in which he had borne the principal part, and also enshrined his devotion to the name and family of Columbus.  His demands for himself were very modest, although there is reason to fear that they were never properly fulfilled.  He was curiously anxious to be remembered chiefly by his plucky canoe voyage; and in giving directions for his tomb, and ordering that a stone should be placed over his remains, he wrote:  “In the centre of the said stone let a canoe be carved, which is a piece of wood hollowed out in which the Indians navigate, because in such a boat I navigated three hundred leagues, and let some letters be placed above it saying:  Canoa.”  The epitaph that he chose for himself was in the following sense: 

Here lies the Honourable Gentleman

DiegoMendez

He greatly served the royal crown of Spain in
the discovery and conquest of the Indies with
the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus of
glorious memory who discovered them, and
afterwards by himself, with his own ships,
at his own expense. 
He died, etc. 
He begs from charity a paternoster
and an Ave Maria.

Surely he deserves them, if ever an honourable gentleman did.

CHAPTER VII

THE HERITAGE OF HATRED

Although the journey from Jamaica to Espanola had been accomplished in four days by Mendez in his canoe, the caravels conveying the party rescued from Puerto Santa Gloria were seven weary weeks on this short voyage; a strong north-west wind combining with the west-going current to make their progress to the north-west impossible for weeks at a time.  It was not until the 13th of August 1503 that they anchored in the harbour of San Domingo, and Columbus once more set foot, after an absence of more than two years, on the territory from the governorship of which he had been deposed.

He was well enough received by Ovando, who came down in state to meet him, lodged him in his own house, and saw that he was treated with the distinction suitable to his high station.  The Spanish colony, moreover, seemed to have made something of a hero of Columbus during his long absence, and they received him with enthusiasm.  But his satisfaction in being in San Domingo ended with that.  He was constantly made to feel that it was Ovando and not he who was the ruler there;—­and Ovando emphasised the difference between them by numerous acts of highhanded authority, some of them of a kind calculated to be extremely mortifying to the Admiral.  Among these things he insisted upon releasing Porras, whom Columbus had confined in chains; and he talked of punishing those faithful followers of Columbus who had taken part in the battle between Bartholomew and the rebels, because in this fight some of the followers of Porras had been killed.  Acts like these produced weary bickerings and arguments between Ovando and Columbus,