II. 468 PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY. PART lumbus, made the vicerojalty of the New World a tempting bait for the avarice and ambition of the most potent grandee. They artfully endeavoured, therefore, to undermine the admiral's credit with the sovereigns, by raising in their minds suspicions of his integrity, founded not merely on vague re- ports, but on letters received from the colony, charging him with disloyalty, with appropriating to his own use the revenues of the island, and with the design of erecting an independent government for himself.^^ Whatever weight these absurd charges may have had with Ferdinand, they had no power to shake the queen's confidence in Columbus, or lead her to suspect his loyalty for a moment. But the long- continued distractions of the colony made her feel a natural distrust of his capacity to govern it, whether from the jealousy entertained of him as a foreigner, or from some inherent deficiency in his own character. These doubts were mingled, it is true, with sterner feelings towards the admiral, on the arrival, at this juncture, of several of the rebels that he and his brother, who were ^9 Benzoni, Novi Orbis Hist., lib. then pages to the queen, could not 1, cap. 12. — National feeling op- stir out into the courtyard of the erated, no doubt, as well as avarice Alhambra, without being followed to sharpen the tooth of slander by fifty of these vagabonds, who against the admiral. " .^gre mul- insulted them in the grossest man- ti patiuntur," says Columbus's ner, " as the sons of the adventur- countryman, with honest warmth, er, who had led so many brave " peregrin um hominem, et quidem Spanish hidalgos to seek their e nostra Italia ortum, tantum hon- graves in the land of vanity and oris ac gloria? consequuluni, ul non delusion which he had found out." tantum Hispanica; gentis, sed et Hist, del Almirante, cap. 85. cujusvis allerius homines superave- rii." Benzoni, lib. l,cap. 5.
