ur when Columbus
returned from his first voyage, but it was a popularity excited solely by
the promises of great wealth that Columbus was continually holding forth.
When those promises were not immediately fulfilled popular favour
subsided; and when the adventurers who had gone out to the new islands on
the strength of those promises had returned with shattered health and
empty pockets there was less chance than ever of the matter being
regarded in its proper light by the people of Spain. Columbus had either
found a gold mine or he had found nothing--that was the way in which the
matter was popularly regarded. Those who really understood the
significance of his discoveries and appreciated their scientific
importance did not merely stay at home in Spain and raise a clamour; they
went out in the Admiral's footsteps and continued the work that he had
begun. Even King Ferdinand, for all his cleverness, had never understood
the real lines on which the colony should have been developed. His eyes
were fixed upon Europe; he saw in the discoveries of Columbus a means
rather than an end; and looked to them simply as a source of revenue with
the help of which he could carry on his ambitious schemes. And when, as
other captains made voyages confirming and extending the work of
Columbus, he did begin to understand the significance of what had been
done, he realised too late that the Admiral had been given powers far in
excess of what was prudent or sensible.

During all the time that Columbus and his brothers were struggling with
the impossible situation at Espanola there was but one influence at work
in Spain, and that was entirely destructive to the Admiral. Every
caravel that came from the New World brought two things. It brought a
crowd of discontented colonists, many of whom had grave reasons for their
discontent; and it brought letters from the Admiral in which more and
more promises were held out, but in which also querulous complaints
against this and that person, and against the Spanish settlers generally,
were set forth at wearisome length. It is not remarkable that the people
of Spain, even those who were well disposed towards Columbus, began to
wonder if these two things were not cause and effect. The settlers may
have been a poor lot, but they were the material with which Columbus had
to deal; he had powers enough, Heaven knew, powers of life and death; and
the problem began to resolve itself in the minds of tho