UNWEPT, UNHONORED, AND UNSUNG.
W. F. Poole, LL. D., Librarian of the Newberry Library, Chicago. From "Christopher Columbus," in The Dial for April, 1892. Published by The Dial Company, Chicago.
It had been well for the reputation of Columbus if he had died in 1493, when he returned from his first voyage. He had found a pathway to a land beyond the western ocean; and although he had no conception of what he had discovered, it was the most important event in the history of the fifteenth century. There was nothing left for him to do to increase his renown. A coat-of-arms had been assigned him, and he rode on horseback through the streets of Barcelona, with the King on one side of him and Prince Juan on the other. His enormous claims for honors and emoluments had been granted. His first letter of February, 1493, printed in several languages, had been read in the courts of Europe with wonder and amazement. "What delicious food for an ingenious mind!" wrote Peter Martyr. In England, it was termed "a thing more divine than human." No other man ever rose to such a pinnacle of fame so suddenly; and no other man from such a height ever dropped out of sight so quickly. His three later voyages were miserable failures; a pitiful record of misfortunes, blunders, cruelties, moral delinquencies, quarrels, and impotent complainings. They added nothing to the fund of human knowledge, or to his own. On the fourth voyage he was groping about to find the River Ganges, the great Khan of China, and the earthly paradise. His two subsequent years of disappointment and sickness and poverty were wretchedness personified. Other and more competent men took up the work of discovery, and in thirteen years after the finding of a western route to India had been announced, the name and personality of Columbus had almost passed from the memory of men. He died at Valladolid, May 20, 1506; and outside of a small circle of relatives, his body was committed to the earth with as little notice and ceremony as that of an unknown beggar on its way to the potter's field. Yet the Spanish court was in the town at the time. Peter Martyr was there, writing long letters of news and gossip; and in five that are still extant there is no mention of the sickness and death of Columbus. Four weeks later an official document had the brief mention that "the Admiral is dead." Two Italian authors, making, one and two years later, some corrections pertaining to his early voyages, had not heard of his death.