[53] This motive is charitably imputed to him by Gaillard. (Rivalité, tom. iv. p. 311.) The same writer commends Ferdinand's _habilité_, in extricating himself from his embarrassments by the treaty, "auquel _il fit consentir_ Philippe dans leur entrevue"! p. 310.
[54] Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 7, cap. 10.--Mariana, Hist. de España, tom. ii. lib. 28, cap. 21.--Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 64.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 210.
[55] Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 7, cap. 10.--Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. 1. quinc. 3, dial. 9.
[56] Zurita, Anales, tom. vi. lib. 7, cap. 10.--See also the melancholy vaticinations of Martyr, (Opus Epist., epist. 311,) who seems to echo back the sentiments of his friends Tendilla and Talavera.
COLUMBUS.--HIS RETURN TO SPAIN.--HIS DEATH.
Return of Columbus from his Fourth Voyage.--His Illness.--Neglected by Ferdinand.--His Death.--His Person.--And Character.
While the events were passing, which occupy the beginning of the preceding chapter, Christopher Columbus returned from his fourth and last voyage. It had been one unbroken series of disappointment and disaster. After quitting Hispaniola, and being driven by storms nearly to the island of Cuba, he traversed the Gulf of Honduras, and coasted along the margin of the golden region, which had so long flitted before his fancy. The natives invited him to strike into its western depths in vain, and he pressed forward to the south, now solely occupied with the grand object of discovering a passage into the Indian Ocean. At length, after having with great difficulty advanced somewhat beyond the point of Nombre de Dios, he was compelled by the fury of the elements, and the murmurs of his men, to abandon the enterprise, and retrace his steps. He was subsequently defeated in an attempt to establish a colony on terra firma, by the ferocity of the natives; was wrecked on the island of Jamaica, where he was permitted to linger more than a year, through the malice of Ovando, the new governor of St. Domingo; and finally, having re-embarked with his shattered crew in a vessel freighted at at his own expense, was driven by a succession of terrible tempests across the ocean, until, on the 7th of November, 1504, he anchored in the little port of St. Lucar, twelve leagues from Seville. [1]