure, since the negroes only mixed with the Indians and taught them bad habits. Ferdinando cared little for this, and at Segovia, September 15, 1505, he notified Ovando that he should send some more negroes. Whether Columbus was aware of this change in the methods of extracting gold from the soil we cannot find.

[Sidenote: 1506. May 4. Codicil to his will.]

As soon as Bartholomew had started on his mission the malady of Columbus increased. He became conscious that the time had come to make his final dispositions. It was on May 4, 1506, according to the common story, that he signed a codicil to his will on a blank page in a breviary which had been given to him, as he says, by Alexander VI., and which had "comforted him in his battles, his captivities, and his misfortunes." This document has been accepted by some of the commentators as genuine; Harrisse and others are convinced of its apocryphal character. It was not found till 1779. It is a strange document, if authentic.

[Sidenote: Thought to be spurious.]

Itholds that such dignities as were his under the Spanish Crown, acknowledged or not, were his of right to alienate from the Spanish throne. It was, if anything, a mere act of bravado, as if to flout at the authority which could dare deprive him of his possessions. He provides for the descent of his honors in the male line, and that failing, he bequeaths them to the republic of Genoa! It was a gauge of hostile demands on Spain which no one but a madman would imagine that Genoa would accept if she could. He bestowed on his native city, in the same reckless way, the means to erect a hospital, and designated that such resources should come from his Italian estates, whatever they were. Certainly the easiest way to dispose of the paper is to consider it a fraud. If such, it was devised by some one who entered into the spirit of the Admiral's madness, and made the most of rumors that had been afloat respecting Columbus's purposes to benefit Genoa at the expense of Spain.

[Sidenote: 1506. May 19. Ratified his will.]

About a fortnight later (May 19), he ratified an undoubted will, which had been drafted by his own hand the year before at Segovia, and executed it with the customary formalities. Its testamentary provisions were not unnatural. He made Diego his heir, and his entailed property was, in default of heirs to Diego, to pass to his illegitimate son Ferdinand, and from him, in like default, to his own brother, the Adelantado, and his male descendants; and all such failing, to the female lines in a similar succession. He enjoined upon his representatives, of whatever generation, to serve the Spanish King with fidelity. Upon Diego, and upon later heads of the family, he imposed the duty of relieving all distressed relatives and others in poverty. He imposed on his lawful son the appointment of some one of his lineage to live constantly in Genoa, to maintain the family dignity. He directed him to grant due allowances to his brother and uncle; and when the estates yielded the means, to erect a chapel in the Vega of Española, where masses might be said daily for the repose of the souls of himself and of his nearest relatives. He made the furthering of the crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre equally contingent upon the increase of his income. He also directed Diego to provide for the maintenance of Donna Beatrix Enriquez, the mother of Ferdinand, as "a person to whom I am under great obligations," and "let this be done for the discharge of my conscience, for it weighs heavy on my soul,--the reasons for which I am not here permitted to give;" and this was a behest that Diego, in his own will, acknowledges his failure to observe during the last years of the lady's life. Then, in a codicil, Columbus enumerates sundry little bequests to other persons to whom he was indebted, and whose kindness he wished to remember. He was honest enough to add that his bequests were imaginary unless his rights were acknowledged. "Hitherto I neither have had, nor have I now, any positive income." He failed to express any wish respecting the spot of his interment. The documents were committed at once to a notary, from whose archives a copy was obtained in 1524 by his son Diego, and this copy exists to-day among the family papers in the hands of the Duke of Veragua.

[Sidenote: 1506. May 20. Columbus dies.]

This making of a will was almost his last act. On the next day he partook of the sacrament, and uttering, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit," he gasped his last. It was on the 20th of May, 1506,--by some circumstances we might rather say May 21,--in the city of Valladolid, that this singular, hopeful, despondent, melancholy life came to its end. He died at the house No. 7 Calle de Colon, which is still shown to travelers.

[Sidenote: His death unnoticed.]

There was a small circle of relatives and friends who mourned. The tale of his departure came like a sough of wind to a few others, who had seen no way to alleviate a misery that merited their sympathy. The King could have but found it a relief from the indiscretion of his early promises. The world at large thought no more of the mournful procession which bore that wayworn body to the grave than it did of any poor creature journeying on his bier to the potter's field.

It is hard to conceive how the fame of a man over whose acts in 1493 learned men cried for joy, and by whose deeds the adventurous spirit had been stirred in every seaport of western Europe, should have so completely passed into oblivion that a professed chronicler like Peter Martyr, busy tattler as he was, should take no notice of his illness and death. There have come down to us five long letters full of news and gossip, which Martyr wrote from Valladolid at this very time, with not a word in them of the man he had so often commemorated. Fracanzio da Montalboddo, publishing in 1507 some correction of his early voyages, had not heard of Columbus's death; nor had Madrignano in dating his Latin rendering of the same book in 1508. It was not till twenty-seven days after the death-bed scene that the briefest notice was made in passing, in an official document of the town, to the effect that "the said Admiral is dead!"

[Sidenote: His burial.]

[Sidenote: His coffin carried to Seville.]

It is not even certain where the body was first placed, though it is usually affirmed to have been deposited in the Franciscan convent in Valladolid. Nor is there any evidence to support another equally prevalent story that King Ferdinand had ordered the removal of the remains to Seville seven years later, when a monument was built bearing the often-quoted distich,--

À CASTILLA Y À LEON NUEVO MUNDO DIÓ COLON,--

it being pretty evident that such an inscription was never thought of till Castellanos suggested it in his Elegias in 1588. If Diego's will in 1509 can be interpreted on this matter, it seems pretty sure that within three years (1509) after the death of Columbus, instead of seven, his coffin had been conveyed to Seville and placed inside the convent of Las Cuevas, in the vault of the Carthusians, where the bodies of his son Diego and brother Bartholomew were in due time to rest beside his own. Here the remains were undisturbed till 1536, when the records of the convent affirm that they were given up for transportation, though the royal order is given as of June 2, 1537. From that date till 1549 there is room for conjecture as to their abiding-place.

[Sidenote: 1541. Removed to Santo Domingo.]

[Sidenote: Remains removed to Havana.]

It was during this interval that his family were seeking to carry out what was supposed to be the wish of the Admiral to rest finally in the island of Española. From 1537 to 1540 the government are known to have issued three different orders respecting the removal of the remains, and it is conjectured the transference was actually made in 1541, shortly after the completion of the cathedral at Santo Domingo. If any record was made at the time to designate the spot of the reëntombment in that edifice, it is not now known, and it was not till 1676 that somebody placed an entry in its records that the burial had been made on the right of the altar. A few years later (1683), the recollections of aged people are quoted to substantiate such a statement. We find no other notice till a century afterwards, when, on the occasion of some repairs, a stone vault, supposed in the traditions to be that which held the remains, was found on "the gospel side" of the chancel, while another on "the epistle side" was thought to contain the remains of Bartholomew Columbus. This was the suspected situation of the graves when the treaty of Basle, in 1795, gave the Santo Domingo end of the island to France, and the Spanish authorities, acting in concert with the Duke of Veragua, as the representative of the family of Columbus, determined on the removal of the remains to Havana. It is a question which has been raised since 1877 whether the body of Columbus was the one then removed, and over which so much parade was made during the transportation and reinterment in Cuba. There has been a controversy on the point, in which the Bishop of Santo Domingo and his adherents have claimed that the remains of Columbus are still in their charge, while it was those of his son Diego which had been removed. The Academy of History at Madrid have denied this, and in a long report to the Spanish government have asserted that there was no mistake in the transfer, and that the additional casket found was that of Christopher Colon, the grandson.

[Sidenote: Question of the identity of his remains.]

It was represented, moreover, that those features of the inscription on the lately found leaden box which seemed to indicate it as the casket of the first Admiral of the Indies had been fraudulently added or altered. The question has probably been thrown into the category of doubt, though the case as presented in favor of Santo Domingo has some recognizably weak points, which the advocates of the other side have made the most of, and to the satisfaction perhaps of the more careful inquirers. The controversial literature on the subject is considerable. The repairs of 1877 in the Santo Domingo cathedral revealed the empty vault from which the transported body had been taken; but they showed also the occupied vault of the grandson Luis, and another in which was a leaden case which bore the inscriptions which are in dispute.

