COLUMBUS
COLVER
show any feeling of brotherhood toward his fel-
loAsr men. He returned to Spain in the t^vo cara-
vels, the Santa Maria having been %\Tecked, and
after a stormy voyage the Xinn alone cast anchor
in the harbor of Tagus and reached Palos, March
15, 1493. The same day the Pinta, which had
parted company from the Nina days before,
reached port. His journey through Spain to
Barcelona was the triumjihal march of a hero,
and while his first expedition had cost him seven
years of tireless effort, his second was the spon-
taneous outpouring of ships, men and money to
an extent that embarras.sed the explorer, and his
success engendered a sjjirit of avarice and ambi-
tion for power before unnoticed in his character.
On Sept. 25, 1493, he sailed with seventeen ships
and 1700 men on his second voyage and made a
settlement in EspaSola, leaving it under charge
of his brother Bartholomew, after having estab-
lished a reign of terror which made huu gener-
ally hated by the Spaniards ; and of the natives
of the island, nearly one-third met an inhuman
death during the first two years. He discovered
the Windward islands, Porto Rico and Jamaica,
and returning reached Cadiz June 11, 1496,
under a cloud of criminating charges made by
his comiDanions of the expedition. The Francis-
cans who went to the island to establish the
church found the colonists enthusiastic over
their deliverance from the rule of Columbus, and
both the Benedictines and Dominicans gave sim-
ilar testimony of the inhumanity of the Spanish
admiral whose course caused the annihilation of
the native races of the Antilles. He was re-
ceived by the colonists with outsjioken opposi-
tion. The Spanish commissioners sent by the
king to investigate charges against him felt jus-
tified in putting both Columbus and his brother
in chains and sending them to Spain. It was
■during this return voyage that he is credited
with refusing to be relieved of his manacles with
the words, " No, I wiU wear them as a memento
of the gratitude of princes." The king dis-
claimed authorizing the arrest but was no doubt
dissatisfied with the small returns from the ex-
peditions, and while he released hini and allowed
him four caravels with which to continue his
explorations in the new-found archipelago, it
was only with the hope of the possible discovery
of the gold which was the object of his patron-
age. Columbus reached San Lucan, Nov. 7, 1504,
where he was detained several months. Sufl;er-
ing from sickness he returned to Sj^ain where his
claims were ignored by the king and he was
stripped of all honors and left to suffer for the
necessities of life. He died on Ascension day
in a small apartment of No. 7 Calle de Colon.
His remains were buried in the Franciscan con-
vent in Valladolid, afterward removed to the
convent of Los Cuevas, Seville, in 1536 were
taken thence with the remains of his son Diego
with extravagant ceremony, and finally reached
Santo Domingo about 1541 and were placed at the
right of the altar within the cathedral. In 1795
the Spanish authorities, acting with the Duke of
Veragua, determined to remove the remains to
Havana and they were presumably placed in the
cathedral of Havana with great pomp, although
there is no evidence to disprove the assertion
that the ashes removed and which found sepul-
chre in the cathedral of Havana were those of
his son Diego Colon. He died without knowing
the value or extent of his chance discovery. In
1892 the whole world joined with America and
Spain in the celebration of the 400th anniversary
of the landing of Columbus on American soil,
"the opening of the gates " of a new world to
civilization. The pomp of the occasion in New
York city was unprecedented in the history of
military and civic procession, and the presence of
exact reproduction of the caravels Santa Maria,
Pinta and Xina, built in Spain, transported across
the Atlantic over the route originally sailed by
Columbus and finally exhibited on the lake at
Chicago to the visitors at the Columbian exposi-
tion in 1893, created intense interest. See TTie
Life of Columbus by Washington Irving (1828),
and by Justin Winsor (1891). Columbus died in
Valladolid, Spain, May 20, 1506.
COLVER, Nathaniel, clergyman, was born in Orwell, Vt., May 10, 1794; son of the Rev. Nathan- iel Colver, a pioneer Baptist clergyman, who removed to Champlain, N.Y., where the son ac- quired his elementary education. In 1809 he removed with the family to West Stockbridge, Mass., where he studied for the ministry. He served churches at Clarendon, Vt. , and Fort Cov- ington, Kingsbury, Fort Ann and Union Village, N.Y. In 1839 he was called to Boston, Mass., where, with Timothy Gilbert, he organized the church afterward known as Tremont Temple. He labored in that church with a success unique in the history of the Boston pulpits until 1852, when he took charge of the church at South Abington. He was j^astor of the First Baptist church, Detroit, Mich., from 1853 until 1856, when he became pas- tor of the First church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and while in the latter citj' organized a class of young men and instructed them regularly in theology. He was pastor of the Tabernacle, afterward the Second Church, Chicago, 1861-67; founded in Richmond, Va., the Colver institute for educat- ing young colored men for the ministry, was its president from 1867 until 1870, when he returned to Chicago and made the beginning toward the organization of tlie Richmond theological semi- nary, in which he declined the chair of doctrinal theology, Denison university conferred upon
