He touched at, and named, Martinique early in June, and afterwards at St. Jean, now Porto Ricco. Ovando refused his request to land at Isabella to repair his vessel and exchange one of them for a faster sailer. Escaping a terrible storm, which wrecked and utterly destroyed the splendid fleet in which the rapacious pillagers of the island had embarked their ill-gotten wealth, he was driven by the winds to Jamaica, and thence by the currents to Cuba. Here a strong north wind enabled him to sail south southwest, towards the latitude where he expected to find the strait. He touched the mainland of North America at Truxillo, in Honduras, and coasted thence southward along the Mosquito shore, Nicaragua, Costa Ricca, and Panama. Here he explored every sinuosity and indentation of the shore, seeking at the very spot where civilization and commerce now require a canal, a passage which he considered as demanded by Nature and accorded by Providence. He followed the isthmus as far as the Gulf of Darien, and then, driven by a furious tropical tempest, returned as far as Veragua, in search of rich gold mines of which he had heard. The storm lasted for eight days, concluding with a terrible display of water-spouts, which Columbus is said to have regarded as a work of the devil, and to have dispelled by bringing forth the Bible and exorcising the demon.
One of the water-spouts passed between the ships without injuring them, and spun away, muttering and terrible, to spend its fury elsewhere.
THE WATERSPOUT.
On reaching Veragua, Columbus sent his brother up a river, which he called Bethlehem, or by contraction Belem, to seek for gold. His researches seeming to indicate the presence of the precious metal, Columbus determined to establish a colony upon the river, an attempt which was defeated by the hostility of the natives. Their fierce resistance and the crazy state of his vessels forced Columbus, in April, 1503, to make the best of his way to Hispaniola with two crowded vessels, which, being totally unseaworthy, he was obliged to run ashore at Jamaica. There Columbus awed the natives and subdued them to obedience and submission, by predicting an eclipse of the moon.
Thus left without a single vessel, he had no resource but to send to Hispaniola for assistance. After a period of fifteen months lost in quelling mutinies and in opposing the cruelties and exactions of the new masters of the island, he obtained a caravel, and again sailed for Spain on the 12th of September, 1504. During the passage, he was compelled, by a severe attack of rheumatism, to remain confined to his cabin. His tempest-tossed and shattered bark at last cast anchor in the harbor of San Lucar. He proceeded to Seville, where he heard, with dismay, of the illness, and then of the death, of his patroness Isabella. Sickness now detained him at Seville till the spring of 1505, when he arrived, exhausted and paralytic, before the king. Here he underwent another courtly denial of redress. He was now without shelter and without hope. He was compelled to borrow money with which to pay for a shabby room at a miserable inn. He lingered for a year in poverty and neglect, and died at last in Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506. The revolting ingratitude of Ferdinand of Spain thus caused the death, in rags, in destitution, and in infirmity, of the greatest man that has ever served the cause of progress or labored in the paths of science. Had we written the life of Columbus, and not thus briefly sketched the history of his voyages, we should have found it easy to assert and maintain his claim to this commanding position.
The agitation of the life of Columbus followed his remains to the grave,—for he was buried four successive times, and his dead body made the passage of the Atlantic. It was first deposited in the vaults of the Franciscan Convent of Valladolid, where it remained seven years. In 1513, Ferdinand, now old and perhaps repentant, caused the coffin to be brought from Valladolid to Seville, where a solemn service was said over it in the grand cathedral. It was then placed in the chapel belonging to the Chartreux. In 1536, the coffin was transported to the city of St. Domingo, in the island of Hispaniola. Here it remained for two hundred and sixty years. In 1795, Spain ceded the island to France, stipulating that the ashes of Columbus should be transferred to Spanish soil. In December of the same year, the vault was opened, and the fragments which were found—those of a leaden coffin, mingled with bones and dust returned to dust—were carefully collected. They were carried on board the brigantine Discovery, which transported them to the frigate San Lorenzo, by which they were taken to Havana, where, in the presence of the Governor-General of Cuba and in the midst of imposing ceremonies, they were consigned to their fourth and final resting-place.
It will not be altogether out of place to group together here the numerous and remarkable instances of the world's injustice and ingratitude towards Columbus. We have said that he died in penury at Valladolid. A publication, issued periodically in that city from 1333 to 1539, chronicling every event of local interest—births, marriages, deaths, fires, executions, appointments, church ceremonies—did not mention, or in any way allude to, the death of Columbus. Pierre Martyr, a poet of Lombardy, once his intimate friend, and who had said, at the time of his first voyage, that by singing of his discoveries he would descend to immortality with him, seemed to think, later in life, that he should peril his chances of immortality were he to sing of his death, for his muse held her peace. In 1507, a collection of voyages was published by Fracanzo de Montalbodo, in which no mention was made of Columbus' fourth voyage, and in which Columbus himself was alluded to as still alive. In 1508, a Latin translation of this work was published, in the preface to which Columbus was mentioned as still living in honor at the court of Spain. Another famous work of the time attributes the discovery of the New World, not to the calculations and science of a man, but to the accidental wanderings of a tempest-driven caravel. Not ten years after the death of Columbus, the chaplain of one of the kings of Italy, in a work upon "Memorable Events in Spain," stated that a New World had been discovered in the West by one Peter Columbus. And, in the same taste and spirit, a German doctor, in the first German book which spoke of the New World, did not once mention the name of Columbus, but, translating the proper name as if it were a common noun, calls him Christoffel Dawber, which, being translated back again, signifies Christopher Pigeon.
We shall now speak of that signal instance of public ingratitude and national forgetfulness which is universally regretted, yet will never be repaired,—the giving to the New World the name of America and not that of Columbia,—a substitution due to an obscure and ignorant French publisher of St. Dié, in Lorraine.