[Sidenote: Alleged burial of his chains with him.]

It is the statement of the Historie that Columbus preserved the chains in which he had come home from his third voyage, and that he had them buried with him, or intended to do so. The story is often repeated, but it has no other authority than the somewhat dubious one of that book; and it finds no confirmation in Las Casas, Peter Martyr, Bernaldez, or Oviedo.

Humboldt says that he made futile inquiry of those who had assisted in the reinterment at Havana, if there were any trace of these fetters or of oxide of iron in the coffin. In the accounts of the recent discovery of remains at Santo Domingo, it is said that there was equally no trace of fetters in the casket.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The age of Columbus.]

The age of Columbus is almost without a parallel, presenting perhaps the most striking appearances since the star shone upon Bethlehem. It saw Martin Luther burn the Pope's bull, and assert a new kind of independence. It added Erasmus to the broadeners of life. Ancient art was revivified in the discovery of its most significant remains. Modern art stood confessed in Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Titian, Raphael, Holbein, and Dürer. Copernicus found in the skies a wonderful development without great telescopic help. The route of the Portuguese by the African cape and the voyage of Columbus opened new worlds to thought and commerce. They made the earth seem to man, north and south, east and west, as man never before had imagined it. It looked as if mercantile endeavor was to be constrained by no bounds. Articles of trade were multiplied amazingly. Every movement was not only new and broad, but it was rapid beyond conception. It was more like the remodeling of Japan, which we have seen in our day, than anything that had been earlier known.

The long sway of the Moors was disintegrating. The Arab domination in science and seamanship was yielding to the Western genius. The Turks had in the boyhood (1453) of Columbus consummated their last great triumph in the capture of Constantinople, thus placing a barrier to Christian commerce with the East. This conquest drove out the learned Christians of the East, who had drunk of the Arab erudition, and they fled with their stores of learning to the western lands, coming back to the heirs of the Romans with the spirit which Rome in the past had sent to the East.

But what Christian Europe was losing in the East Portugal and Prince Henry were gaining for her in the great and forbidding western waste of waters and along its African shores. As the hot tide of Mahometan invasion rolled over the Bosphorus, the burning equatorial zone was pierced from the north along the coasts of the Black Continent.

[Sidenote: Italian discoverers.]

[Sidenote: His growing belief in the western passage.]

Italy, seeing her maritime power drop away as the naval supremacy of the Atlantic seaboard rose, was forced to send her experienced navigators to the oceanic ports, to maintain the supremacy of her name and genius in Cadamosto, Columbus, Vespucius, Cabot, and Verrazano. Those cosmographical views which had come down the ages, at times obscured, then for a while patent, and of which the traces had lurked in the minds of learned men by an almost continuous sequence for many centuries, at last possessed by inheritance the mind of Columbus. By reading, by conference with others, by noting phenomena, and by reasoning, in the light of all these, upon the problem of a western passage to India, obvious as it was if once the sphericity of the earth be acknowledged, he gradually grew to be confident in himself and trustful in his agency with others. He was far from being alone in his beliefs, nor was his age anything more than a reflection of long periods of like belief.

[Sidenote: Deficiencies of character.]

There was simply needed a man with courage and constancy in his convictions, so that the theory could be demonstrated. This age produced him. Enthusiasm and the contagion of palpable though shadowy truths gave Columbus, after much tribulation, the countenance in high quarters that enabled him to reach success, deceptive though it was. It would have been well for his memory if he had died when his master work was done. With his great aim certified by its results, though they were far from being what he thought, he was unfortunately left in the end to be laid bare on trial, a common mortal after all, the creature of buffeting circumstances, and a weakling in every element of command. His imagination had availed him in his upward course when a serene habit in his waiting days could obscure his defects. Later, the problems he encountered were those that required an eye to command, with tact to persuade and skill to coerce, and he had none of them.

[Sidenote: Roger Bacon and Columbus.]

[Sidenote: Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi.]

The man who becomes the conspicuous developer of any great world-movement is usually the embodiment of the ripened aspirations of his time. Such was Columbus. It is the forerunner, the man who has little countenance in his age, who points the way for some hazardous after-soul to pursue. Such was Roger Bacon, the English Franciscan. It was Bacon's lot to direct into proper channels the new surging of the experimental sciences which was induced by the revived study of Aristotle, and was carrying dismay into the strongholds of Platonism. Standing out from the background of Arab regenerating learning, the name of Roger Bacon, linked often with that of Albertus Magnus, stood for the best knowledge and insight of the thirteenth century. Bacon it was who gave that tendency to thought which, seized by Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, and incorporated by him in his Imago Mundi (1410), became the link between Bacon and Columbus. Humboldt has indeed expressed his belief that this encyclopædic Survey of the World exercised a more important influence upon the discovery of America than even the prompting which Columbus got from his correspondence with Toscanelli. How well Columbus pored over the pages of the Imago Mundi we know from the annotations of his own copy, which is still preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina. It seems likely that Columbus got directly from this book most that he knew of those passages in Aristotle, Strabo, and Seneca which speak of the Asiatic shores as lying opposite to Hispania. There is some evidence that this book was his companion even on his voyages, and Humboldt points out how he translates a passage from it, word for word, when in 1498 he embodied it in a letter which he wrote to his sovereigns from Española.

[Sidenote: His acquaintance with the elder writers.]

If we take the pains, as Humboldt did, to examine the writings of Columbus, to ascertain the sources which he cited, we find what appears to be a broad acquaintance with books. It is to be remembered, however, that the Admiral quoted usually at second hand, and that he got his acquaintance with classic authors, at least, mainly through this Imago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly. Humboldt, in making his list of Columbus's authors, omits the references to the Scriptures and to the Church fathers, "in whom," as he says, "Columbus was singularly versed," and then gives the following catalogue:--

Aristotle; Julius Cæsar; Strabo; Seneca; Pliny; Ptolemy; Solinus; Julius Capitolinus; Alfrazano; Avenruyz; Rabbi Samuel de Israel; Isidore, Bishop of Seville; the Venerable Bede; Strabus, Abbé of Reichenau; Duns Scotus; François Mayronis; Abbé Joachim de Calabre; Sacrobosco, being in fact the English mathematician Holywood; Nicholas de Lyra, the Norman Franciscan; King Alfonso the Wise, and his Moorish scribes; Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly; Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris; Pope Pius II., otherwise known as Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini; Regiomontanus, as the Latinized name of Johann Müller of Königsberg is given, though Columbus does not really name him; Paolo Toscanelli, the Florentine physician; and Nicolas de Conti, of whom he had heard through Toscanelli, perhaps.

Humboldt can find no evidence that Columbus had read the travels of Marco Polo, and does not discover why Navarrete holds that he had, though Polo's stories must have permeated much that Columbus read; nor does he understand why Irving says that Columbus took Marco Polo's book on his first voyage.

[Sidenote: Columbus and Toscanelli.]

We see often in the world's history a simultaneousness in the regeneration of thought. Here and there a seer works on in ignorance of some obscure brother elsewhere. Rumor and circulating manuscripts bring them into sympathy. They grow by the correlation. It is just this correspondence that confronts us in Columbus and Toscanelli, and it is not quite, but almost, perceptible that this wise Florentine doctor was the first, despite Humboldt's theory, to plant in the mind of Columbus his aspirations for the truths of geography. It is meet that Columbus should not be mentioned without the accompanying name of Toscanelli. It was the Genoese's different fortune that he could attempt as a seaman a practical demonstration of his fellow Italian's views.

Many a twin movement of the world's groping spirit thus seeks the light. Progress naturally pushes on parallel lines. Commerce thrusts her intercourse to remotest regions, while the Church yearns for new souls to convert, and peers longingly into the dim spaces that skirt the world's geography. Navigators improve their methods, and learned men in the arts supply them with exacter instruments. The widespread manifestations of all this new life at last crystallize, and Gama and Columbus appear, the reflex of every development.

[Sidenote: Opportuneness of his discoveries.]

