The proverb, “Fear old age, for it does not come alone,” was especially applicable to Columbus, while suffering sickness without the elasticity to bear it, poverty with high station and debt, and all the delay of suitorship, not at the beginning, but at the close, of a career.  A similar decline of fortune is to be seen in the lives of many men; of those, too, who have been most adventurous and successful in their prime.  Their fortunes grow old and feeble with themselves; and those clouds, which were but white and scattered during the vigour of the day, sink down together, stormful and massive, in huge black lines, across the setting sun.

  Death of Columbus

Shortly after the arrival of Philip and his queen in Spain, Columbus had written to their Highnesses, deploring his inability to come to them, through illness, and saying that, notwithstanding his pitiless disease (the gout), he could yet do them service the like of which had not been seen.  Perhaps he meant service in the way of good advice touching the administration of the Indies; perhaps, for he was of an indomitable spirit, that he could yet make more voyages of discovery.  But there was then only left for him that voyage in which the peasant who has seen but the little district round his home, and the great travellers in thought and deed, are alike to find themselves upon the unknown waters of further life.  Looked at in this way, what a great discoverer each of us is to be!  But we must not linger too long, even at the deathbed of a hero.  Having received all the sacraments of the Church, and uttering as his last words, “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum,” Columbus died, at Valladolid, on Ascension Day, the 20th of May, 1506.  His remains were carried to Seville and buried in the monastery of Las Cuevas; afterwards they were removed to the cathedral at St. Domingo; and, in modern times, were taken to the cathedral at Havana, where they now rest.

THE END.

CHISWICK PRESS:—­CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.  TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.