roaching his ideal
was discovered. On September 13th Cape Gracias-a-Dios was sighted. The
men had become clamorous and insubordinate; not until December 5th,
however, would he tack about and retrace his course. It now became his
intention to plant a colony on the River Veragua, which was afterward 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 the
Epiphany, blew him into an embouchure, which he named 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, with eighty men, was to remain, while
Columbus returned to Spain for men and supplies. Quarrels, however,
arose with the natives, the adelantado made an attempt to seize on the
person of the cacique and failed, and before Columbus could leave the
coast he had to abandon a caravel to take the settlers on board, and to
relinquish the enterprise. Steering eastward he left a second caravel at
Porto Bello, and on May 31st he bore northward for Cuba, where he
obtained supplies from the natives. From Cuba he bore up for Jamaica,
and there, in the harbor of Santa Gloria, now St. Anne's Bay, he ran his
ships aground in a small inlet called Don Christopher's Cove.

The expedition was received with the greatest kindness by the natives,
and here Columbus remained upward of a year awaiting the return of his
lieutenant Diego Mendez, whom he had dispatched 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 their relief from Mendez and Ovando, Columbus set sail for
Spain, after a tempestuous voyage landing once more at Seville on
September 7, 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 followed the young man from Seville, one by the hands of
Amerigo Vespucci. A license to ride on mule-back was granted him on
February 23, 1505;[11] and in the following May he was removed to the