108 



humboldt's cuba. 



thy of the attention of the government. Since my 

 return to Europe a marble statue of Carlos III. lias 

 been erected in the extra-mural paseo. Its site had 

 been first selected for a monument to Columbus, 

 whose aslies were brought to Havana on the cession 

 of the Spanish part of St. Domingo to the French. 

 The remains of Hernan Cortes having been carried 

 during the same year (1796) from one church in 

 Mexico to another, there occurred the coincidence 

 of a re-interment at the same time, near the close of 

 the eighteenth century, of the two greatest of the 

 men who were made illustrious by the discovery 

 and conquest of America. 1 



1 " The line-of-battle ship, San Lorenzo, arrived at Havana on the 

 15th January, 1796, bearing, in a rich coffin, the venerated ashes of 

 Columbus. Generals Las Casas and Araoz and bishops Trespalacios 

 and Penalver received them on the shore, amid the entire garrison 

 formed for the occasion, and deposited them with solemn ceremo- 

 nials in their resting-place in the cathedral, in that humble niche 

 where they still repose." — Pezuela Ensayo Historico de Cuba, page 

 354. " The bones of Cortes were secretly removed from the church 

 of San Francisco with the permission of his excellency the arch- 

 bishop, on the 2d July, 1794, at eight o'clock in the evening, in the 

 carriage of the governor, the Marquis de Sierra Nevada, and were 

 placed in a vault made for this purpose in the church of Jesus of 

 Nazareth. The bones were deposited in a wooden coffin inclosed in 

 one of lead, being the same in which they came from Castilleja de la 

 Cuesta, near Seville. This was placed in another of crystal, with its 

 crossbars and plates of silver, and the remains were shrouded in a 



