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True Story of Christopher Columbus, Admiral; told for youngest readers by Elbridge Streeter Brooks
page 57 of 91 (62%)
all that he saw to the Bible stories he knew so well, and felt sure that
he had really discovered the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

He would gladly have sailed across the broad bay and up the great river
to explore this heavenly land; but he was ill with gout, he was nearly
blind from his sore eyes, his ships were shaky and leaky, and he felt
that he ought to hurry away to the city of Isabella where his brothers,
Bartholomew and Diego, were in charge of affairs and were, he knew,
anxiously waiting for him to come back.

So at last he turned away from the lovely land that he thought must
be Paradise and steered toward Hayti. On the nineteenth of August he
arrived off the coast of Hayti. He sent a messenger with news of his
arrival, and soon greeted his brother Bartholomew, who, when he heard of
the Admiral's arrival, sailed at once to meet him.

Bartholomew Columbus had a sad story to tell his brother Christopher.
Things had been going badly in Hayti, and the poor Admiral grew sicker
and sicker as he listened to what Bartholomew had to tell.

You have heard it said that there are black sheep in every flock. There
were black sheep in this colony of Columbus. There were lazy men and
discontented men and jealous men, and they made great trouble, both in
the city of Isabella and in the new town which Bartholomew bad built in
another part of the island and called Santo Domingo.

Such men are sure to make mischief, and these men in Hayti had made a
lot of it. Columbus had staid so long in Spain that these men began to
say that they knew he was certainly in trouble or disgrace there, that
the king and queen were angry with him, and that his offices of viceroy
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