cies made up to him; he
was to receive the arrears of his revenue; he was permitted to have
an agent who should see that he received his share in future. To this
agency he appointed Alonzo Sanchez de Carvajal, and the sovereigns gave
orders that this agent should be treated with respect.

Other preparations were made, so that Ovando might arrive with a strong
reinforcement for the colony. He sailed with thirty ships, the size of
these vessels ranging from one hundred and fifty Spanish toneles to one
bark of twenty-five. It will be remembered that the Spanish tonele is
larger by about ten per cent than our English ton. Twenty-five hundred
persons embarked as colonists in the vessels, and, for the first time,
men took their families with them.

Everything was done to give dignity to the appointment of Ovando, and
it was hoped that by sending out families of respectable character,
who were to be distributed in four towns, there might be a better
basis given to the settlement. This measure had been insisted upon by
Columbus.

This fleet put to sea on the thirteenth of February, 1502. It met, at
the very outset, a terrible storm, and one hundred and twenty of the
passengers were lost by the foundering of a ship. The impression was at
first given in Spain that the whole fleet had been lost; but this proved
to be a mistake. The others assembled at the Canaries, and arrived in
San Domingo on the fifteenth of April.

Columbus himself never lost confidence in his own star. He was sure that
he was divinely sent, and that his mission was to open the way to the
Indies, for the religious advancement of mankind. If Vasco de Gama had
discovered a shorter way than men knew before, Christopher Columbus
should discover one shorter still, and this discovery should tend to the
glory of God. It seemed to him that the simplest way in which he could
make men understand this, was to show that the Holy Sepulchre might, now
and thus, be recovered from the infidel.

Far from urging geographical curiosity as an object, he proposed rather
the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. That is, there was to be a new and
last crusade, and the money for this enterprise was to be furnished from
the gold of the farthest East. He was close at the door of this farthest
East; and as has been said, he believed that Cuba was the Ophir of
Solomon, and he supposed, that a very little farther voyaging would open
all the treasures which Marco Polo had described, and wo