COL 4 



Columbus, approached his prisoner, immediately after they had 

 "•-"V— quitted the island, with feelings of the highest venera- 

 tion and the deepest regret, and offered to release him 

 from the fetters with which he was bound. " No," 

 said Columbus, in a burst of generous indignation, " I 

 wear those irons in consequence of an order from their 

 majesties the rulers of Spain. They shall find me as 

 obedient to this, as to their other injunctions. By their 

 command I have been confined, and their command 

 alone shall set me at liberty." He never forgot the un- 

 just and shameful treatment which he had received. 

 Through the whole of his after life he carried the fetters 

 with him wherever he went, as a memorial of the in- 

 gratitude of his country : he hung them up in his cham- 

 ber, and at last gave orders that they should be buried 

 with him in his grave. 



Upon the arrival of Columbus in Spain, a prisoner 

 and in fetters, the indignation of all men was highly 

 excited, and Ferdinand himself, cold and distant and 

 haughty as he was, felt, for a while, the emotions of 

 shame. He ordered Columbus into his presence, dis- 

 claimed all knowledge of his imprisonment, and sooth- 

 ed him with kind words and promises. But after de- 

 taining him at court for a long time in fatiguing attend- 

 ance and fruitless solicitation, he appointed Nicholas de 

 Ovando, a knight of the order of Alcantara, governor 

 of Hispaniola in his stead. Such was the reward which 

 Columbus received, for having devised and carried on 

 to a successful issue, the most noble enterprise which 

 has ever entered into the mind of man ; and such is 

 the account which impartial history is constrained to 

 give of the justice and the gratitude of kings ! 



But though unwilling to restore Columbus to his 

 place and the honours connected with it, Ferdinand and 

 Isabella were still desirous to employ him in new en- 

 terprises by sea. He made in all four voyages to the 



COM 



western continent. He discovered the main land of Coiumbus 

 America, and sailed along the coast from Cape Gracios II 



a Dios to the harbour of Portobello. It was in the Comedy. 

 neighbourhood of the place last mentioned, that he ' """ 



gained, for a time, an astonishing command over the 

 Indians by predicting an eclipse of the moon. At 

 length, after a considerable variety of fortune, he re- 

 turned to Spain ; and worn out with many years, and 

 fatigue, and disappointment, and sorrow, he died at 

 Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506. His funeral, by 

 the orders of Philip, who ascended about this time the 

 throne of Castile, was extremely magnificent, and the 

 following inscription was engraven upon his tomb : 

 A Castilia ya Leon 



NuEVO MUNDO, DIO COLON. 



See Herrera's Gen. Hist. dec. 1. lib. iv. c. 7 ; Life of 

 Columbus, Churchill's Voyages, vol. ii. ; Aikin's Bio- 

 graphical Dictionary, article Columbus ; and Robertson'* 

 America, vol. 1. (h) 



COLUMELLIA. See Botany, p. 92, 300. 



COLUMN. See Civil Architecture. 



COLUMNEA, a genus of plants of the class Didy- 

 namia, and order Angiospermia. See Botany, p. 250. 



COLURES. See Geography. 



COLUTE A, a genus of plants of the class Diadelphia # 

 and order Decandria. See Botany, p. 276". 



COMA Berenice's. See Astronomy, p. 750. 



COMARUM,agenus of plants of the class Icosandria,, 

 and order Polygynia. See Botany, p. 232. 



COMASPERMUM, a genus of plants of the class Dia- 

 delphia, and order Octandria. See Botany, p. 285. 



COMBRETUM, a genus of plants of the class Oc- 

 tandria, and order Monogynia. See Botany, p. 199- 



COMBUSTION. See Burning Instruments, and 

 Chemistry. 



COMEDY. See Drama. 



COMETS. 



oi" comets 



Comets. In the article Astronomy, Vol. II. pp. 674. 695, 814, 

 «-»— v ~'»»' we have already treated of the subject of comets, and 

 we shall now lay before our readers such further infor- 

 mation as may appear necessary upon this important 

 subject. 

 Oneral When examined through a good telescope, a comet 



phenomena resembles a mass of aqueous vapours encircling an 

 opaque nucleus of different degrees of darkness in dif- 

 ferent comets, though sometimes, as in the case of se- 

 veral discovered by Dr Herschel, no nucleus can be seen. 

 As the comet advances towards the sun, its faint and ne- 

 bulous lfght becomes more brilliant, and its luminous 

 train gradually increases in length. When it reaches its 

 perihelion, the intensity of its light, and the length of 

 its tail, reach their maximum, and sometimes it shines 

 with all the splendour of Venus. During its retreat 

 from the perihelion, it is shorn of its splendour, it gra- 

 dually resumes its nebulous appearance, and its tail de- 

 creases in magnitude till it reaches such a distance 

 from the earth, that the attenuated light of the sun, 

 which it reflects, ceases to make an impression on the 

 organ of sight. Traversing unseen the remote portion 

 of its orbit, the comet wheels its ethereal course far be- 

 yond the limits of our system. What region it there 

 visits, or upon what destination it is sent, the limited 

 powers of man are unable to discover. After the lapse 

 ef years, we perceive it again returning to our system, 



and tracing a portion of the same orbit round the sun, Comets, 

 which it had formerly described. v """"~\''~ w » 



It would be a waste of time to detail the various Opinions 

 wild and extravagant opinions which have been enter- respecting 

 tained respecting these interesting stars. During the comets, 

 ages of barbarism and superstition, they were regarded 

 as the harbingers of awfid convulsions, both in the po- 

 litical and in the physical world. Wars, pestilence, and 

 famine, the dethronement of kings, the fall of nations, 

 and the more alarming convulsions of the globe, were 

 the dreadful evils which they presented to the diseased 

 and terrified imaginations of men. As the light of 

 knowledge dissipated these gloomy apprehensions, the 

 absurdities of licentious speculation supplied their place, 

 and all the ingenuity of conjecture was exhausted in 

 assigning some rational office to these wandering pla- 

 nets. Even at the beginning of the 18th century, the 

 friend and companion of Newton regarded them as the 

 abode of the damned. Anxious to know more than 

 what is revealed, the fancy of speculative theologians 

 strove to discover the frightful regions in which vice 

 was to suffer its merited punishment ; and the interior 

 caverns of the earth had, in general, been regarded as 

 the awful prison-house in which the Almighty was to 

 dispense the severities of justice. Mr Whiston, how- 

 ever, outstripped all his predecessors in fertility of in- 

 vention. He pretended not only to fix the residence 



