the den of lions with notes on the current price of little girls and big
lumps of gold like the eggs of geese, hens, and pullets. He complains
that he is judged as a man would be judged who had been sent out to
govern a ready-made colony, and represents instead that he went out to
conquer a numerous and warlike people "whose custom and religion are very
contrary to ours, and who lived in rocks and mountains"; forgetting that
when it suited him for different purposes he described the natives as so
peaceable and unwarlike that a thousand of them would not stand against
one Christian, and that in any case he was sent out to create a
constitution and not merely to administer one. Very sore indeed is
Christopher as he reveals himself in this letter, appealing now to his
correspondent, now to the King and Queen, now to that God who is always
on the side of the complainant. "God our Lord is present with His
strength and wisdom, as of old, and always punishes in the end,
especially ingratitude and injuries." Not boastfulness and weakness, let
us hope, or our poor Admiral will come off badly.

CHAPTER II

CRISIS IN THE ADMIRAL'S LIFE

Columbus was not far wrong in his estimate of the effect likely to be
produced by his manacles, and when the ships of Villegio arrived at Cadiz
in October, the spectacle of an Admiral in chains produced a degree of
commiseration which must have exceeded his highest hopes. He was now in
his fiftieth year and of an extremely venerable appearance, his kindling
eye looking forth from under brows of white, his hair and beard
snow-white, his face lined and spiritualised with suffering and sorrow.
It must be remembered that before the Spanish people he had always
appeared in more or less state. They had not that intimacy with him, an
intimacy which perhaps brought contempt, which the people in Espanola
enjoyed; and in Spain, therefore, the contrast between his former
grandeur and this condition of shame and degradation was the more
striking. It was a fact that the people of Spain could not neglect. It
touched their sense of the dramatic and picturesque, touched their
hearts also perhaps--hearts quick to burn, quick to forget. They had
forgotten him before, now they burned with indignation at the picture of
this venerable and much-suffering man arriving in disgrace.

His letter to Dofia Juana, hastily despatched by him, probably through
the office of some friendly soul on board, immediatel