112 Field Columbian Museum. 



After many attempts to make a journey he was too weak to un- 

 dertake, Columbus started in May, 1505, under the patient and 

 affectionate care of his brother, Bartholomew, and reached Segovia, 

 where the king was living, in the following August; but his cool re- 

 ception by the King only increased his mortification and distress. 

 His personal application for redress was quite as ineffective as his 

 letters, and he sank in despair. On the 25th of August he made his 

 will, which is a very long and comprehensive document, and then, 

 from his bed, renewed his written appeals, not for himself, as he 

 realized that his days were numbered, but in behalf of his son. He 

 begged King Ferdinand to bestow upon Diego the honors he had 

 won, and restore to him the rights and authority of which he had 

 been deprived. 



The house at Valladolid, Spain, in which Columbus died. May 

 20, 1506, is still standing, and is visited by multitudes of tourists. 

 At the time of his death it was an inn. His brother, Bartholomew, 

 was with him. In none of the chronicles of the times, and they are 

 numerous, is there any allusion to the event. It was not until nearly 

 a month after that the fact was officially recorded, and then in the 

 briefest and most indifferent manner. On the back of one of his be- 

 lated appeals to the king some clerk wrote this endorsement : 



"The within admiral is dead." 



That is the only record in the archives of the Nation of the loss 

 of him who brought Spain her greatest glory. 



His letters written from Jamaica while on his voyage, in 1503, 

 to Father Caspar, show the same profound piety and the same loy- 

 alty to the sovereigns of Spain that appears in his other communica- 

 tions. " If my voyage could prove as conducive to my personal 

 health and to the welfare of my house as it promises of aggrandise- 

 ment to the royal crown of the King and Queen, my masters," he 

 writes, " I might hope to live more than a thousand years;" and 

 again from San Lucar he tells the "Reverend and Most Pious 

 Father: If the anxiety to hear from you troubles me in the places 

 where I am going as much as it does here I shall feel very badly." 



While at Seville, in 1505, Columbus saw a good deal of Ameri- 

 cus Vespucci. They had become acquainted in 1493, while the ad- 

 miral was fitting out the ships for his second voyage; the contract 

 for furnishing the supplies having been awarded to a merchant 

 named Beradi, by whom Vespucci was employed, and the latter had 

 active charge of the business. In the meantime Vespucci had him- 

 self made two voyages, cruising along a good deal of the northern 

 coast of South America, and down the east coast as far as Bahia, 



