Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/672

 simple justice at their hands, remained unanswered; and the discoverer of a New World, who had adorned the crown of Spain with by far its brightest jewels, broken down by infirmities, lay despised and impoverished in the city of Seville. This extraordinary conduct on the part of the sovereigns of Spain is, however, in some measure accounted for by the fact that Isabella lay dangerously ill, of an illness from which she never recovered; while the cold-hearted Ferdinand, instigated no doubt by the enemies of Columbus, treated all his applications, if he ever read them, with indifference.

During the remainder of the winter, and a part of the spring, Columbus was detained by painful illness at Seville, and when in May, 1505, he was able to be removed to Segovia, where the court then sat, Ferdinand had lost sight of all his past services, in what appeared to him the inconvenience of his present demands, though receiving the once courted navigator with many professions of kindness. Months were however spent in unavailing attendance upon the court. In the meantime his cares and sorrows were fast drawing to a close. He had for some time felt that he was dying, and having arranged as best he could his worldly affairs, he resigned himself into the hands of that great God whom he had worshipped with the same sincerity in his hours of triumph as he had done in the time of his deep adversity. On the day of Ascension, the 20th of May, 1506, being about seventy years of age, Christopher Columbus, who had done so much without reward, and suffered so much without upbraiding, passed silently away to, I doubt not, a better and a happier world.