Thus the discovery of Columbus came in the ripeness of time. No one of the anterior accidents, suggesting a western land, granting that there was some measure of fact in all of them, had come to a world prepared to think on their developments. Vinland was practically forgotten, wherever it may have been. The tales of Fousang had never a listener in Europe. Madoc was as unknown as Elidacthon. While the new Indies were not in their turn to be forgotten, their discoverer was to bury himself in a world of conjecture. The superlatives of Columbus soon spent their influence. The pioneer was lost sight of in the new currents of thought which he had started. Not of least interest among them was the cognizance of new races of men, and new revelations in the animal and physical kingdoms, while the question of their origins pressed very soon on the theological and scientific sense of the age.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Not above his age.]

[Sidenote: Claims for palliation.]

No man craves more than Columbus to be judged with all the palliations demanded of a difference of his own age and ours. No child of any age ever did less to improve his contemporaries, and few ever did more to prepare the way for such improvements. The age created him and the age left him. There is no more conspicuous example in history of a man showing the path and losing it.

It is by no means sure, with all our boast of benevolent progress, that atrocities not much short of those which we ascribe to Columbus and his compeers may not at any time disgrace the coming as they have blackened the past years of the nineteenth century. This fact gives us the right to judge the infirmities of man in any age from the high vantage-ground of the best emotions of all the centuries. In the application of such perennial justice Columbus must inevitably suffer. The degradation of the times ceases to be an excuse when the man to be judged stands on the pinnacle of the ages. The biographer cannot forget, indeed, that Columbus is a portrait set in the surroundings of his times; but it is equally his duty at the same time to judge the paths which he trod by the scale of an eternal nobleness.

[Sidenote: Test of his character.]

[Sidenote: Not a creator of ideas.]

The very domination of this man in the history of two hemispheres warrants us in estimating him by an austere sense of occasions lost and of opportunities embraced. The really great man is superior to his age, and anticipates its future; not as a sudden apparition, but as the embodiment of a long growth of ideas of which he is the inheritor and the capable exemplar. Humboldt makes this personal domination of two kinds. The one comes from the direct influence of character; the other from the creation of an idea, which, freed from personality, works its controlling mission by changing the face of things. It is of this last description that Humboldt makes the domination of Columbus. It is extremely doubtful if any instance can be found of a great idea changing the world's history, which has been created by any single man. None such was created by Columbus. There are always forerunners whose agency is postponed because the times are not propitious. A masterful thought has often a long pedigree, starting from a remote antiquity, but it will be dormant till it is environed by the circumstances suited to fructify it. This was just the destiny of the intuition which began with Aristotle and came down to Columbus. To make his first voyage partook of foolhardiness, as many a looker-on reasonably declared. It was none the less foolhardy when it was done. If he had reached the opulent and powerful kings of the Orient, his little cockboats and their brave souls might have fared hard for their intrusion. His blunder in geography very likely saved him from annihilation.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: His character differently drawn.]

[Sidenote: Prescott.]

[Sidenote: Irving.]

The character of Columbus has been variously drawn, almost always with a violent projection of the limner's own personality. We find Prescott contending that "whatever the defects of Columbus's mental constitution, the finger of the historian will find it difficult to point to a single blemish in his moral character." It is certainly difficult to point to a more flagrant disregard of truth than when we find Prescott further saying, "Whether we contemplate his character in its public or private relations, in all its features it wears the same noble aspects. It was in perfect harmony with the grandeur of his plans, and with results more stupendous than those which Heaven has permitted any other mortal to achieve." It is very striking to find Prescott, after thus speaking of his private as well as public character, and forgetting the remorse of Columbus for the social wrongs he had committed, append in a footnote to this very passage a reference to his "illegitimate" son. It seems to mark an obdurate purpose to disguise the truth. This is also nowhere more patent than in the palliating hero-worship of Irving, with his constant effort to save a world's exemplar for the world's admiration, and more for the world's sake than for Columbus's.

Irving at one time berates the biographer who lets "pernicious erudition" destroy a world's exemplar; and at another time he does not know that he is criticising himself when he says that "he who paints a great man merely in great and heroic traits, though he may produce a fine picture, will never present a faithful portrait." The commendation which he bestows upon Herrera is for precisely what militates against the highest aims of history, since he praises that Spanish historian's disregard of judicial fairness.

In the being which Irving makes stand for the historic Columbus, his skill in softened expression induced Humboldt to suppose that Irving's avoidance of exaggeration gave a force to his eulogy, but there was little need to exaggerate merits, if defects were blurred.

[Sidenote: Humboldt.]

The learned German adds, in the opening of the third volume of his Examen Critique, his own sense of the impressiveness of Columbus. That impressiveness stands confessed; but it is like a gyrating storm that knows no law but the vagrancy of destruction.

One need not look long to discover the secret of Humboldt's estimate of Columbus. Without having that grasp of the picturesque which appeals so effectively to the popular mind in the letters of Vespucius, the Admiral was certainly not destitute of keen observation of nature, but unfortunately this quality was not infrequently prostituted to ignoble purposes. To a student of Humboldt's proclivities, these traits of observation touched closely his sympathy. He speaks in his Cosmos of the development of this exact scrutiny in manifold directions, notwithstanding Columbus's previous ignorance of natural history, and tells us that this capacity for noting natural phenomena arose from his contact with such. It would have been better for the fame of Columbus if he had kept this scientific survey in its purity. It was simply, for instance, a vitiated desire to astound that made him mingle theological and physical theories about the land of Paradise. Such jugglery was promptly weighed in Spain and Italy by Peter Martyr and others as the wild, disjointed effusions of an overwrought mind, and "the reflex of a false erudition," as Humboldt expresses it. It was palpably by another effort, of a like kind, that he seized upon the views of the fathers of the Church that the earthly Paradise lay in the extreme Orient, and he was quite as audacious when he exacted the oath on the Cuban coast, to make it appear by it that he had really reached the outermost parts of Asia.

[Sidenote: Observations of nature.]

Humboldt seeks to explain this errant habit by calling it "the sudden movement of his ardent and passionate soul; the disarrangement of ideas which were the effect of an incoherent method and of the extreme rapidity of his reading; while all was increased by his misfortunes and religious mysticism." Such an explanation hardly relieves the subject of it from blunter imputations. This urgency for some responsive wonderment at every experience appears constantly in the journal of Columbus's first voyage, as, for instance, when he makes every harbor exceed in beauty the last he had seen. This was the commonplace exaggeration which in our day is confined to the calls of speculating land companies. The fact was that Humboldt transferred to his hero something of the superlative love of nature that he himself had experienced in the same regions; but there was all the difference between him and Columbus that there is between a genuine love of nature and a commercial use of it. Whenever Columbus could divert his mind from a purpose to make the Indies a paying investment, we find some signs of an insight that shows either observation of his own or the garnering of it from others, as, for example, when he remarks on the decrease of rain in the Canaries and the Azores which followed upon the felling of trees, and when he conjectures that the elongated shape of the islands of the Antilles on the lines of the parallels was due to the strength of the equatorial current.

[Sidenote: Roselly de Lorgues and his school.]

[Sidenote: Harrisse.]

Since Irving, Prescott, and Humboldt did their work, there has sprung up the unreasoning and ecstatic French school under the lead of Roselly de Lorgues, who seek to ascribe to Columbus all the virtues of a saint. "Columbus had no defect of character and no worldly quality," they say. The antiquarian and searching spirit of Harrisse, and of those writers who have mainly been led into the closest study of the events of the life of Columbus, has not done so much to mould opinion as regards the estimate in which the Admiral should be held as to eliminate confusing statements and put in order corroborating facts. The reaction from the laudation of the canonizers has not produced any writer of consideration to array such derogatory estimates as effectually as a plain recital of established facts would do it. Hubert Bancroft, in the incidental mention which he makes of Columbus, has touched his character not inaptly, and with a consistent recognition of its infirmities. Even Prescott, who verges constantly on the ecstatic elements of the adulatory biographer, is forced to entertain at times "a suspicion of a temporary alienation of mind," and in regard to the letter which Columbus wrote from Jamaica to the sovereigns, is obliged to recognize "sober narrative and sound reasoning strangely blended with crazy dreams and doleful lamentations."

[Sidenote: Aaron Goodrich.]

"Vagaries like these," he adds, "which came occasionally like clouds over his soul to shut out the light of reason, cannot fail to fill the mind of the reader, as they doubtless did those of the sovereigns, with mingled sentiments of wonder and compassion." An unstinted denunciatory purpose, much weakened by an inconsiderate rush of disdain, characterizes an American writer, Aaron Goodrich, in his Life of the so-called Christopher Columbus (New York, 1875); but the critic's temper is too peevish and his opinions are too unreservedly biased to make his results of any value.

