nduras, great hardships were endured, but nothing approaching his
ideal was discovered. On the 12th of September Cape Gracias-a-Dios was
rounded. The men had become clamorous and insubordinate; not until the
5th of December, however, would he tack about and retrace his course. It
now became his intention to plant a colony on the river Veragua, which
was afterwards to give his descendants a title of nobility; but he had
hardly put about when he was caught in a storm, which lasted eight days,
wrenched and strained his crazy, worm-eaten ships severely, and finally,
on Epiphany Sunday 1503, blew him into an embouchure which he named
Belem or Bethlehem. Gold was very plentiful in this place, and here he
determined to found his settlement. By the end of March 1503 a number of
huts had been run up, and in these the _adelantado_ (Bartholomew
Columbus), with 80 men, was to remain, while Christopher returned to
Spain for men and supplies. Quarrels, however, arose with the natives;
the cacique was made prisoner, but escaped again; and before Columbus
could leave the coast he had to abandon a caravel, to take the settlers
on board, and to relinquish the enterprise of colonization. Steering
eastwards, he left a second caravel at Puerto Bello; he thence bore
northwards for Cuba, where he obtained supplies from the natives. From
Cuba he bore up for Jamaica, and there, in the harbour of San Gloria,
now St Ann's Bay, he ran his ships aground in a small inlet still called
Don Christopher's Cove (June 23rd, 1503).

The expedition was received with great kindness by the natives, and here
Columbus remained upwards of a year, awaiting the return of his
lieutenant Diego Mendez, whom he had despatched to Ovando for
assistance. During his critical sojourn here, the admiral suffered much
from disease and from the lawlessness of his followers, whose misconduct
had alienated the natives, and provoked them to withhold their
accustomed supplies, until he dexterously worked upon their
superstitions by prognosticating an eclipse. Two vessels having at last
arrived for his relief, Columbus left Jamaica on the 28th of June 1504,
and, after calling at Hispaniola, set sail for Spain on the 12th of
September. After a tempestuous voyage he landed once more at San Lucar
on the 7th of November 1504.

As he was too ill to go to court, his son Diego was sent thither in his
place, to look after his interests and transact his business. Letter
after letter follow