Finally, the fierce resistance of the natives and the crazy State of his ships forced him, at the close of April, 1503, to make the best of his way for Hispaniola with only two crowded wrecks, which, being incapable of keeping the sea, came, on the 24th of June, to anchor at Jamaica. After famine and despair had occasioned a series of mutinies and disasters far greater than any that he had yet experienced, he at last arrived, on the 13th of August, at Santo Domingo. Here he exhausted his funds in relieving his crews, extending his generosity even to those who had been most outrageous. Sailing homewards on the 12th of September, ho anchored his tempest-tossed and shattered bark at San Lucar, the 7th of November 1504. From San Lucar he proceeded to Sevilla, where he soon after received the news of the death of his patroness Isabelle,. Ho was detained by illness till the spring of 1505, when he arrived, wearied and exhausted, at Segovia, to have only another courtly denial of redress, and to linger a year longer In neglect, poverty, and pain, till death gave him relief at Valladolid on the 20th of May 1506. Thus ended a noble and glorious career, inseparably connected with the records of the injustice and ingratitude of kings. To make some amends for the sorrows and wrongs of this great man, his remains received a pompous funeral, and his grave and coat of arms the following motto : " A Castilla y a Leon Nuevo mond° dio Colon." Although Sebastian Cabot discovered Newfoundland and Labrador in June 1497, and Columbus did not touch the American continent till he visited the coast of Paria in August 1498, yet Columbus first reached Guanahani, and what may properly be denominated the Columbian Archipelago, and is really the discoverer of the New World. Rafn (` Antiquitates Americanm,' 1845) seems to have estab lished—if the passages he quotes from the Sagas are not interpolations— not merely that the Northmen discovered the American continent, but that they formed settlements on the coast between Boston and New York, in or before the 11th century. Humboldt, a great authority in
such matters, has adopted this view (` Kosmos, ii. 231, and Notes): Bancroft (` Hist. of United States,' chap. examines and rejects it. The legend of an Irish discovery and colonisation has found no recent supporters among the learned.
The voyage of one Antonio Sanchez from the Canaries to Hayti in 1484, mentioned by the 'Inca Garcilaso and some other Spanish writers, is regarded as a fable. The accounts however of Spaniards and Portu guese who had sailed westward so far as to perceive indications of land, were useful to Columbus, according to his own avowal. Ferdinand and Isabella, in a written declaration of the 4th of August 1494, ascribe the new discoveries to Columbus. Amerigo Vespucci, whose name was afterwards given to the new hemisphere, did not see it till he accompanied Ojeda, as a pilot, to the coast of Paria in 1499.
(The following are the principal authorities for the Life of Colum bus :—Naeigatione del Re di Castiglia delle Isole e Paesi nuovamente ritroraii, and the Latin traoalatiou, Navigatio Christophori Colombi, Vicenza, 1507 ; Itinerarium Portugallensium, Milan, 1503 ; Griumus, Novas Orbis Regionum, Bale, 1533; Life of the Admiral, by his son Fernando, Oviedo; Chronicle of the Indies, Sevilla, 1535; Manu script History of Fernando and Isabella, by the curate of Los Palacrom; Manuscript History of tho Indies, by Las Cassias; Letters and Decades of the Ocean, by Peter Martyr d'Anghierra, or Angleria; Herrera, History of the Indies ; Robertson, History of America ; Churchill, Voyages, voL Navarrete, Relation de los quatro Vtajes de Cristobal Colon ; Irving, Life of Columbus ; Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella.)