[Sidenote: Humboldt.]

The mental hallucinations of Columbus, so patent in his last years, were not beyond recognition at a much earlier age, and those who would get the true import of his character must trace these sorrowful manifestations to their beginnings, and distinguish accurately between Columbus when his purpose was lofty and unselfish and himself again when he became mercenary and erratic. So much does the verdict of history lodge occasionally more in the narrator of events than in the character of them that, in Humboldt's balancing of the baser with the nobler symptoms of Columbus's nature, he does not find even the most degraded of his actions other than powerful in will, and sometimes, at least, clear in intelligence. There were certainly curiously transparent, but transient gleams of wisdom to the last. Humboldt further says that the faith of Columbus soothed his dreary and weary adversities by the charm of ascetic reveries. So a handsome euphuism tries to save his fame from harsher epithets.

It was a faith, says the same delineator, which justified at need, under the pretext of a religious object, the employment of deceit and the excess of a despotic power; a tenderer form, doubtless, of the vulgar expression that the end sanctifies the means. It is not, however, within the practice of the better historical criticism of our day to let such elegant wariness beguile the reader's mind. If the different, not to say more advanced, condition of the critical mind is to be of avail to a new age through the advantage gained from all the ages, it is in precisely this emancipation from the trammels of traditionary bondage that the historian asserts his own, and dispels the glamour of a conventionalized hero-worship.

[Sidenote: Dr. J. G. Shea.]

Dr. Shea, our most distinguished Catholic scholar, who has dealt with the character of Columbus, says: "He accomplished less than some adventurers with poor equipped vessels. He seems to have succeeded in attaching but few men to him who adhered loyally to his cause. Those under him were constantly rebellious and mutinous; those over him found him impracticable. To array all these as enemies, inspired by a satanic hostility to a great servant of God, is to ask too much for our belief;" and yet this is precisely what Irving by constant modifications, and De Lorgues in a monstrous degree, feel themselves justified in doing.

[Sidenote: The French canonizers.]

There is nothing in Columbus's career that these French canonizers do not find convertible to their purpose, whether it be his wild vow to raise 4,000 horse and 50,000 foot in seven years, wherewith to snatch the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel, or the most commonplace of his canting ejaculations. That Columbus was a devout Catholic, according to the Catholicism of his epoch, does not admit of question, but when tried by any test that finds the perennial in holy acts, Columbus fails to bear the examination. He had nothing of the generous and noble spirit of a conjoint lover of man and of God, as the higher spirits of all times have developed it. There was no all-loving Deity in his conception. His Lord was one in whose name it was convenient to practice enormities. He shared this subterfuge with Isabella and the rest. We need to think on what Las Casas could be among his contemporaries, if we hesitate to apply the conceptions of an everlasting humanity.

[Sidenote: Converts and slaves.]

The mines which Columbus went to seek were hard to find. The people he went to save to Christ were easy to exterminate. He mourned bitterly that his own efforts were ill requited. He had no pity for the misery of others, except they be his dependents and co-sharers of his purposes. He found a policy worth commemorating in slitting the noses and tearing off the ears of a naked heathen. He vindicates his excess by impressing upon the world that a man setting out to conquer the Indies must not be judged by the amenities of life which belong to a quiet rule in established countries. Yet, with a chance to establish a humane life among peoples ready to be moulded to good purposes, he sought from the very first to organize among them the inherited evils of "established countries." He talked a great deal about making converts of the poor souls, while the very first sight which he had of them prompted him to consign them to the slave-mart, just as if the first step to Christianize was the step which unmans.

The first vicar apostolic sent to teach the faith in Santo Domingo returned to Spain, no longer able to remain, powerless, in sight of the cruelties practiced by Columbus. Isabella prevented the selling of the natives as slaves in Spain, when Columbus had dispatched thither five shiploads. Las Casas tells us that in 1494-96 Columbus was generally hated in Española for his odiousness and injustice, and that the Admiral's policy with the natives killed a third of them in those two years. The Franciscans, when they arrived at the island, found the colonists exuberant that they had been relieved of the rule which Columbus had instituted; and the Benedictines and Dominicans added their testimony to the same effect.

[Sidenote: He urges enslaving the natives from the first.]

The very first words, as has been said, that he used, in conveying to expectant Europe the wonders of his discovery, suggested a scheme of enslaving the strange people. He had already made the voyage that of a kidnapper, by entrapping nine of the unsuspecting natives.

On his second voyage he sent home a vessel-load of slaves, on the pretense of converting them, but his sovereigns intimated to him that it would cost less to convert them in their own homes. Then he thought of the righteous alternative of sending some to Spain to be sold to buy provisions to support those who would convert others in their homes. The monarchs were perhaps dazed at this sophistry; and Columbus again sent home four vessels laden with reeking cargoes of flesh. When he returned to Spain, in 1496, to circumvent his enemies, he once more sought in his turn, and by his reasoning, to cheat the devil of heathen souls by sending other cargoes. At last the line was drawn. It was not to save their souls, but to punish them for daring to war against the Spaniards, that they should be made to endure such horrors.

It is to Columbus, also, that we trace the beginning of that monstrous guilt which Spanish law sanctioned under the name of repartimientos, and by which to every colonist, and even to the vilest, absolute power was given over as many natives as his means and rank entitled him to hold. Las Casas tells us that Ferdinand could hardly have had a conception of the enormities of the system. If so, it was because he winked out of sight the testimony of observers, while he listened to the tales prompted of greed, rapine, and cruelty. The value of the system to force heathen out of hell, and at the same time to replenish his treasury, was the side of it presented to Ferdinand's mind by such as had access to his person. In 1501, we find the Dominicans entering their protest, and by this Ferdinand was moved to take the counsel of men learned in the law and in what passed in those days for Christian ethics. This court of appeal approved these necessary efforts, as was claimed, to increase those who were new to the faith, and to reward those who supported it.

Peter Martyr expressed the comforting sentiments of the age: "National right and that of the Church concede personal liberty to man. State policy, however, demurs. Custom repels the idea. Long experience shows that slavery is necessary to prevent those returning to their idolatry and error whom the Church has once gained." All professed servants of the Church, with a few exceptions like Las Casas, ranged themselves with Columbus on the side of such specious thoughts; and Las Casas, in recognizing this fact, asks what we could expect of an old sailor and fighter like Columbus, when the wisest and most respectable of the priesthood backed him in his views. It was indeed the misery of Columbus to miss the opportunity of being wiser than his fellows, the occasion always sought by a commanding spirit, and it was offered to him almost as to no other.

[Sidenote: Progress of slavery in the West Indies.]

There was no restraining the evil. The cupidity of the colonists overcame all obstacles. The Queen was beguiled into giving equivocal instructions to Ovando, who succeeded to Bobadilla, and out of them by interpretation grew an increase of the monstrous evil. In 1503, every atrocity had reached a legal recognition. Labor was forced; the slaves were carried whither the colonists willed; and for eight months at least in every year, families were at pleasure disrupted without mercy. One feels some satisfaction in seeing Columbus himself at last, in a letter to Diego, December 1, 1504, shudder at the atrocities of Ovando. When one sees the utter annihilation of the whole race of the Antilles, a thing clearly assured at the date of the death of Columbus, one wishes that that dismal death-bed in Valladolid could have had its gloom illumined by a consciousness that the hand which lifted the banner of Spain and of Christ at San Salvador had done something to stay the misery which cupidity and perverted piety had put in course. When a man seeks to find and parades reasons for committing a crime, it is to stifle his conscience. Columbus passed years in doing it.

[Sidenote: Talavera.]

[Sidenote: The Franciscans.]

Back of Isabella in this spasmodic interest in the Indians was the celebrated Archbishop of Granada, Fernando de Talavera, whom we have earlier known as the prior of Prado. He had been since 1478 the confessor of the Queen, and when the time came for sending missionaries to the Antilles it was natural that they were of the order of St. Jerome, of which Talavera was himself a member. Columbus, through a policy which induced him to make as apparent as possible his mingling of interests with the Church, had before this adopted the garb of the Franciscans, and this order was the second in time to be seen in Española in 1502. They were the least tolerant of the leading orders, and had already shown a disposition to harass the Indians, and were known to treat haughtily the Queen's intercessions for the poor souls. It was not till after the death of Columbus that the Dominicans, coming in 1510, reinforced the kindly spirit of the priests of St. Jerome. Still later they too abandoned their humanity.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Columbus's mercenary impulses.]

