We only know that after a while he crossed
his hands peacefully on his breast and murmured, "Into thy hands, O
Lord, I commit my spirit." A moment later and the great Admiral passed
forth on his last voyage into the unknown.
The event on May 20, 1506, passed unheeded. A life had ended whose
results were more stupendous than those of any other human life ever
lived. Yet Valladolid took no notice of Columbus's death; neither did
Spain. The nation was too busy watching the men who had practical plans
for colonizing the new lands, and turning them into profit, to concern
itself with the death of the one brave soul who had found the path.
Indeed, Cristobal Colon was really forgotten before his death; yet he
was living on, as every great spirit lives on, in the ambitions of the
men who were endeavoring to push his work still further. When, a few
years after his death, Balboa first saw the Pacific stretching far, far
off to Asia, and when in another few years the whole globe had been
circumnavigated, from Spain back again to Spain, only then did the
vastness of Columbus's discovery begin to be appreciated. Europe at last
realized that, during all her centuries of civilization, when she had
thought herself mistress of the world, she had in fact known but half of
it.
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