ally owed to the aid
of the crown, and how much to private enterprise, in fitting out his
expeditions of discovery, cannot be definitely ascertained. How far he
was hindered by the bigotry, or helped by the enlightenment of powerful
ecclesiastics, as at the council of Salamanca, is a theme of perennial
controversy.

The island where he first landed is so far from being identified, that
many books have been written to prove the claims of this, that, or the
other gem of the sea to be the true land-fall of Columbus. His treatment
of the natives has been made the subject of unsparing denunciation and
of undiscriminating eulogy. His conduct toward his own, often mutinous,
crews is alternately lauded as humane and generous, or denounced as
arrogant and cruel, according to the sympathies or the point of view of
the critic. His imprisonment and attempted disgrace have been made the
theme of indignant comment and of extenuating apology. His moral
character and marital relations are subjects of irreconcilable
differences of judgment. His deep religious bias, so manifest in nearly
all his writings, has been praised as a mark of exalted merit by some
writers, and stigmatized by others as cant and superstition. The last
resting-place of his bones, even, is in doubt, which it required an
elaborate investigation by the Royal Academy of History of Madrid to
solve in favor of Havana, as against the cathedral of Santo Domingo;
though its report is still controverted, and M. A. Pinart has proved to
the satisfaction of many that a misprision took place and that the true
remains of Columbus still rest at Santo Domingo. The movement to
canonize the great discoverer has been championed with more zeal than
discretion by some over-ardent churchmen, while the too-evident human
frailties of the proposed candidate for the honors of sainthood have
inspired an abundant caution in the councils of the Vatican.

On a subject fraught with so much inherent difficulty, contradictory
evidence, and conflict of opinion, he is on the safest ground who
candidly holds his judgment in reserve. In the light of the
keenly-sifted evidence which modern critical study has brought to bear,
the laudatory judgments of Irving and Prescott, rendered sixty years
ago, cannot stand wholly approved.

Neither can a discerning reader accept the fulsome laudations of his
principal French biographer, Roselly de Lorgues, whose rhetorical
panegyrics and pious eulogies place its