The journal of the admiral breaks off at this island, and he does not inform us of his course from thence to Isabella; but only, that while going from Mona to St John, the great fatigues he had undergone, together with his own weakness and the want of proper food, brought on a violent malady, between a pestilential fever and a lethargy, which presently deprived him of his senses and memory; whereupon, all the people in the three caravels resolved to desist from the design he had then in hand of discovering all the islands in the Caribbean sea, and returned to Isabella, where they arrived on the 29th of September, five days afterwards[21].  This heavy sickness lasted during five months, but it pleased GOD to restore him afterwards to health.  His illness was occasioned by the great sufferings he had gone through in this voyage, during which he had often not been able to sleep three hours in eight days, owing to the perilous nature of the navigation among innumerable islands and shoals; a degree of privation that seems almost impossible, were it not authenticated by himself and those who accompanied him.

On his return to Hispaniola, the admiral found there his brother Bartholomew Columbus whom he had sent, as formerly related, to treat with the king of England about the discovery of the Indies.  On his return to Spain with the grant of all his demands, he learned at Paris from Charles king of France, that his brother the admiral had already made the discovery, and the king supplied him with an hundred crowns to enable him to prosecute his journey into Spain.  He thereupon made all the haste he could to overtake the admiral in Spain; but on his arrival at Seville, he found that the admiral had gone out upon his second voyage with seventeen sail, as already related.  Wherefore, to fulfil the orders which his brother had left for him at the beginning of 1494, he went to the court of their Catholic majesties at Valadolid, carrying my brother Don James Columbus and me along with him, as we had been appointed to serve as pages to Prince John.  Immediately upon our arrival, their majesties sent for Don Bartholomew, and dispatched him with three ships to Hispaniola, where he served several years, as appears from the following memorandum which I found among his papers:  “I served as captain from the 14th April 1494, till the 12th of March 1498, when the admiral set out for Spain, and then I began to act as governor till the 24th of August 1498, when the admiral returned from the discovery of Paria; after which, I again served as captain till the 11th of December 1500, when I returned to Spain.”  On his return from Cuba, the admiral appointed his brother governor of the Indies; though controversies afterwards arose on this subject, as their majesties alleged that they had not given authority to the admiral to make any such appointment.  But to end this difference, their highnesses granted it a-new, under the title of adelantado, or lieutenant of the Indies, to my uncle Don Bartholomew.