Considering all this, and considering that Columbus himself had admitted his "inexperience in government" to the queen, it is astonishing to learn that he was deeply hurt because she did not reinstate him instantly as ruler of the island! Experience had taught the great discoverer but little. At a moment when he should have fallen on his knees in thankfulness because he would never again have to be responsible for that colony of vicious men, he instead felt hurt! He wanted to return and start the whole sorry business over again. Moreover, he protested, as indeed he had been doing for years, because other navigators were imploring the monarchs to break their contract giving _him_ a monopoly of western exploration, and to allow them to undertake voyages, asking no government assistance whatsoever. Now was the time for him to say, "It is to Spain's interest that she send as many explorers as possible over to these new lands, in order that we may quickly determine how many islands there really are, and whether what I last visited was the mainland; only, pray let me hasten back free from every responsibility except that of a navigator; so that I, who so justly deserve the first chance of exploring the new lands, may get there ahead of these others who are clamoring to go." Had Columbus been businesslike enough to make this proposition to the monarchs, he need not have died in ignorance of the prodigious fact that he had discovered a great continent undreamed-of by Europeans. But, instead of renouncing his monopoly, he complained that licenses had been granted to others to sail west in violation of the agreement that he alone, and his descendants after him, should sail among the new lands. This attitude annoyed King Ferdinand exceedingly. For Columbus to hope to keep this monopoly in his own family was madness; as by this time other countries, having heard of his opening up the way, had sent out explorers to plant their standards. John and Sebastian Cabot had gone out from Bristol, England, to Newfoundland, and had discovered, in June, 1497, the North American continent before Columbus had touched South America. Early in 1499 one of the pilots who had accompanied Columbus on his Cuban trip secured a license, and not only explored the Central American coast for several hundred miles, but traded his European trifles and gewgaws with the natives for gold and silver, returning to Spain with real profits.