It was executed in a bay at the extreme southwestern corner of Cuba.  It has been remarked by Munoz, that at that moment, in that place, a ship boy at the masthead could have looked over the group of low islands and seen the open sea, which would have shown that Cuba was an island.

The facts, which were controlling, were these, that the vessels were leaky and the crews sick and discontented.  On the thirteenth of June, Columbus stood to the southeast.  He discovered the island now known as the Island of Pines.  He called it Evangelista.  He anchored here and took in water.  In an interview, not unlike that described, in which the old Cuban expressed his desire to return with Columbus, it is said that an Evangelistan chief made the same offer, but was withheld by the remonstrances, of his wife and children.  A similar incident is reported in the visit to Jamaica, which soon followed.  Columbus made a careful examination of that island.  Then he crossed to Hispaniola, where, from the Indians, he received such accounts from the new town of Isabella as assured him that all was well there.

With his own indomitable zeal, he determined now to go to the Carib islands and administer to them the vengeance he had ready.  But his own frame was not strong enough for his will.  He sank exhausted, in a sort of lethargy.  The officers of his ship, supposing he was dying, put about the vessels and the little squadron arrived, none too soon as it proved, at Isabella.

He was as resolute as ever in his determination to crush the Caribs, and prevent their incursions upon those innocent islanders to whom he had made so many promises of protection.  But he fell ill, and for a short time at least was wholly unconscious.  The officers in command took occasion of his illness, and of their right to manage the vessels, to turn back to the city of Isabella.  He arrived there “as one half dead,” and his explorations and discoveries for this voyage were thus brought to an end.  To his great delight he found there his brother Bartholomew, whom he had not seen for eight years.  Bartholomew had accompanied Diaz in the famous voyage in which he discovered the Cape of Good Hope.  Returning to Europe in 1488 he had gone to England, with a message from Christopher Columbus, asking King Henry the Seventh to interest himself in the great adventure he proposed.

The authorities differ as to the reception which Henry gave to this great proposal.  Up to the present time, no notice has been found of his visit in the English archives.  The earliest notice of America, in the papers preserved there, is a note of a present of ten pounds “to hym that found the new land,” who was Cabot, after his first voyage.  Bartholomew Columbus was in England on the tenth of February, 1488; how much later is not known.  Returning from England he staid in France, in the service of Madama de Bourbon.  This was either Anne of Beaujeu, or the widow of the Admiral Louis de Bourbon.  Bartholomew was living in Paris when he heard of his brother’s great discovery.