[Sidenote: His praise of gold.]

The downfall of Columbus began when he wrested from the reluctant monarchs what he called his privileges, and when he insisted upon riches as the accompaniment of such state and consequence as those privileges might entail. The terms were granted, so far as the King was concerned, simply to put a stop to importunities, for he never anticipated being called upon to confirm them. The insistency of Columbus in this respect is in strange contrast to the satisfaction which the captains of Prince Henry, Da Gama and the rest, were content to find in the unpolluted triumphs of science. The mercenary Columbus was forced to the utterance of Solomon: "I looked upon the labor that I had labored to do, and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit." The Preacher never had a better example. Columbus was wont to say that gold gave the soul its flight to paradise. Perhaps he referred to the masses which could be bought, or to the alms which could propitiate Heaven. He might better have remembered the words of warning given to Baruch: "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. For, saith the Lord, thy life will I give unto them for a prey in all places whither thou goest." And a prey in all places he became.

Humboldt seeks to palliate this cupidity by making him the conscious inheritor of the pecuniary chances which every free son of Genoa expected to find within his grasp by commercial enterprise. Such prominence was sought because it carried with it power and influence in the republic.

If Columbus had found riches in the New World as easily as he anticipated, it is possible that such affluence would have moulded his character in other ways for good or for evil. He soon found himself confronting a difficult task, to satisfy with insufficient means a craving which his exaggerations had established. This led him to spare no device, at whatever sacrifice of the natives, to produce the coveted gold, and it was an ingenious mockery that induced him to deck his captives with golden chains and parade them through the Spanish towns.

[Sidenote: Nicolas de Conti.]

[Sidenote: The world's disgust.]

After Da Gama had opened the route to Cathay by the Cape of Good Hope, and Columbus had, as he supposed, touched the eastern confines of the same country, the wonderful stories of Asiatic glories told by Nicolas de Conti were translated, by order of King Emanuel (in 1500), into Portuguese. It is no wonder that the interest in the development of 1492 soon waned when the world began to compare the descriptions of the region beyond the Ganges, as made known by Marco Polo, and so recently by Conti, and the apparent confirmation of them established by the Portuguese, with the meagre resources which Columbus had associated with the same country, in all that he could say about the Antilles or bring from them. An adventurous voyage across the Sea of Darkness begat little satisfaction, if all there was to show for it consisted of men with tails or a single eye, or races of Amazons and cannibals.

[Sidenote: Columbus's lack of generosity.]

When we view the character of Columbus in its influence upon the minds of men, we find some strange anomalies. Before his passion was tainted with the ambition of wealth and its consequence, and while he was urging the acceptance of his views for their own sake, it is very evident that he impressed others in a way that never happened after he had secured his privileges. It is after this turning-point of his life that we begin to see his falsities and indiscretions, or at least to find record of them. The incident of the moving light in the night before his first landfall is a striking instance of his daring disregard of all the qualities that help a commander in his dominance over his men. It needs little discrimination to discern the utter deceitfulness of that pretense. A noble desire to win the loftiest honors of the discovery did not satisfy a mean, insatiable greed. He blunted every sentiment of generosity when he deprived a poor sailor of his pecuniary reward. That there was no actual light to be seen is apparent from the distance that the discoverers sailed before they saw land, since if the light had been ahead they would not have gone on, and if it had been abeam they would not have left it. The evidence is that of himself and a thrall, and he kept it secret at the time. The author of the Historie sees the difficulty, and attempts to vaporize the whole story by saying that the light was spiritual, and not physical. Navarrete passes it by as a thing necessary, for the fame of Columbus, to be ignored.

[Sidenote: His enforced oath at Cuba.]

A second instance of Columbus's luckless impotence, at a time when an honorable man would have relied upon his character, was the attempt to make it appear that he had reached the coast of Asia by imposing an oath on his men to that effect, in penalty of having their tongues wrenched out if they recanted. One can hardly conceive a more debasing exercise of power.

[Sidenote: His ambition of territorial power.]

His insistence upon territorial power was the serious mistake of his life. He thought, in making an agreement with his sovereigns to become a viceroy, that he was securing an honor; he was in truth pledging his happiness and beggaring his life. He sought to attain that which the fates had unfitted him for, and the Spanish monarchs, in an evil day, which was in due time their regret, submitted to his hallucinated dictation. No man ever evinced less capacity for ruling a colony.

[Sidenote: His professed inspiration.]

The most sorrowful of all the phases of Columbus's character is that hapless collapse, when he abandoned all faith in the natural world, and his premonitions of it, and threw himself headlong into the vortex of what he called inspiration.

Everything in his scientific argument had been logical. It produced the reliance which comes of wisdom. It was a manly show of an incisive reason. If he had rested here his claims for honor, he would have ranked with the great seers of the universe, with Copernicus and the rest. His successful suit with the Spanish sovereigns turned his head, and his degradation began when he debased a noble purpose to the level of mercenary claims. He relied, during his first voyage, more on chicanery in controlling his crew than upon the dignity of his aim and the natural command inherent in a lofty spirit. This deceit was the beginning of his decadence, which ended in a sad self-aggrandizement, when he felt himself no longer an instrument of intuition to probe the secrets of the earth, but a possessor of miraculous inspiration. The man who had been self-contained became a thrall to a fevered hallucination.

The earnest mental study which had sustained his inquisitive spirit through long years of dealings with the great physical problems of the earth was forgotten. He hopelessly began to accredit to Divinity the measure of his own fallibility. "God made me," he says, "the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth, of which He spoke in the Apocalypse by St. John, after having spoken of it by the mouth of Isaiah, and He showed me the spot where to find it." He no longer thought it the views of Aristotle which guided him. The Greek might be pardoned for his ignorance of the intervening America. It was mere sacrilege to impute such ignorance to the Divine wisdom.

[Sidenote: Lost his friends.]

There is no excuse but the plea of insanity. He naturally lost his friends with losing his manly devotion to a cause. I do not find the beginning of this surrender of his manhood earlier than in the will which he signed February 22, 1498, when he credits the Holy Trinity with having inspired him with the idea that one could go to the Indies by passing westward.

In his letter to the nurse of Don Juan, he says that the prophecy of Isaiah in the Apocalypse had found its interpreter in him, the messenger to disclose a new part of the world. "Human reason," he wrote in the Proficias, "mathematics, and maps have served me in no wise. What I have accomplished is simply the fulfillment of the prophecy of David."

[Sidenote: His pitiable death.]

We have seen a pitiable man meet a pitiable death. Hardly a name in profane history is more august than his. Hardly another character in the world's record has made so little of its opportunities. His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a new world; the New World is his monument! Its discoverer might have been its father; he proved to be its despoiler. He might have given its young days such a benignity as the world likes to associate with a maker; he left it a legacy of devastation and crime. He might have been an unselfish promoter of geographical science; he proved a rabid seeker for gold and a viceroyalty. He might have won converts to the fold of Christ by the kindness of his spirit; he gained the execrations of the good angels. He might, like Las Casas, have rebuked the fiendishness of his contemporaries; he set them an example of perverted belief. The triumph of Barcelona led down to the ignominy of Valladolid, with every step in the degradation palpable and resultant.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXI. THE DESCENT OF COLUMBUS'S HONORS

[Sidenote: His kinsfolk.]

Columbus had left behind him, as the natural guardians of his name and honors, the following relatives: his brother Bartholomew, who in December, 1508, had issue of an illegitimate daughter, his only child so far as known; his brother Diego, who, as a priest, was precluded from having lawful issue; his son Diego, now become the first inheritor of his honors; his natural son, Ferdinand, the most considerable in intellectual habit of all Columbus's immediate kin.

[Sidenote: His son Diego.]

The descent of his titles depended in the first instance on such a marriage as Diego might contract. Within a year or two Diego had had by different women two bastard children, Francisco and Cristoval, shut off from heirship by the manner of their birth. Diego was at this time not far from four and twenty years of age.

