I sat down in the shade, for, as we left the carriage, a big cloud tumbled over by mistake and the sun laughingly plunged headlong through the mist before the quarrelsome elements had time to gainsay. With Little Blue Ribbons close by, and Sister and our Spanish Student disappearing within the arches of the Cathedral, I sat there on the base of one of the great pillars at the doorway, and filled my eyes with the beauty of the strong, graceful arches overhead, in whose time-worn curves hung the ancient bells, beautiful bronze bells, now green with age, still pealing forth the praise of God as in the days of Columbus’s followers.
Down the weather-worn and sun-ripened sides of the Cathedral were long streaks of black, like the silent tears of centuries, shed for glories now no more. Was it not enough to rest there, where one could look at the bells and wait for the quiver of the long tongues, ringing out the hour of mass, and catch the thrill of the mottled gray and blue sky sifting its mellow light through the ancient towers? There are some things so absolutely satisfying that it seems an arrant sacrilege to be discontent and want for more. But Little Blue Ribbons, with the impatience of childhood, began to tug at my hand, and the dear old bells must have gone asleep, for with all our longing they hung there covered by their deep, green silence, and Little Blue Ribbons said we would have our waiting all for nothing. For nothing is it, dear one, to forget the stress of living for awhile, and let one’s spirit drop into the peace of a sleeping bell?
III.
We found that the interior of the Cathedral had a very new, clean face, having been recently “restored” and whitewashed; thus being out of harmony with the venerable exterior; however, some one remarked, it was “gratifying to see that the Dominicans appreciate their ancient monument.” That complacent remark struck the ear awry, like the whine of a deacon’s report at a Sunday-school convention. Appreciate? Why, the people of Santo Domingo worship this spot! It is the one place of interest to them; it is the one thing they ask the stranger if he has seen; it is the centre of their life and love,—that ancient pile of yellow glory,—for are not the ashes of their great Cristobal Colon guarded there? Would that we Americans had any relic we held as sacredly!
So I suppose we ought not to quarrel with the Dominicans over the new coat of whitewash, for they meant it well, but we can at least wish they hadn’t cleaned house so thoroughly. Within those walls rest the bones of Columbus after their many disinterments and post-mortem wanderings—so it is claimed; but whether these are the bones of Columbus, or of some one else, who can say? What does it matter? Somewhere about one hundred years ago,—in 1795,—’tis said, when this island was ceded to the French, the Spaniards took Columbus’s bones back to Spain. Later these mortal fragments were returned to Santo Domingo, in accordance with his expressed wish that they finally be buried in this his beloved birthplace and funeral-pyre of his cherished hopes in the New World; which wish had been once before honoured in the first removal of the remains to the then Spanish colony. Sealed in a leaden casket they were imbedded in masonry under the stone floor of the cathedral chancel, and there was no attempt to disturb them until about 1878, when they were presumably removed to Havana to be re-interred there, and, as the Spaniards stoutly maintain, again disinterred from their resting-place in the cathedral at Havana and hurried away to Spain just before the American occupation of Cuba, there to receive the sad honour of a costly mausoleum in Seville. But a few years ago a second box was discovered, buried fast in ancient masonry and cement, about three feet from the place in which the first one was found; and this leaden box, the Dominicans claim, holds the real bones of the real Columbus, for they stoutly maintain that the other box contained the bones Diego Colon, nephew to Columbus, or, as some say, his son,—not Cristobal Colon, our Columbus—and the inscription on a silver plate found inside seems to bear out the authenticity of the later discovery, as does also the location of this second casket and the pains taken to render it secure. Whosesoever bones they were, I was in the proper frame of mind to venerate them, and it was with a feeling of deep awe and pathos that I stood before the much-disputed leaden box, now enshrined in gold and silver, and covered by a very gorgeous white marble tomb, newly made in Barcelona. The box is about a foot and a half long, one foot high, and one foot wide—rather a small space for so great a man as Columbus, but then,—