was greatly in need of repairs, and he had no choice but to abandon her or disobey orders. He preferred the latter alternative, and sent a boat ashore to Ovando, asking for a new ship and for permission to enter the harbor to weather a hurricane which he saw was coming on. But his requests were refused, and he coasted the island, casting anchor under lee of the land. Here he weathered the storm, which drove the other caravels out to sea and annihilated the homeward-bound fleet, the richest till then that had been sent from Española. Roldan and Bobadilla perished with others of the Admiral's enemies; and Hernando Colon, who accompanied his father on this voyage, wrote, long years afterward, "I am satisfied it was the hand of God, for had they arrived in Spain they had never been punished as their crimes deserved, but rather been favored and preferred."

After recruiting his flotilla at Azua, Columbus put in at Jaquimo and refitted his four vessels, and on July 14, 1502, he steered for Jamaica. For nine weeks the ships wandered painfully among the keys and shoals he had named the Garden of the Queen, and only an opportune easterly wind prevented the crews from open mutiny. The first land sighted was the Islet of Guanaja, about forty miles to the east of the coast of Honduras. Here he got news from an old Indian of a rich and vast country lying to the eastward, which he at once concluded must be the longsought-for empire of the Grand Khan. Steering along the coast of Honduras great hardships were endured, but nothing approaching his ideal was discovered. On September 13th Cape Gracias-á-Dios was sighted. The men had become clamorous and insubordinate; not until December 5th, however, would he tack about and retrace his course. It now became his intention to plant a colony on the River Veragua, which was afterward to give his

descendants a title of nobility; but he had hardly put about when he was caught in a storm which lasted eight days, wrenched and strained his crazy, worm-eaten ships severely, and finally, on the Epiphany, blew him into an embouchure, which he named Bethlehem. Gold was very plentiful in this place, and here he determined to found his settlement. By the end of March, 1503, a number of huts had been run up, and in these the adelantado, with eighty men, was to remain, while Columbus returned to Spain for men and supplies. Quarrels, however, arose with the natives, the adelantado made an attempt to seize on the person of the cacique and failed, and before Columbus could leave the coast he had to abandon a caravel to take the settlers on board, and to relinquish the enterprise. Steering eastward he left a second caravel at Porto Bello, and on May 31st he bore northward for Cuba, where he obtained supplies from the natives. From Cuba he bore up for Jamaica, and there, in the harbor of Santa Gloria, now St. Anne's Bay, he ran his ships aground in a small inlet called Don Christopher's Cove.

The expedition was received with the greatest kindness by the natives, and here Columbus remained upward of a year awaiting the return of his lieutenant Diego Mendez, whom he had dispatched to Ovando for assistance. During his critical sojourn here the Admiral suffered much from disease and from the lawlessness of his followers, whose misconduct had alienated the natives, and provoked them to withhold their accustomed supplies, until he dexterously worked upon their superstitions by prognosticating an eclipse. Two vessels having at last arrived for their relief from Mendez and Ovando, Columbus set sail for Spain, after a tempestuous voyage landing once more at Seville on September 7, 1504.

As he was too ill to go to court, his son Diego was sent

thither in his place, to look after his interests and transact his business. Letter after letter followed the young man from Seville, one by the hands of Amerigo Vespucci. A license to ride on mule-back was granted him on February 23, 1505; and in the following May he was removed to the court at Segovia, and thence again to Valladolid. On the landing of Philip and Juan at Coruña (April 25, 1506), although "much oppressed with the gout and troubled to see himself put by his rights," he is known to have sent the adelantado to pay them his duty and to assure them that he was yet able to do them extraordinary service. The last documentary note of him is contained in a codicil to the will of 1498, made at Valladolid on May 19, 1506; the principal portion is said, however, to have been signed at Segovia on August 25, 1506. By this the old will is confirmed; the mayorazgo is bequeathed to his son Diego and his heirs male; failing these to Hernando, his second son, and failing these to the heirs male of Bartholomew.

"Owing to the difficulty in securing animals for the cavalry in Spain (about A. D. 1505), an edict had been published by the King forbidding the use of mules in traveling, except by royal permission.

While Columbus was in Seville he wished to make a journey to the court, then sitting at Granada, to plead his own cause. Cardinal Mendoza placed his litter at the disposal of the Admiral, but he preferred a mule, and wrote to Diego, asking him to petition the King for the privilege of using one. The request was granted in the following curious document:

Decree granting to Don Cristoval Colon permission to ride on a mule, saddled and bridled, through any part of these Kingdoms.

THE KING: As I am informed that you, Cristoval Colon, the Admiral, are in poor bodily health, owing to certain diseases which you had or have, and that you can not ride on horse-back without injury to your health; therefore, conceding this to your advanced age, I, by these presents, grant you leave to ride on a mule, saddled and bridled, through whatever parts of these kingdoms or realms you wish and choose, notwithstanding the law which I issued thereto; and I command the subjects of all parts of these kingdoms and realms not to offer you any impediment or allow any to be offered to you, under penalty of ten thousand maravedi in behalf of the treasury, of whoever does the contrary. Given in the City of Toro, February 23, 1505.

Only in the event of the extinction of the male line, direct or collateral, is it to descend to the females of the family; and those into whose hands it may fall are never to diminish it, but always to increase and ennoble it by all means possible. The head of the house is to sign himself "The Admiral." A tenth of the annual income is to be set aside yearly for distribution among the poor relations of the house. A chapel is founded and endowed for the saying of masses. Beatrix Enriquez is left to the care of the young Admiral in most grateful terms. Among other legacies is one of "half a mark of silver to a Jew who used to live at the gate of the Jewry in Lisbon." The codicil was written and signed with the Admiral's own hand. Next day (May 20, 1506) he died.

The body of Columbus was buried in the parish church of Santa Maria de la Antigua in Valladolid. It was transferred in 1513 to the Cartuja de las Cuevas, near Seville, where on the monument was inscribed that laconic but pregnant tribute:

A Castilla y a Leon,

Nuevo mundo dió Colon.

(To Castille and Leon, Columbus gave a new world.) Here the bones of Diego, the second Admiral, were also laid. Exhumed in 1536, the bodies of both father and son were taken over sea to Española (San Domingo), and interred in the cathedral. In 1795-96, on the cession of that island to the French, the august relics were re-exhumed, and were transferred with great state and solemnity to the cathedral of Havana, where, it is claimed, they yet remain. The male issue of the Admiral became extinct with the third generation, and the estates and titles passed by marriage to a scion of the house of Braganca.

"In person, Columbus was tall and shapely, long-faced and aquiline, white-eyed and auburn-haired, and beauti