Ten or twelve days after Diego succeeded to his inheritance, Philip the Handsome, now sharing the throne of Castile as husband of Juana, daughter of Isabella, ordered that what was due to Columbus should be paid to his successor. This order reached Española in June, 1506, but was not obeyed promptly; and when Ferdinand of Aragon returned from Italy in August, 1507, and succeeded to the Castilian throne, he repeated the order on August 24.

[Sidenote: Diego's income.]

[Sidenote: Diego presses for a restitution of Columbus's honors.]

It would seem that in due time Diego was in receipt of 450,000 ounces of gold annually from the four foundries in Española. This, with whatever else there may have been, was by no means satisfactory to the young aspirant, and he began to press Ferdinand for a restitution of his inherited honors and powers with all the pertinacity which had characterized his father's urgency.

[Sidenote: 1508. Suit against the Crown.]

Upon the return of Ferdinand from Naples, Diego determined to push the matter to an issue, but Ferdinand still evaded it. Diego now asked, according to Las Casas and Herrera, to be allowed to bring a suit against the Crown before the Council of the Indies, and the King yielded to the request, confident, very likely, in his ability to control the verdict in the public interests. The suit at once began (1508), and continued for several years before all was accomplished, and in December of that same year (1508), we find Diego empowering an attorney of the Duke of Alva to represent his case.

The defense of the Crown was that a transmission of the viceroyalty to the Admiral's son was against public policy, and at variance with a law of 1480, which forbade any judicial office under the Crown being held in perpetuity. It was further argued in the Crown's behalf that Columbus had not been the chief instrument of the first discovery and had not discovered the mainland, but that other voyagers had anticipated him. In response to all allegations, Diego rested his case on the contracts of the Crown with his father, which assured him the powers he asked for. Further than this, the Crown had already recognized, he claimed, a part of the contract in its orders of June 2, 1506, and August 24, 1507, whereby the revenues due under the contracts had been restored to him. It was also charged by the defense that Columbus had been relieved of his powers because he had abused them, and the answer to this was that the sovereigns' letter of 1502 had acknowledged that Bobadilla acted without authority. A number of navigators in the western seas were put on the stand to rebut the allegation of existing knowledge of the coast before the voyages of Columbus, particularly in substantiating the priority of the voyage of Columbus to the coast of Paria, and the evidence was sufficient to show that all the alleged claims were simply perverted notions of the really later voyage of Ojeda in 1499. It is from the testimony at this time, as given in Navarrete, that the biographers of Columbus derive considerable information, not otherwise attainable, respecting the voyages of Columbus,--testimony, however, which the historian is obliged to weigh with caution in many respects.

[Sidenote: Diego wins.]

The case was promptly disposed of in Diego's favor, but not without suspicions of the Crown's influence to that end. The suit is, indeed, one of the puzzles in the history of Columbus and his fame. If it was a suit to secure a verdict against the Crown in order to protect the Crown's rights under the bull of demarcation, we can understand why much that would have helped the position of the fiscal was not brought forward. If it was what it purported to be, an effort to relieve the Crown of obligations fastened upon it under misconceptions or deceits, we may well marvel at such omission of evidence.

[Sidenote: Diego marries Maria de Toledo.]

[Sidenote: Diego waives his right to the title of Viceroy.]

It was left for the King to act on the decision for restitution. This might have been by his studied procrastination indefinitely delayed but for a shrewd movement on the part of Diego, who opportunely aspired to the hand of Doña Maria de Toledo, the daughter of Fernando de Toledo. This nobleman was brother of the Duke of Alva, one of the proudest grandees of Spain, and he was also cousin of Ferdinand, the King. The alliance, soon effected, brought the young suitor a powerful friend in his uncle, and the bride's family were not averse to a connection with the heir to the viceroyalty of the Indies, now that it was confirmed by the Council of the Indies. Harrisse cannot find that the promised dower ever came with the wife; but, on the contrary, Diego seems to have become the financial agent of his wife's family. A demand for the royal acquiescence in the orders of the Council could now be more easily made, and Ferdinand readily conceded all but the title of Viceroy. Diego waived that for the time, and he was accordingly accredited as governor of Española, in the place of Ovando.

[Sidenote: Ovando recalled.]

Isabella had indeed, while on her death-bed, importuned the King to recall Ovando, because of the appalling stories of his cruelty to the Indians. Ferdinand had found that the governor's vigilance conduced to heavy remittances of gold, and had shown no eagerness to carry out the Queen's wishes. He had even ordered Ovando to begin that transference of the poor Lucayan Indians from their own islands to work in the Española mines which soon resulted in the depopulation of the Bahamas. Now that he was forced to withdraw Ovando he made it as agreeable for him as possible, and in the end there was no lack of commendation of his administration. Indeed, as Spaniards went in those days, Ovando was good enough to gain the love of Las Casas, "except for some errors of moral blindness."

[Sidenote: 1509. June 9. Diego sails for Española.]

It was on May 3, 1509, that Ferdinand gave Diego his instructions; and on June 9, the new governor with his noble wife sailed from San Lucar. There went with Diego, beside a large number of noble Spaniards who introduced, as Oviedo says, an infusion of the best Spanish blood into the colony, his brother Ferdinand, who was specially charged, as Oviedo further tells us, to found monasteries and churches. His two uncles also accompanied him. Bartholomew had gone to Rome after Columbus's death, with the intention of inducing Pope Julius II. to urge upon the King a new voyage of discovery; and Harrisse thinks that this is proved by some memoranda attached to an account of the coasts of Veragua, which it is supposed that Bartholomew gave at this time to a canon of the Lateran, which is now preserved in the Megliavecchian library, and has been printed by Harrisse in his Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima. It was perhaps on this visit that the Adelantado took to Rome that map of Columbus's voyage to those coasts which it is usually said was carried there in 1505, when he may possibly have borne thither the letter of Columbus to the Pope.

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus, and Diego Mendez.]

The position which Bartholomew now went with Diego to assume, that of the Chief Alguazil of Santo Domingo, caused much complaint from Diego Mendez, who claimed the credit of bringing about the restitution of Diego's power, and who had, as he says, been promised both by Columbus and by his son this office as recompense for his many services.

[Sidenote: 1509. July 10. Diego reaches his government.]

The fleet arrived at its destination July 10, 1509. The wife of the governor had taken a retinue, which for splendor had never before been equaled in the New World, and it enabled her to maintain a kind of viceregal state in the little capital. It all helped Diego to begin his rule with no inconsiderable consequence. There was needed something of such attraction to beguile the spirits of the settlers, for, as Benzoni learned years afterwards, when he visited the region, the coming of the son of Columbus had not failed to engender jealousies, which attached to the imposition of another foreigner upon the colony.

[Sidenote: Ojeda and Nicuessa.]

The King was determined that Diego's rule should be confined to Española, and, much to the governor's annoyance, he parceled out the coasts which Columbus had tracked near the Isthmus of Panama into two governments, and installed Ojeda in command of the eastern one, which was called New Andalusia, while the one beyond the Gulf of Uraba, which included Veragua, he gave to Diego de Nicuessa, and called it Castilla del Oro.

[Sidenote: Porto Rico.]

[Sidenote: Faction of Passamonte.]

[Sidenote: 1511. October 5. Audiencia.]

This action of the King, as well as his effort to put Porto Rico under an independent governor, incited new expostulations from Diego, and served to make his rule in the island quite as uncomfortable as its management had been to his father. There also grew up the same discouragement from faction. The King's treasurer, Miguel Passamonte, became the head of the rebellious party, not without suspicion that he was prompted to much denunciations in his confidential communications with the King. Reports of Diego's misdeeds and ambitions, threatening the royal power even, were assiduously conveyed to the King. The sovereign devised a sort of corrective, as he thought, of this, by instituting later, October 5, 1511, a court of appeals, or Audiencia, to which the aggrieved colonists could go in their defense against oppression or extortion. Its natural effect was to undermine the governor's authority and to weaken his influence. He found himself thwarted in all efforts to relieve the Indians of their burdens, as nothing of that sort could be done without disturbing the revenues of leading colonists. There was no great inducement to undo measures by which no one profited in receipts more than himself, and the cruel devastation of the native population ran on as it had done. He certainly did not show himself averse to continuing the system of repartimientos for the benefit of himself and his friends.

