United States or Afghanistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He dispatched canoes to Hispaniola, asking Ovando to send a ship to relieve him, but many months of suffering and difficulty elapsed before it came. Columbus returned to Spain in November 1504. Care and sorrow were destined to follow him; his finances were exhausted, and he was unable, from his infirmities, to go to court. The death of Isabella was a fatal blow to his fortunes.
I saw I saw I saw that there was some wisdom in King Ferdinand! The Governor's house that used to be the Viceroy's house. State state! They had cried out upon the Genoese's keeping it but Don Nicholas de Ovando kept more. While we waited in the antechamber I saw, out of window and the tail of my eye, files of soldiery go by.
Ovando listened to these men; indeed he must have been much inclined to believe them, or he would hardly have come all this way. He was now convinced that an insurrection was intended. The infantry, too, he caused to be ready for action. He himself, a Tiberius in dissembling, went to play at quoits, and was disturbed by his men coming to him and begging him to look on at their sports.
Had not this same Ovando refused to let you enter the harbor of San Domingo last year when the frightful hurricane was gathering? Yet that was what happened. Ovando, whose heart, if he ever had one, had shriveled to the size of a mustard grain, practically refused to send help. On hearing Mendez' tale he said he was sorry for the Admiral and his men, but he did not say he would send them a ship.
He was constantly made to feel that it was Ovando and not he who was the ruler there; and Ovando emphasised the difference between them by numerous acts of highhanded authority, some of them of a kind calculated to be extremely mortifying to the Admiral.
Escobar took the letter, returned to his vessel, and she made sail at once, leaving the starving Spaniards in dismay, to the same fate which hung over them before. Columbus tried to reassure them. He professed himself satisfied with the communications from Ovando, and told them that vessels large enough for them would soon arrive.
Other preparations were made, so that Ovando might arrive with a strong reinforcement for the colony. He sailed with thirty ships, the size of these vessels ranging from one hundred and fifty Spanish toneles to one bark of twenty-five. It will be remembered that the Spanish tonele is larger by about ten per cent than our English ton.
Putting a letter on board for the Admiral from Ovando, he then withdrew to a distance, and shouted out that he had been sent by the Governor to express his concern for the sufferings of Columbus, and his regret that he had no vessel of sufficient size to bring him off, but would send one as soon as possible.
Ovando was not merely appointed Governor of Espanola but of the whole of the new territory discovered in the west, his seat of government being San Domingo. He was given the necessary free hand in the matters of punishment, confiscation, and allotment of lands.
San Fernando de Monte Cristi, 196 miles northwest of Santo Domingo City, the capital of Monte Cristi province, was founded during the government of Ovando by sixty Spanish families, and after giving promise of prosperity decayed with the rest of the colony.
Word Of The Day