This, however, was only a temporary resting-place; and a few years later
his body was formally interred in the choir of the monastery of Las
Cuevas at Seville, there to lie for thirty years surrounded by continual
chauntings. After that it was translated to the cathedral in San
Domingo; rested there for 250 years, and then, on the cession of that
part of the island to France, the body was removed to Cuba. But the
Admiral was by this time nothing but a box of bones and dust, as also
were brother Bartholomew and son Diego, and Diego's son, all collected
together in that place. There were various examinations of the
bone-boxes; one, supposed to be the Admiral's, was taken to Cuba and
solemnly buried there; and lately, after the conquest of the island in
the Spanish-American War, this box of bones was elaborately conveyed to
Seville, where it now rests.

But in the meanwhile the Chapter of the cathedral in San Domingo had made
new discoveries and examinations; had found another box of bones, which
bore to them authentic signs that the dust it contained was the Admiral's
and not his grandson's; and in spite of the Academy of History at Madrid,
it is indeed far from unlikely that the Admiral's dust does not lie in
Spain or Cuba, but in San Domingo still. Whole books have been written
about these boxes of bones; learned societies have argued about them,
experts have examined the bones and the boxes with microscopes; and
meantime the dust of Columbus, if we take the view that an error was
committed in the transference to Cuba, is not even collected all in one
box. A sacrilegious official acquired some of it when the boxes were
opened, and distributed it among various curiosity-hunters, who have
preserved it in caskets of crystal and silver. Thus a bit of him is worn
by an American lady in a crystal locket; a pinch of him lies
in a glass vial in a New York mansion; other pinches in the Lennox
Library, New York, in the Vatican, and in the University of Pavia. In