Diego, who had been for a while in Spain, returned in 1512 to Española, and later new orders were sent out by the King, and these included commands to reduce the labor of the Indians one third, to import negro slaves from Guinea as a measure of further relief to the natives, and to brand Carib slaves, so as to protect other Indians from harsh treatment intended for the Caribs alone.

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus died.]

Diego was again in Spain in 1513, and the attempts of Ojeda and Nicuessa having failed, later orders in 1514 so far reinstated Diego in his viceregal power as to permit him to send his uncle Bartholomew to take possession of the Veragua coast. But the life of the Adelantado was drawing to a close, and his death soon occurring nothing was done.

[Sidenote: 1515. Diego in Spain.]

Affairs had come to such a pass that Diego again felt it necessary to repair to Court to counteract his enemies' intrigues, and once more getting permission from the King, he sailed for Spain, April 9, 1515, leaving the Vice-Queen with a council in authority.

Diego found the King open and kindly, and not averse to acknowledging the merits of his government. He again pressed his bonded rights with the old fervency. "I would bestow them willingly on you," said the King; "but I cannot do so without intrusting them also to your son and to his successors." "Is it just," said Diego, "that I should suffer for a son which I may never have?" Las Casas tells us that Diego repeated this colloquy to him.

[Sidenote: 1516. January 23. Ferdinand died.]

The King found it reasonable to question if Columbus had really sailed along all the coasts in which Diego claimed a share, and ordered an examination of the matter to be made. While these claims were in abeyance, the King died, January 23, 1516.

[Sidenote: Diego again in Española.]

[Sidenote: 1520. Diego in Spain.]

[Sidenote: Diego partially reinstated.]

This event much retarded the settlement of the difficulties. Cardinal Ximenes, who held power for a while, was not willing to act, and nothing was done for four years, during part of which period Diego was certainly in Española. We know also that he was present at the convocation of Barcelona, presided over by the Emperor, when Las Casas made his urgent appeals for the Indians and pictured their hardships. Finally, in 1520, when Charles V. was about to embark for Flanders, Diego was in a position to advance to the Emperor so large a sum as ten thousand ducats, which was, as it appears, about a fifth of his annual income from Española at this time. This financial succor seemed to open the way for the Emperor to dismiss all charges against Diego, and to reinstate him in qualified authority as Viceroy over the Indies.

[Sidenote: 1520. September. Diego returns to Española.]

This seeming restitution was not without a disagreeable accompaniment in the appointment of a supervisor to reside at his viceregal court and report on the Viceroy's doings. In September, 1520, Diego sailed once more for his government, and on November 14 we find him in Santo Domingo, and shortly afterwards engaged in the construction of a lordly palace, which he was to occupy, and which is seen there to-day. The substantialness of its structure gave rise to rumors that he was preparing a fortress for ulterior aims.

[Sidenote: Negro slaves increase.]

Diego soon found that various administrative measures had not gone well in his absence. Commanders of some of the provinces had exceeded their powers, and it became necessary to supersede them. This made them enemies as a matter of course. The raising of sugar-cane had rapidly developed under the imported African labor, and the revenues now came for the most part from the plantations rather than from the mines. The negroes so increased that it was not long before some of them dared to rise in revolt, but the mischief was stopped by a rapid swoop of armed horsemen.

[Sidenote: 1523. Diego in Spain.]

[Sidenote: 1526. February 23. Diego dies.]

The jealousies and revengeful accusations of Diego's enemies were not so easily quelled, and before long he was summoned to Spain to render an account of his doings, for Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon had presented charges against him. On September 16, 1523, Diego embarked, and landed at St. Lucar November 5. He presented himself before the Emperor at Vittoria in January, 1524, and reviewed his conduct. This he succeeded in doing in a manner to disarm his foes; and this success encouraged him to press anew for his inherited rights. The demand ended in the questions in dispute being referred to a board; and Diego for two years followed the Court in its migrations, to be in attendance on the sessions of this commission. His health gave way under the strain, so that, with everything still unsettled, he died at Montalvan, February 23, 1526, having survived his father for twenty troublous years. His remains were laid in the monastery of Las Cuevas by the side of Columbus. Being later conveyed to the cathedral at Santo Domingo, they were, if one may credit the quite unproved statements of the priests of the cathedral, mistaken for those of his father, and taken to Havana in 1795.

[Sidenote: His family.]

[Sidenote: Luis Colon succeeds.]

The Vice-Queen and her family were still in Santo Domingo, and her children were seven in number, four daughters and three sons. The descent of the honors came eventually to the descendants of one of these daughters, Isabel, who married George of Portugal, Count of Gelves. Of the three sons, Luis succeeded his father, who was in turn succeeded by Diego, a son of Luis's brother Cristoval.

The Vice-Queen, after making an ineffectual attempt to colonize Veragua, in which she was thwarted by the royal Audiencia at Española, returned to Spain in 1529. Her son Luis, the heir, was still a child, having been born in 1521 or 1522. For fourteen years his mother pressed his claims upon the Emperor, Charles V., and she was during a part of the time in such distress that she borrowed money of Ferdinand Columbus and pledged her jewels. She lived till 1549, and died at Santo Domingo.

[Sidenote: 1536. The Crown's compromise with Luis.]

[Sidenote: Duke of Veragua.]

[Sidenote: 1540. Luis in Española.]

Early in 1536 the Cardinal Garcia de Loyasa, in behalf of the Council of the Indies, rendered a decision in which he and Ferdinand Columbus had acted as arbiters, which was confirmed by the Emperor in September of the same year. This was that, upon the abandonment by Luis of all claims upon the revenues of the Indies, of the title of Viceroy, and of the right to appoint the officers of the New World, he should be given the island of Jamaica in fief, a perpetual annuity of ten thousand ducats, and the title of Duke of Veragua, with an estate twenty-five leagues square in that province, to support the title and functions of Admiral of the Indies. In 1540 Luis returned to Española with the title of Captain-General, and in 1542 married at Santo Domingo, much against his mother's wish, Maria de Orozco, who later lived in Honduras and married another. While she was still living, Luis again espoused at Santo Domingo Maria de Mosquera. In 1551 he returned to Spain.

[Sidenote: Columbus's privileges gradually abridged.]

[Sidenote: 1556. All Columbus's territorial rights abandoned.]

Whatever remained of the rights which Columbus had sought to transmit to his heirs had already been modified to their detriment by Charles, under decrees in 1540, 1541, and 1542; and when Charles was succeeded by Philip II., early in 1556, one of the first acts of the latter was to force Luis to abandon his fief of Veragua and to throw up his power as Admiral. The Council of the Indies took cognizance of the case in July, 1556, and on September 28 following, Philip II., at Ghent, recompensed the grandson of Columbus, for his submission to the inevitable, by decreeing to Luis the honorary title of Admiral of the Indies and Duke of Veragua, with an income of seven thousand ducats. So in fifty years the dreams of Columbus for territorial magnificence came to naught, and the confident injunctions of his will were dissipated in the air.

[Sidenote: Luis a polygamist.]

[Sidenote: 1572. Luis dies.]

Immediately after this, Luis furtively married, while his other wives were still living, Ana de Castro Ossorio. The authorities found in these polygamous acts a convenient opportunity to get another troublesome Colon out of the way, and arrested Luis in 1559. He was held in prison for nearly five years, and when in 1563 judgment was got against him, he was sentenced to ten years of exile, half of which was to be passed in Oran, in Africa. While his appeal was pending, his scandalous life added crime to crime, and finally, in November, 1565, his sentence being confirmed, he was conducted to Oran, and there he died February 3, 1572.

THE COLUMBUS PEDIGREE.

NOTE. Dotted lines mark illegitimate descents; the dash-and-dot lines mark pretended descents. The heavy face numerals show the successful holders of the honors of Columbus. The lines a a, b b, and c c join respectively.

