CHAP. II.]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
463
turn all things to his disadvantage, and felt the importance of being there in person to defeat their machinations : but his infirmi ties detained him at Seville. He made an attempt to set forth on the journey, but the severity of the winter and the virulence of his malady obliged him to relinquish it in despair. All that he could do was to reiterate his letters to the sovereigns, and to en treat the intervention of his few but faithful friends. He feared the disastrous occurrences of the last voyage might be represented to his prejudice. The great object of the expedition, the dis covery of a strait opening from the Caribbean to a southern sea, had failed. The secondary object, the acquisition of gold, had not been completed. He had discovered the gold mines of Ve ragua, it is true ; but he had brought home no treasure ; because, as he said, in one of his letters, “ I would not rob nor outrage the country ; since reason requires that it should be settled, and then the gold may be procured without violence." He was especially apprehensive that the violent scenes in the island of Jamaica might, by the perversity of his enemies, and the effrontery of the delinquents, be wrested into matters of accu sation against him, as had been the case with the rebellion of Roldan. Porras, the ringleader of the late faction, had been sent home by Ovando, to appear before the board of the Indies ; but without any written process, setting forth the offences charged against him. While at Jamaica, Columbus had ordered an inquest of the affair to be taken ; but the notary of the squadron who took it, and the papers which he drew up, were on board of the ship in which the admiral had sailed from Hispaniola, but which had put back dismasted. No cognizance of the case, there fore, was taken by the council of the Indies ; and Porras went at large, armed with the power and the disposition to do mischief.