cisco de Bobadilla, a needy, passionate and vain-glorious knight, to investigate the affairs of the colony. He was armed with several letters, one of which, conferring on him the supreme command of the island, he was not to produce, unless the culpability of Columbus should be fully proved. CHAPTER XVI. RASH AND OPPRESSIVE CONDUCT OF BOBADILLA-COLUMBUS SENT HOME IN CHAINS-SENSATION AT THE SPANISH COURT-INJUSTICE OF FERDINAND-APPOINTMENT OF OVANDO. "Chains thy reward! beyond the Atlantic wave, BOBADILLA set sail in July, 1500, and on the 23d of the following month arrived at St. Domingo. As he entered the river, he beheld the body of a Spaniard hanging on a gibbet on either bank. He was also informed that several of the insurgents had suffered a similar fate, and that others were in prison awaiting their doom. He was naturally excited at this instance of severity, and his ears were soon filled with the complaints of the disaffected. He demanded the custody of the persons in confinement to be committed to himself; and Diego Columbus, who was in command, imprudently refusing compliance, afforded him an excuse for producing his full powers. With great pomposity, he read before the church the final missive of the sovereigns, and then, with a huge and motley array, proceeded to the fortress. Opposition was, of course, impossible; but this doughty commander, provided with scaling ladders, attacked the prison with great fury. The doors flew open before his blows, the few officers in charge of the building making no resistance; and he took possession of the prisoners with great show of importance. He followed up this step by occupying the house of the absent viceroy and seizing on all his property; and, in short, conducted himself with all the insolence and rapacity which might be expected from a man of his character, whose elevation to office was dependant on his assertion of the guilt of his predecessor. The latter, who was at a distance, on hearing these tidings, could scarcely credit that the sovereigns had authorized acts of such injustice and ingratitude. He supposed Bobadilla to have greatly exceeded his powers, and wrote a letter cautioning him against the rash edicts which the latter, to secure popularity, had already issued. The reply was a peremptory command, backed by the mandate of the sovereigns, to appear before his rival at St. Domingo. On receiving this decisive intimation of the ingratitude of the court, he hesitated no longer, but set out for St. Domingo, and, travelling in a lonely manner, presented himself before the intruder. Bobadilla, swelling with importance, and aware that the presumption of the admiral's guilt was necessary to his own justification, at once ordered him to be put into irons; but such was the awe inspired by his age, his dignity, and his great name, that even among the hardened wretches who were his accusers, it was difficult to find one who would perform the infamous task. He submitted to the indignity with the calm endurance of a great mind. The malice of his oppressors could excite no expression of anger or impatience. "Columbus," says his distinguished biographer, "could not stoop to depre cate the arrogance of a weak and violent man like Bobadilla. He looked beyond this shallow agent and all his petty tyranny, to the sovereigns who employed him. It was their injustice, and their ingratitude alone that could wound his spirit; and he felt assured that when the truth came to be known, they would blush to find how greatly they had wronged him.” His brothers shared a similar fate, and all were separately confined on board of vessels, and were kept in entire ignorance of the nature of their accusation or of the evidence which was industriously collected against them. Every species of complaint found a ready market with the new governor, who knew that his own justification must depend upon the convic tion of the accused; and the imprisoned commanders were held responsible for every abuse which had been committed on the island, and even for the excesses of the insurgent faction, which now, by an alliance natural enough, was in close league. with Bobadilla. The most ridiculous charges were trumped up against the admiral, for an accusation of him was the surest mode of securing the favor of his supplanter. In October, 1500, this illustrious man was sent from the world which he had discovered, manacled like a common felon. Villejo, a man of honorable feelings, who had charge of the prisoners, after the vessel was out to sea, would have taken off his irons; but the admiral proudly and gravely refused. "Their majesties," he said, "commanded me by letter to submit to whatever Bobadilla should order in their name; by their authority he has put upon me these chains: I will wear them until they shall order them to be taken off, and I will preserve them afterwards as relics and memorials of the reward of my services." This striking resolution, the offspring of a deeplywounded and indignant heart, he religiously fulfilled; the chains were always seen hanging in his cabinet; and he charged that they should be