mercy of fickle and doubtful friends--these were the chief causes of the
Admiral's anxiety. All he said about himself was that "by my misfortune
the twenty years of service which I gave with so much fatigue and danger
have profited me so little that to-day I have in Castile no roof, and if
I wished to dine or sup or sleep I have only the tavern for my last
refuge, and for that, most of the time, I would be unable to pay the
score." Not cheerful reflections, these, to add to the pangs of acute
gout and the consuming anxieties of seamanship under such circumstances.
Dreadful to him, these things, but not dreadful to us; for they show us
an Admiral restored to his true temper and vocation, something of the old
sea hero breaking out in him at last through all these misfortunes, like
the sun through the hurrying clouds of a stormy afternoon.


Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured
before the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw
stretching before them to the southward a long coast of plain and
mountain which they were able to follow with a fair wind. Gradually the
sea went down; the current which had opposed them here aided them, and
they were able to recover a little from the terrible strain of the last
six weeks. The cape was called by Columbus 'Gracios de Dios'; and on the
16th of September they landed at the entrance to a river to take in
water. The boat which was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy
bar of the entrance, two men being drowned, and the river was given the
name of Rio de Desastre. They found a better anchorage, where they
rested for ten days, overhauled their stores, and had some intercourse
with the natives and exploration on shore. Some incidents occurred which
can best be described in the Admiral's own language as he recorded them
in his letter to the Sovereigns.