the island. His voyage, in consequence, became a toilsome and tedious struggle against the trade winds and calms which prevail between the tropics. Though he sailed on the 10th of March, yet on the 6th of April he was still in the vicinity of the Caribbee islands, and had to touch at Guadaloupe to procure provisions. Here skirmishes occurred with the fierce natives, both male and female; for the women were perfect amazons, of large and powerful frame and great agility. Several of the latter were taken prisoners; they were naked, and wore their hair loose and flowing upon their shoulders, though some decorated their heads with tufts of feathers. Their weapons were bows and arrows. Among them was the wife of a cacique, a woman of a proud and resolute spirit. On the approach of the Spaniards she had fled with an agility that soon distanced all pursuers, excepting a native of the Canary islands, noted for swiftness of foot. She would have escaped even from him, but perceiving that he was alone, and far from his companions, she suddenly turned upon him, seized him by the throat, and would have strangled him, had not the Spaniards arrived and taken her, entangled like a hawk with her prey.

When Columbus departed from the island, he dismissed all the prisoners with presents. The female cacique alone refused to go on shore. She had conceived a passion for Caonabo, having found out that he was a Carib, and she had been won by the story, gathered from the other Indians, of his great valour and his misfortunes. In the course of the voyage, however, the unfortunate Caonabo expired. He maintained his haughty nature to the last, for his

death is principally ascribed to the morbid melancholy of a proud but broken spirit. His fate furnishes on a narrow scale a picture of the fallacy of human greatness. When the Spaniards first arrived on the coast of Hayti, their imaginations were inflamed with rumours of a magnificent prince among the mountains, the lord of the golden house, the sovereign of the mines of Cibao; but a short time had elapsed, and he was a naked and moody prisoner on the deck of one of their caravals, with none but one of his own wild native heroines to sympathize in his misfortunes. All his importance vanished with his freedom; scarce any mention is made of him during his captivity; and with innate qualities of a high and heroic nature, he perished with the obscurity of one of the vulgar.

Columbus left Guadaloupe on the 20th of April, still working his way against the whole current of the trade winds. By the 20th of May but a portion of the voyage was performed, yet the provisions were so much exhausted that every one was put on an allowance of six ounces of bread, and a pint and a half of water. By the beginning of June there was an absolute famine on board of the ships, and some proposed that they should kill and eat their Indian prisoners, or throw them into the sea as so many useless mouths. Nothing but the absolute authority of Columbus prevented this last counsel from being adopted. He represented that the Indians were their fellow-beings, some of them Christians like themselves, and all entitled to similar treatment. He exhorted them to a little patience, assuring them that they would soon make land, as, according to his reckoning, they could not

be far from Cape St. Vincent. They scoffed at his words, for they believed themselves as yet far from their desired haven. The next morning, however, proved the correctness of his calculations, for they made the very land he had predicted.

On the 11th of June the vessels anchored in the bay of Cadiz. The populace crowded to witness the landing of the gay and bold adventurers, who had sailed from this very port animated by the most sanguine expectations. Instead, however, of a joyous crew, bounding on shore, flushed with success, and rich with the spoils of the golden Indies, a feeble train of wretched men crawled forth, emaciated by the diseases of the colony and the hardships of the voyage; who carried in their yellow countenances, says an old writer, a mockery of that gold which had been the object of their search; and who had nothing to relate of the new world but tales of sickness, poverty, and disappointment.

The appearance of Columbus himself was a kind of comment on his fortunes. Either considering himself in disgrace with the sovereigns, or having made some penitential vow, he was clad in the habit of a Franciscan monk, girded with a cord, and he had suffered his beard to grow like the friars of that order. But however humble he might be in his own personal appearance, he endeavoured to keep alive the public interest in his discoveries. On his way to Burgos to meet the sovereigns, he made a studious display of the coronets, collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, which he had brought from the new world. He carried with him, also, several Indians, decorated with glittering ornaments, and among them the brother of Caonabo, on whom

he put a massive collar and chain of gold, weighing six hundred castillanos *, as being cacique of the golden country of Cibao.

The reception of Columbus by the sovereigns was different from what he had anticipated, for he was treated with distinguished favour; nor was any mention made either of the complaints of Margarite and Boyle, or the judicial inquiries conducted by Aguado. However these may have had a transient effect upon the minds of the sovereigns, they were too conscious of his great deserts, and of the extraordinary difficulties of his situation, not to tolerate what they may have considered errors on his part.

Encouraged by the interest with which the sovereigns listened to his account of his recent voyage along the coast of Cuba, bordering, as he supposed, on the rich territories of the Grand Khan, and of his discovery of the mines of Hayna, which he failed not to represent as the Ophir of the ancients, Columbus now proposed a further enterprise, by which he promised to make yet more extensive discoveries, and to annex a vast and unappropriated portion of the continent of Asia to their dominions. All he asked was eight ships, two to be despatched to Hispaniola with supplies, the remaining six to be put under his command for the voyage.

The sovereigns readily promised to comply with his request, and were probably sincere in their intentions to do so; but in the performance of their promise Columbus was doomed to meet with intolerable delay. The resources of Spain at this moment were tasked to the utmost by the ambition

* Equivalent to 3195 dollars of the present time.

of Ferdinand, who lavished all his revenues in warlike enterprises. While maintaining a contest of deep and artful policy with France, with the ultimate aim of grasping the sceptre of Naples, he was laying the foundation of a wide and powerful connexion, by the marriages of the royal children, who were now maturing in years. At this time rose that family alliance which afterwards consolidated such an immense empire under his grandson and successor, Charles V.

These widely extended operations both of war and amity put all the land and naval forces into requisition, drained the royal treasury, and engrossed the time and thoughts of the sovereigns. It was not until the spring of 1497 that Isabella could find leisure to enter fully into the concerns of the new world. She then took them up with a spirit that showed she was determined to place them upon a substantial foundation, as well as clearly to define the powers and reward the services of Columbus. To her protecting zeal all the provisions in favour of the latter must be attributed, for the king began to look coldly on him, and Fonseca, who had most influence in the affairs of the Indies, was his implacable enemy. As the expenses of the expeditions had hitherto exceeded the returns, Columbus was relieved of his eighth part of the cost of the past enterprises, and allowed an eighth of the gross proceeds for the next three years, and a tenth of the net profits. He was allowed also to establish a mayorazgo, or entailed estate, in his family, of which he immediately availed himself, devising his estates to his male descendants, with the express charge that his successor should never use any other title in

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