He says, in a letter to his son written at this period, “I have not a roof over my head in Castile.  I have no place to eat nor to sleep excepting a tavern, and there I am often too poor to pay my scot.”  This passage has been quoted as if he were living as a beggar at this time, and the world has been asked to believe that a man who had a tenth of the revenue of the Indies due to him in some fashion, was actually living from hand to mouth from day to day.  But this is a mere absurdity of exaggeration.

Undoubtedly, he was frequently pressed for ready money.  He says to his son, in another letter, “I only live by borrowing.”  Still he had good credit with the Genoese bankers established in Andalusia.  In writing to his son he begs him to economize, but at the same time he acknowledges the receipt of bills of exchange and considerable sums of money.

In the month of December, there is a single transaction in Hispaniola which amounts to five thousand dollars of our money.  We must not, therefore, take literally his statement that he was too poor to pay for a night’s lodging.  On the other hand, it is observed in the correspondence that, on the fifteenth of April, 1505, the king ordered that everything which belonged to Columbus on account of his ten per cent should be carried to the royal treasury as a security for certain debts contracted by the Admiral.

The king had also given an order to the royal agent in Hispaniola that everything which he owned there should be sold.  All these details have been carefully brought together by Mr. Harrisse, who says truly that we cannot understand the last order.

When at last the official proceedings relating to the affairs in Jamaica arrived in Europe, Columbus made an effort to go to court.  A litter was provided for him, and all the preparations for his journey made.  But he was obliged once more by his weakness to give up this plan, and he could only write letters pressing his claim.  Of such letters the misfortune is, that the longer they are, and the more of the detail they give, the less likely are they to be read.  Columbus could only write at night; in the daytime he could not use his hands.

He took care to show Ferdinand that his interests had not been properly attended to in the islands.  He said that Ovando had been careless as to the king’s service, and he was not unwilling to let it be understood that his own administration had been based on a more intelligent policy than that of either of the men who followed him.

But he was now an old man.  He was unable to go to court in person.  He had not succeeded in that which he had sailed for—­a strait opening to the Southern Sea.  He had discovered new gold mines on the continent, but he had brought home but little treasure.  His answers from the court seemed to him formal and unsatisfactory.  At court, the stories of the Porras brothers were told on the one side, while Diego Mendez and Carvajal represented Columbus.