at his situation, and always treated him with profound respect and assiduous attention. They would have taken off his irons, but to this he would not consent. "No," said he, proudly, " their majesties commanded me by letter to submit to whatever Bobadilla should order in their name; by their authority he has put upon me these chains; I will wear them until they shall order them to be taken off, and I will afterwards preserve them as relics and memorials of the reward of my services."

"He did so,” adds his son Fernando, in his history; "I saw them always hanging in his cabinet, and he requested that when he died they might be buried with him!"

CHAPTER XXXV.

Arrival of Columbus in Spain-His Interview with the Sovereigns-Appointment of Ovando to the Govern→ ment of Hispaniola.

[1500.]

THE arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, a prisoner, and in chains, produced almost as great a sensation as his triumphant return from his first voyage. A general burst of indignation arose in Cadiz, and in the powerful and opulent Seville, which was immediately echoed throughout all Spain. No one stopped to reason on the subject. It was sufficient to be told that Columbus was brought home in chains from the world he had discovered.

The tidings reached the court of Granada, and filled the halls of the alhambra with murmurs of astonishment. On the arrival of the ships at Cadiz, Andreas Martin, the captain, had permitted Columbus to send off letters privately by express. The admiral, full of his wrongs, but ignorant how far they had been authorized by the sovereigns, forbore to write to them. He sent a long letter, however, to a lady of the court, high in favour with the queen, and who had been nurse to Prince Juan. It contained an ample vindication of his conduct, couched in eloquent and dignified and touching language. When it was read to the noble-minded

Isabella, and she found how grossly Columbus had been wronged, and the royal authority abused, her heart was filled with mingled sympathy and indignation.

However Ferdinand might have secretly felt disposed against Columbus, the momentary tide of public sentiment was not to be resisted. He joined with his generous queen, in her reprobation of the treatment of the admiral. Without waiting to receive any documents that might arrive from Bobadilla, they sent orders to Cadiz that the prisoners should be instantly set at liberty, and treated with all distinction, and that two thousand ducats should be advanced to Columbus to defray the expenses of his journey to court. They wrote him a letter at the same time, expressing their grief at all that he had suffered, and inviting him to Granada.

The loyal heart of Columbus was cheered by this letter from his sovereigns. He appeared at court, not as a man ruined and disgraced, but richly dressed, and with an honourable retinue. He was received by their majesties with unqualified favour and distinction. When the queen beheld this venerable man approach, and thought on all he had deserved, and all that he had suffered, she was moved to tears. Columbus had borne up firmly against the stern conflicts of the world; he had endured with lofty scorn the injuries and insults of ignoble men, but he possessed strong and quick sensibility. When he found himself thus kindly received, and beheld tears in the benign eyes of Isabella, his long suppressed feelings burst forth; he threw himself upon his knees, and for some time could not utter a word for the violence of his tears and sobbings.

Ferdinand and Isabella raised him from the ground,

and endeavoured to encourage him by the most gracious expressions. As soon as he regained his selfpossession, he entered into an eloquent and highminded vindication of his loyalty, and the zeal he had ever felt for the glory and advantage of the Spanish crown; if, at any time, he had erred, it had been, he said, through inexperience in the art of governing, and through the extraordinary difficulties by which he had been surrounded.

There was no need of vindication on his part. He stood in the presence of his sovereigns a deeply injured man, and it remained for them to vindicate themselves to the world, from the charge of ingratitude towards their most deserving subject. They expressed their indignation at the proceedings of Bobadilla, which they disavowed, as contrary to his instructions; they promised that he should be immediately dismissed from his command, and Columbus reinstated in all his privileges and dignities, and indemnified for the losses he had sustained. The latter expected, of course, to be immediately sent back in triumph to San Domingo, as viceroy and admiral of the Indies; but in this he was doomed to experience a disappointment, which threw a gloom over the remainder of his days. The fact was, that Ferdinand, however he might have disapproved of the violence of Bobadilla, was secretly well pleased with its effects. It had produced a temporary exclusion of Columbus from his high offices, and the politic monarch determined, in his heart, that he should never be restored to them. He had long repented having vested such great powers and prerogatives in any subject, particularly in a foreigner; but at the time of granting them he had no idea of the extent of the countries over which they would be exercised.

Recent discoveries, made by various individuals, showed them to be almost boundless. Vincente Yañez Pinzon, one of the brave and intelligent family of navigators that had sailed with Columbus in his first voyage, had lately crossed the line, and explored the shores of the southern continent, as far as Cape St. Augustine. Diego Lepe, another bold navigator of Palos, had doubled that cape, and beheld the continent stretching away out of sight, to the south-west. The report of every discoverer put it beyond a doubt that these countries must be inexhaustible in wealth, as they appeared to be boundless in extent. Yet over all these Columbus was to be viceroy, with a share in their productions, and in the profits of their trade, that must yield him an incalculable revenue. The selfish monarch appeared almost to consider himself outwitted in the arrangement he had made; and every new discovery, instead of increasing his feeling of gratitude to Columbus, seemed only to make him repine at the growing magnitude of his reward.

Another grand consideration with the monarch was, that Columbus was no longer indispensable to him. He had made his great discovery; he had struck out the route to the new world, and now any one could follow it. A number of able navigators had sprung up under his auspices, who were daily besieging the throne with offers to fit out expeditions at their own cost, and to yield a share of the profits to the crown. Why should he, therefore, confer princely dignities and prerogatives for that which men were daily offering to perform gratuitously?

Such, from his after conduct, appears to have been the jealous and selfish policy which actuated