Enforced absence from the thing he has organised is a great test of
efficiency in any man. The world is full of men who can do things
themselves; but those who can organise from the industry of their men a
machine which will steadily perform the work whether the organiser is
absent or present are rare indeed. Columbus was one of the first class.
His own power and personality generally gave him some kind of mastery
over any circumstances in which he was immediately concerned; but let him
be absent for a little time, and his organisation went to pieces. No one
was better than he at conducting a one-man concern; and his conduct of
the first voyage, so long as he had his company under his immediate
command, was a model of efficiency. But when the material under his
command began to grow and to be divided into groups his life became a
succession of ups and downs. While he was settling and disciplining one
group mutiny and disorder would attack the other; and when he went to
attend to them, the first one immediately fell into confusion again. He
dealt with the discontent in Isabella, organising the better disposed
part of it in productive labour, and himself marching the malcontents
into something like discipline and order, leaving them at Saint Thomas,
as we have seen, usefully collecting gold. But while he was away the
people at Isabella had got themselves into trouble again, and when he
arrived there on the morning of March 29th he found the town in a
deplorable condition. The lake beside which the city had been built, and
which seemed so attractive and healthy a spot, turned out to be nothing
better than a fever trap. Drained from the malarial marshes, its sickly
exhalations soon produced an epidemic that incapacitated more than half
the colony and interrupted the building operations. The time of those
who were well was entirely occupied with the care of those who were sick,
and all productive work was at a standstill. The reeking virgin soil had