s much disputed. Some have placed
it as late as the year 1513, while others, as the result of later and
more assured research, declare it to have been within a year or two, or
at most within three years, of his death. Of the new place of sepulture,
however, there is no question. It was in a chapel of the Carthusian
monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas, at Seville; where also, years
afterward, were laid the remains of his son, Diego, who died at
Montalban on February 23, 1526.

But as in life, so in death Columbus must needs be a wanderer. In 1542
the city of Santo Domingo, the capital of that island colony of
Hispaniola to which Columbus's chief attention had been given, demanded
to be made the repository of the body of its founder. Accordingly,
Charles I decreed the removal, and the bodies of Christopher Columbus
and his son Diego were both transferred from Seville to a double tomb in
the cathedral of Santo Domingo, hard by the fortress in which the
Discoverer had once been confined by Bobadilla as a prisoner. Thus far
the record was and is clear; and for two and a half centuries the tomb
remained inviolate. Indeed, it was so little meddled with that its
precise location became a matter of doubt, save that it was somewhere
"in the main sanctuary" of the cathedral.

The first attempt to determine it was made about 1783 by the French
politician and writer, Moreau de Saint-Mery, a kinsman of the Empress
Josephine and a member of the Colonial Council of Santo Domingo.
Diligent inquiry, without actual exhumation, resulted in the information
that the remains of Christopher Columbus, enclosed first in a leaden
casket and then in a massive coffin of stone, lay underneath the Gospel
side of the sanctuary, and that those of his brother, Bartholomew
Columbus, similarly enclosed, lay underneath the Epistle side. This was
contrary, in one respect, to the understanding of years before, which
was that it was the body of Columbus's grandson Luis which lay under the
Epistle side of the sanctuary. The problem was complicated by the fact
that the cathedral had been so remodelled that the tomb of Columbus was
underneath its wall, where actual examination was difficult; and in fact
no exhumation was then attempted.

In 1795, however, the island was transferred to French sovereignty, and
the Spanish governor, on relinquishing his rule, requested permission to
remove the remains of Columbus to Havana, Cuba, in order that they might
cont