The Columbiad | Page 9

either feigned or felt a sufficient regret at the conduct of Bovadilla towards their illustrious prisoner. He was not only released from confinement; he was treated with all imaginable respect. But, altho the king endeavored to expiate the offence by censuring and recalling Bovadilla, yet we may judge of his sincerity from his appointing Nicholas de Ovando, another well known enemy of Columbus, to succeed in the government; and from his ever after refusing to reinstate Columbus, or to fulfil any of the conditions on which the discoveries had been undertaken.
After two years of solicitation for this or some other employment, he at length obtained a squadron of four small vessels to attempt new discoveries. He then set out, with the enthusiasm of a young adventurer, in quest of what was always his favorite object, a passage into the South Sea, by which he might sail to India. He touched at Hispaniola, where Ovando the governor refused him admittance on shore, even to take shelter during a hurricane, the prognostics of which his experience had taught him to discern. By putting into a creek he rode out the storm, and then bore away for the continent. He spent several months, the most boisterous of the year, in exploring the coast round the gulph of Mexico, in hopes of finding the intended navigation to India. At length he was shipwrecked, and driven ashore on the island of Jamaica.
His cup of calamities seemed now to be full. He was cast upon an island of savages, without provisions, without a vessel, and thirty leagues from any Spanish settlement. But the greatest physical misfortunes are capable of being embittered by the insults of our fellow creatures. A few of his companions generously offered, in two Indian canoes, to attempt a voyage to Hispaniola, in hopes of obtaining a vessel for the relief of the unhappy crew. After suffering every extremity of danger and fatigue, they arrived at the Spanish colony in ten days. Ovando, excited by personal malice against Columbus, detained these messengers for eight months, and then despatched a vessel to Jamaica to spy out the condition of Columbus and his crew, with positive instructions to the captain not to afford them any relief. This order was punctually executed. The captain approached the shore, delivered a letter of empty compliment from Ovando to the admiral, received his answer and returned. About four months afterwards a vessel came to their relief; and Columbus, worn out with fatigues and broken by misfortunes, returned for the last time to Spain. Here a new distress awaited him, which he considered as one of the greatest of his whole life: this was the death of queen Isabella, his last and most powerful friend.
He did not suddenly abandon himself to despair. He called upon the gratitude and justice of the king; and in terms of dignity demanded the fulfilment of his former contract. Notwithstanding his age and infirmities, he even solicited to be farther employed in extending the career of discovery, without a prospect of any other reward than the pleasure of doing good to mankind. But Ferdinand, cold ungrateful and timid, dared not comply with any proposal of this kind, lest he should increase his own obligations to a man, whose services he thought it dangerous to reward. He therefore delayed and avoided any decision on these subjects, in hopes that the declining health of Columbus would soon rid the court of the remonstrances of a suitor, whose unexampled merit was, in their opinion, a sufficient reason for destroying him. In this they were not disappointed. Columbus languished a short time, and gladly resigned a life which had been worn out in the most signal services perhaps that have been rendered by any one man to an ungrateful world.
Posterity is sometimes more just to the memory of great men than contemporaries were to their persons. But even this consolation, if it be one, has been wanting to the discoverer of our hemisphere. The continent, instead of bearing his name, has been called after one of his followers, a man of no particular merit. And in the modern city of Mexico there is instituted and perpetuated, by order of government, an annual festival in honour of Hernando Cortez, the perfidious butcher of its ancient race; while no public honors have been decreed to Christopher Columbus, one of the wisest and best among the benefactors of mankind.
After his last return from America he seems to have past the short remainder of his life at Valladolid, the capital of Old Castile, and then the seat of the Spanish government. He died in that city on the twentieth of August 1506, and was buried in one of its churches. Over his body is a plain stone inscribed simply with his name, as