--stern, valiant, brotherly soul, whose devotion to Christopher must be
for ever remembered and honoured with the name of the Admiral.


From Segovia Columbus followed the Court to Salamanca and thence to
Valladolid, where his increasing illness kept him a prisoner after the
Court had left to greet Philip and Juana. He had been in attendance upon
it for nearly a year, and without any results: and now, as his infirmity
increased, he turned to the settling of his own affairs, and drawing up
of wills and codicils--all very elaborate and precise. In these
occupations his worldly affairs were duly rounded off; and on May 19,
1506, having finally ratified a will which he had made in Segovia a year
before, in which the descent of his honours was entailed upon Diego and
his heirs, or failing him Ferdinand and his heirs, or failing him
Bartholomew and his heirs, he turned to the settlement of his soul.

His illness had increased gradually but surely, and he must have known
that he was dying. He was not without friends, among them the faithful
Diego Mendez, his son Ferdinand, and a few others. His lodging was in a
small house in an unimportant street of Valladolid, now called the "Calle
de Colon"; the house, .No. 7, still standing, and to be seen by curious
eyes. As the end approached, the Admiral, who was being attended by
Franciscan monks, had himself clothed in a Franciscan habit; and so, on
the 20th May 1506, he lay upon his bed, breathing out his life.

. . . And as strange thoughts
Grow with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life too, Popes, Cardinals, and priests,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes