COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 267 



is there any allusion to tlie 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 belated appeals to 

 the King some clerk wrote &quot; The within admiral is dead.&quot; The house is 

 a plain structure, at No. 2 Calle Ancha de Magdalena, its most note 

 worthy feature, until recently, being a sign over the door announcing 

 the sale within of Leche de burros y vacas (cows and asses 7 milk). 



The biographies of Columbus usually state that King Ferdinand 

 ordered the removal of the remains of Columbus to Seville immediately 

 after his death, and erected a monument bearing the inscription: &quot;A 

 Castilla y a Leon, Kuevo Man do dio Colon.&quot; (To Castile and Leon, 

 Columbus gave a new world.) 



This statement did not appear in print for eight years after, and if 

 the will of Diego can be accepted as testimony, the remains of Colum 

 bus were removed three years after his death to the vault of the Car 

 thusian Monastery of Las Cuevas, near Seville, by members of his own 

 family, who erected the monument without the aid or knowledge of the 

 King. His remains were first deposited in the Convent of San Fran 

 cisco, Valladolid, and subsequently removed to Seville in 1513, whence, 

 about the year 1541, they were taken to Santo Domingo. 



In 1537, upon the application of Dona Maria de Toledo, the widow of 

 Diego Columbus, a royal order was issued permitting the removal of 

 the body of Columbus to Santo Domingo, but for some reason it was 

 not carried o it, and three separate orders to the same effect were 

 granted to Dona Maria between 1537 and 1541. In the latter year her 

 efforts appear to have been successful, although some historians hold 

 that the removal did not take place until nine years later, upon the 

 completion of the great cathedral at Santo Domingo. The records of 

 that city throw no light upon the controversy, for it was not until 1676 

 that an entry was made in canonical books of the cathedral concerning 

 the reentombment of the remains. It is said, however, that when the 

 city was sacked by Sir Francis Drake, the British freebooter, in 1585, 

 the archives of the cathedral were destroyed. 



When the treaty of Basle, in 1795, transferred the colony of Santo 

 Domingo from the Spaniards to the French, the Duke of Veragua, who 

 had inherited the titles and estates of the admiral, obtained permission 

 to transport the remains to Havana, in order that they might remain on 

 Spanish soil. With great solemnity and ceremony, what was believed 

 to be the coffin of Christopher Columbus was removed from the pres 

 bytery of the Santo Domingo cathedral, and, attended by a splendid 

 retinue of ecclesiastic and civil dignitaries, with a fleet of the Spanish 

 navy, was carried to Havana and there embedded in the walls of the 

 cathedral to the left of the altar. 



On the 14th of May, 1877, while the cathedral at Santo Domingo was 

 being restored, some workmen discovered, on the epistle side of the 

 altar, a metallic box. The archbishop was at once notified, and he 

 directed the box to be removed, in the presence of a number of officials. 



