214 THE OCEAN RIVER 



his men, Columbus was rescued and returned to Spain. From 

 Jamaica he had sent a letter to King Ferdinand which shows 

 his state of mental and bodily weakness. It reads in part: '*I 

 came to serve your Highness at the age of twenty-eight, and 

 now I have no hair upon me that is not white, and my body 

 is infirm and exhausted. All that was left to me and my 

 brothers has been taken away and sold, even to the cloak that 

 I wore, to my great dishonor. The restitution of my honor and 

 losses, and the punishment of those who have inflicted them, 

 of those who plundered me of my pearls and who have dis- 

 paraged my Admiral's privileges, will redound to the honor 

 of your royal dignity. . . . Isolated in this pain, infirm, daily 

 expecting death, surrounded by a million savages full of cruelty 

 and thus separated from the holy sacraments of the holy 

 church, how neglected will be this soul if it here part from 

 the body. Weep for me, whoever has truth, charity and 

 justice." 



This letter did not much move the king — it did not smell 

 of success. Columbus spent the final few years of his life 

 harassing the court in vain for adequate recognition of his 

 services. His touchy temperament, his zeal for honor and 

 worldly position and wealth, estranged a king never too sym- 

 pathetic toward him. He died May 20th, 1506. Morison puts 

 it well and briefly: ''So died the man who had done more to 

 direct the course of history than any individual since Augustus 

 Caesar. Yet the life of the Admiral closed on a note of frus- 

 tration. He had not found the Strait, or met the Grand Khan, 

 or converted any great number of heathen, or regained Jeru- 

 salem. He had not even secured the future of his family. And 

 the significance of what he had done was only slightly less 

 obscure to him than to the chroniclers who neglected to record 

 his death, or to the courtiers who neglected to attend his 

 modest funeral at Valladolid. The vast extent and immense 

 resources of the Americas were but dimly seen, the mighty 