Fadrique Enriquez, Adm. of Castile. | +-----+------+ | | Alvarez = Maria. Juana = Juan II. de | |of Aragon. Toledo | | +----------------------a +-----+------+ +----+----+ | | | |Ferdinand| = Isabella of Filipe = CRISTOFORO = Beatrix Duke of Fernando. |of Aragon| Castile. Moniz | =1= ¦ Henriquez, Alba. | +---------+ | ¦ living in 1513. | +-----------------------------------+ ¦ | | Fernando, Maria de = DIEGO, b. 1488, Toledo | =2= d. 1526. d. 1539. | +---------+-----------------+---------------+-----------------------+-------------------------b | | | | | Felipa, Maria Juana Isabel Luisa de = LUIS = Maria de nun. = Sancho = Luis de = Jorge de Carvajal ¦ =3= | Mosquira. | de Cardona, | la Cueva. Portogallo. ¦ | | Adm. of | | ¦ +------------+ | Aragon. | | ¦ | | +----------+-------+ | | ¦ | | | | | Maria, =Alvaro.= Cristoval. Maria, Filipa, c =Cristoval=, Luis, Maria = Carlos de | of the d. 1577. d.s.p. d.s.p. = Fr. | Arellano, | Convent 1583. de Mendoza| d. bef. 1600. +-------+------+ of San d. 1605. | | | Quirce. | | Jorge NUÑO DE =5= | | Alberti, PORTOGALLO, | | d. 1581. established in | | 1608. Maria Juana | d.s.p. = Fr. Pacheco, | | d. 1605. ALVARO =6= +---------+ | JACINTO. |James II.| = Arabella Carlos. | |England. | ¦ Churchill. | | +---------+ ¦ | PEDRO NUÑO. =7= ¦ | | Duke of Various | Berwick. lines. | | PEDRO MANUEL. =8= | | | +----------------------------+---+ | | | James STUART, = Catarina PEDRO NUÑO, =9= Duke of Liria, | Ventura, d. 1753, d. 1738. | d. 1740. without legitimate | issue. JACOBO EDUARDO. | =10= | CARLOS FERNANDO. | =11= | JACOBO FILIPE, =12= dispossessed in 1790; the decree of 1664 reversed. | | Continued to our day.

Dominico Susanna Colombo, of DOMENICO = Fontanarosa. Cuccaro. | | a---------------+-------------+------------+-------------+ ¦ | | | | | Bartolomeo. Giovanni Giacomo Blanchinetta ¦ ¦ | Pelegrino, or Diego, = Giacomo | ¦ ¦ d. s. p. priest. Paravello. ¦ ¦ | | Maria, ¦ ¦ nun, | | b. 1508. .----.----.----.----.----.----. ¦ | | b---------------+--------------------+ ¦ ¦ | | | | Ana = Cristoval = Magdalena Diego ¦ ¦ de | | de = Isabel | | Pravia | | Guzman. Justenian. ¦ ¦ | | | | +------+-----+ +---------+ ¦ ¦ | | | | | c = DIEGO, Francesca Maria ¦ ¦ =4= d.s.p. = Diego = Luis de | | 1578. | Ortegon. Avila. ¦ ¦ | | | | | | ¦ ¦ Josefa | Bernardo Balthazar = De Paz de la Luis de Colombo, Colombo, | Serra. AVILA, of Cogoleto. of Cuccaro. | d. 1633. | Josefa = Martín de | LARREATEGUI. | Diego. | | Francisco. | | Pedro Isidoro. | | MANIANO(1790). =13= | | PEDRO. =14= | | CRISTOVAL. =15= | | Son b. 1878.

[Sidenote: His heirs.]

[Sidenote: His daughter marries her cousin Diego, the male heir.]

[Sidenote: Columbus's male line extinct.]

Luis left two illegitimate children, one a son; but his lawful heirs were adjudged to be the children of Maria de Mosquera, two daughters, one a nun and the other Filipa. This last presented a claim for the titles in opposition to the demands of Diego, the nephew of her father. She declared this cousin to be the natural, and not the lawful, son of Luis's brother. It was easy enough to forget such imputations in coming to the final conclusion, when Filipa and Diego took each other in marriage (May 15, 1573) to compose their differences, the husband becoming Duke of Veragua. Filipa died in November, 1577, and her husband January 27, 1578. As they had no children, the male line of Columbus became extinct seventy years after his death.

[Sidenote: The long lawsuit and its many contestants.]

The lawsuit which followed for the settlement of the succession was a famous one. It lasted thirty years. The claimants were at first eight in number, but they were reduced to five by deaths during the progress of the trials.

The first was Francesca, own sister of Diego, the late Duke. Her claim was rejected; but five generations later the dignities returned to her descendants.

The second was the representative of Maria, the daughter of Luis, and sister-in-law of Diego. The claim made by her heir, the convent of San Quirce, was discarded.

The third was Cristoval, the bastard son of Luis, who claimed to be the fruit of a marriage of Luis, concluded while he was in prison accused of polygamy. Cristoval died in 1601, before the cause was decided.

The fourth was Alvaro de Portogallo, Count of Gelves, a son of Isabel, the sister of Luis. He had unsuccessfully claimed the titles when Luis died, in 1572, and again put forth his claims in 1578, when Diego died, but he himself died, pending a decision, in 1581. His son, Jorge Alberto, inherited his rights, but died in 1589, before a decision was reached, when his younger brother, Nuño de Portogallo, became the claimant, and his rights were established by the tribunal in 1608, when he became Duke of Veragua. His enjoyment of the title was not without unrest, but the attempts to dispossess him failed.

The fifth was Cristoval de Cardona, Admiral of Aragon, son of Maria, elder sister of Luis. This claimant died in 1583, while his claim, having once been allowed, was held in abeyance by an appeal of his rivals. His sister, Maria, was then adjudged inheritor of the honors, but she died in 1605, before the final decree.

The sixth was Maria de la Cueva, daughter of Juana, sister of Luis, who died before December, 1600, while her daughter died in 1605, leaving Carlos Pacheco a claimant, whose rights were disallowed.

The seventh was Balthazar Colombo, a descendant of a Domenico Colombo, who was, according to the claim, the same Domenico who was the father of Columbus. His genealogical record was not accepted.

The eighth was Bernardo Colombo, who claimed to be a descendant of Bartholomew Columbus, the Adelantado, a claim not made good.

These last two contestants rested their title in part on the fact that their ancestors had always borne the name of Colombo, and this was required by Columbus to belong to the inheritors of his honors. The lineal ancestors of the other claimants had borne the names of Cardona, Portogallo, or Avila.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Nuño de Portogallo succeeds, and the line later changes.]

From Nuño de Portogallo the titles descended to his son Alvaro Jacinto, and then to the latter's son, Pedro Nuño. His rights were contested by Luis de Avila (grandson of Cristoval, brother of Luis Colon), who tried in 1620 to reverse the verdict of 1608, and it was not till 1664 that Pedro Nuño defeated his adversaries. He was succeeded by his son, Pedro Manuel, and he by his son, Pedro Nuño, who died in 1733, when this male line became extinct.

The titles were now illegally assumed by Pedro Nuño's sister, Catarina Ventura, who by marriage gave them to her husband, James Fitz-James Stuart, son of the famous Duke of Berwick, and by inheritance in his own right, Duke of Liria. When he died, in 1738, the titles passed to his son, Jacobo Eduardo; thence to the latter's son, Carlos Fernando, who transmitted them to his son, Jacobo Filipe. This last was obliged, by a verdict in 1790, which reversed the decree of 1664, to yield the titles to the line of Francesca, sister of Diego, the fourth holder of them. This Francesca married Diego Ortegon, and their grandchild, Josefa, married Martin Larreategui, whose great-great-grandson, Mariano (by decrees 1790-96), became Duke of Veragua, from whom the title descended to his son, Pedro, and then to his grandson, Cristoval, the present Duke, born in 1837, whose heir, the next Duke, was born in 1878. The value of the titles is said to-day to represent about eight or ten thousand dollars, and this income is chargeable upon the revenues of Cuba and Porto Rico.

In concluding this rapid sketch of the descent of the blood and honors of Columbus, two striking thoughts are presented. The Larreateguis are a Basque family. The blood of Columbus, the Genoese, now mingles with that of the hardiest race of navigators of western Europe, and of whom it may be expected that if ever earlier contact of Europe with the New World is proved, these Basques will be found the forerunners of Columbus. The blood of the supposed discoverer of the western passage to Asia flows with that of the earliest stock which is left to us of that Oriental wave of population which inundated Europe, in the far-away times when the races which make our modern Christian histories were being disposed in valleys and on the coasts of what was then the Western World.

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