buried with him when he died. On his arrival at Cadiz, and the publication of these circumstances, the Spanish nation experienced a universal shock of shame and indignation. The court, which probably had not contemplated such results, hastened to rescue itself from obloquy and to make ostentatious amends for its injustice. The sovereigns wrote to him, deploring the unhappy event of their mission, and making provision for his honorable appearance at court. He appeared before them at Granada with much state and dignity, and met with the most favorable and distinguished reception. Hitherto his soul, steeled by hardship and experience, had showed itself unmoved by prosperity or adversity; but when he beheld tears in the eyes of Isabella, his feelings utterly overcame him, and he threw himself on his knees before her, unable to speak from the excess of his weers ing and emotion. Being reassured by the kindest expressions, he recovered his self-command, and eloquently vindicated his character and the justice of his administration. He had already, in a letter to a friend at the court, explained the injustice of his treatment. "I have been much aggrieved," he had written, "that a person should be sent out to investigate my conduct, who knew that if the inquest sent home should be of a grave nature, he would remain in the government. *****. I have been judged as a governor who had been sent to take charge of a well-regulated city, under the dominion of long-established laws, where there was no danger of every thing running to disorder and ruin; but I ought to be judged as a captain, sent to subdue a numerous and hostile people, of manners and religion opposite to ours, living, not in regular towns, but in forests and mountains. It ought to be considered that I have brought all these under subjection to their majesties, giving them dominion over another world, by which Spain, heretofore poor, has suddenly become rich. Whatever errors I may have fallen into, they were not with an evil intention." His patrons expressed high indignation against the conduct of Bobadilla, which they entirely disavowed; and promised that he should forthwith be dismissed from office, assuring Columbus of his speedy restitution in all his honors and privileges. But he was doomed, during the brief remainder of his life, to experience, with continual disappointment, the fickle and faithless nature that is too generally the attribute of crowned heads. It is probable that Ferdinand never intended to fulfil his engagements. The daily-increasing evidence of the grandeur and extent of the new discoveries, had aroused his jealousy against the dangerous powers which, according to covenant, he had bestowed on the great admiral. Many expeditions of a private nature had been made, all tending to prove the vast extent of the newly-found continent. One Niño, a pilot of Columbus, in a little caravel of fifty tons, had coasted a considerable distance along the northern shore of South America, and had returned richly freighted with pearls and gold (1499). Vicente Pinzon, in January, 1500, crossing the line, had landed at Cape St. Augustine, in the Brazils, and had discovered the great river Amazon. Diego de Lepe, immediately afterwards, had explored a great tract of coast, and had ascertained that, below Cape St. Augustine, it ran to the south-west. The expedition of Sebastian Cabot, under Henry VII. of England, in 1497, had proved the existence of a great tract to the northward; and Alvarez de Cabral, a Portuguese admiral, in 1500, on his route around Africa, had accidentally fallen on the Brazils. These vast discoveries were, however, as yet, generally regarded as different portions of the coast of Asia. Such evidences of the importance of the new acquisitions were quite sufficient to cause the resolve of the selfish and jealous monarch that Columbus should never again hold the high office of which he had been so opportunely deprived. His task had been performed, and the only question was, how to evade with decency the performance of the contracts which assured him of his reward. The king therefore amused him. by promises, but adduced specious reasons against his immediate reassumption of authority. Since he was at present unpopular on the island, it would be for his interest for a while to remain absent. Meanwhile, some officer of repute should replace Bobadilla, and arrange the troubled affairs of the colony. At the end of two years, it was promised he should be fully reinstated. With this treacherous assurance he was compelled to appear satisfied. Nicholas de Ovando, a man of some reputation and of agreeable manners, but ambitious, ungenerous, and cruel in the extreme, was now appointed to the supreme government of the islands and the newly-discovered Terra Firma. Interference of some kind was much needed, for the affairs of the island, under the reckless administration of Bobadilla, were in a shameful condition. To secure popularity, he had allowed the colonists to indulge in great excesses; and these wretches, many of them convicts and criminals, exercised the most fright |