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 bark of twenty-five tons. The number of souls," he continues, "embarked in this fleet, was about twenty-five hundred, many of them persons of rank and distinction, with their families." But as the smaller craft were not adapted for a voyage across the Atlantic, and as the number of persons embarked would give eighty-three, on an average, to each vessel, which is a greater number than even the largest vessels could conveniently carry with their luggage, and the requisite stores of provisions and water for such a voyage, there is no doubt some error in the figures of Las Casas. It is more likely, especially as the vessels conveyed many persons of rank and distinction, that the smallest was one hundred, and the largest somewhere about three hundred tons burthen. This fleet, it would appear, did not arrive at Dominica until the 15th of April; and in a violent storm, which it encountered soon after leaving Spain, lost, according to the same authority, one of its number, with "one hundred and twenty persons" on board.

Age and care were rapidly reducing the otherwise strong frame of Columbus, when, on the 9th of May, 1502, he set sail from Cadiz in four small caravels on his fourth and last voyage of discovery. He was then about sixty-six years of age; but from the hardships he had encountered, and the mental sufferings he had undergone, his constitution was so much impaired, that he was more infirm than many men who were ten years his senior. In his brother, Don Bartholomew, and in his younger son, Fernando, he however found wise counsellors and able assistants, combined with sincere and affectionate sympathisers.