A second expedition was hastened; and Sept. 25, 1493, Columbus sailed again,—this time taking fifteen hundred Spaniards in seventeen vessels, with animals and supplies to colonize his New World. And now, too, with strict commands from the Crown to Christianize the Indians, and always to treat them well, Columbus brought the first missionaries to America,—twelve of them. The wonderful mother-care of Spain for the souls and bodies of the savages who so long disputed her entrance to the New World began early, and it never flagged. No other nation ever evolved or carried out so noble an "Indian policy" as Spain has maintained over her western possessions for four centuries.
The second voyage was a very hard one. Some of the vessels were worthless and leaky, and the crews had to keep bailing them out.
Columbus made his second landing in the New World Nov. 3, 1493, on the island of Dominica. His colony of La Navidad had been destroyed; and in December he founded the new city of Isabella. In January, 1494, he founded there the first church in the New World. During the same voyage he also built the first road.
As has been said, the first voyages to America were little in comparison with the difficulty in getting a chance to make a voyage at all; and the hardships of the sea were nothing to those that came after the safe landing. It was now that Columbus entered upon the troubles which darkened the remainder of a life of glory. Great as was his genius as an explorer, he was an unsuccessful colonizer; and though he founded the first four towns in all the New World, they brought him only ill. His colonists at Isabella soon grew mutinous; and San Tonias, which he founded in Hayti, brought him no better fortune. The hardships of continued exploration among the West Indies presently overcame his health, and for nearly half a year he lay sick in Isabella. Had it not been for his bold and skilful brother Bartholomew, of whom we hear so little, we might not have heard so much of Columbus.
By 1495, the just displeasure of the Crown with the unfitness of the first viceroy of the New World caused Juan Aguado to be sent out with an open commission to inspect matters. This was more than Columbus could bear; and leaving Bartholomew as adelantado (a rank for which we now have no equivalent; it means the officer in chief command of an expedition of discoverers), Columbus hastened to Spain and set himself right with his sovereigns. Returning to the New World as soon as possible, he discovered at last the mainland (that of South America), Aug. 1, 1498, but at first thought it an island, and named it Zeta. Presently, however, he came to the mouth of the Orinoco, whose mighty current proved to him that it poured from a continent.
Stricken down by sickness, he returned to Isabella, only to find that his colonists had revolted against Bartholomew. Columbus satisfied the mutineers by sending them back to Spain with a number of slaves,—a disgraceful act, for which the times are his only apology. Good Queen Isabella was so indignant at this barbarity that she ordered the poor Indians to be liberated, and sent out Francisco de Bobadilla, who in 1500 arrested Columbus and his two brothers, in Española, and sent them in irons to Spain. Columbus speedily regained the sympathy of the Crown, and Bobadilla was superseded; but that was the end of Columbus as viceroy of the New World. In 1502 he made his fourth voyage, discovered Martinique and other islands, and founded his fourth colony,—Bethlehem, 1503. But misfortune was closing in upon him. After more than a year of great hardship and distress, he returned to Spain; and there he died May 20, 1506.
The body of the world-finder was buried in Valladolid, Spain, but was several times transferred to new resting-places. It is claimed that his dust now lies, with that of his son Diego, in a chapel of the cathedral of Havana; but this is doubtful. We are not at all sure that the precious relics were not retained and interred on the island of Santo Domingo, whither they certainly were brought from Spain. At all events, they are in the New World,—at peace at last in the lap of the America he gave us.
Columbus was neither a perfect man nor a scoundrel,—though as each he has been alternately pictured. He was a remarkable man, and for his day and calling a good one. He had with the faith of genius a marvellous energy and tenacity, and through a great stubbornness carried out an idea which seems to us very natural, but to the world then seemed ridiculous. As long as he remained in the profession to which he had been reared, and in which he was probably unequalled at the time, he made a wonderful record. But when, after half a century as a sailor, he suddenly turned viceroy, he became the proverbial "sailor on land,"—absolutely "lost." In his new duties he was unpractical, headstrong, and even injurious to the colonization of the New World. It has been a fashion to accuse the Spanish Crown of base ingratitude toward Columbus; but this is unjust. The fault was with his own acts, which made harsh measures by the Crown necessary and right. He was not a good manager, nor had he the high moral principle without which no ruler can earn honor. His failures were not from rascality but from some weaknesses, and from a general unfitness for the new duties to which he was too old to adapt himself.
We have many pictures of Columbus, but probably none that look like him. There was no photography in his day, and we cannot learn that his portrait was ever drawn from life. The pictures that have come down to us were made, with one exception, after his death, and all from memory or from descriptions of him. He is represented to have been tall and imposing, with a rather stern face, gray eyes, aquiline nose, ruddy but freckled cheeks, and gray hair, and he liked to wear the gray habit of a Franciscan missionary. Several of his original letters remain to us, with his remarkable autograph, and a sketch that is attributed to him.