He nominated a council to manage the government during his absence, with
his brother Don Diego as president of it; he appointed a certain Don Pedro
Margarite as captain-general; and then put to sea on the 24th of April,
1494.



CHAPTER VII.

In the course of the voyage that then ensued, the admiral made many
important discoveries, amongst them Jamaica, and the cluster of little
islands called the "Garden of the Queen." The navigation amongst these
islands was so difficult, that the admiral is said to have been thirty-two
days without sleeping. Certain it is, that after he had left the island
called La Mona, and when he was approaching the island of San Juan, a
drowsiness, which Las Casas calls "pestilential," but which might
reasonably be attributed to the privations, cares, and anxieties which the
admiral had now undergone for many months, seized upon him, and entirely
deprived him for a time of the use of his senses.

The object in going to San Juan was to capture cannibals there, and Las
Casas looks upon this lethargical attack as a judgment upon the admiral
for so unjust a manner of endeavouring to introduce Christianity. The
mariners turned the fleet homewards to Isabella, where they arrived the
29th of September, 1494, bearing with them their helpless commander.


ILLNESS OF COLUMBUS.

On Columbus's arrival at Isabella, where he remained ill for five months,