Von Concelos, the historian of King John II., has given a graphic account of the discussion held before this council. The Bishop of Ceuta, the same important dignitary that had been a member of the committee of three, opposed this scheme in a cool and deliberate speech. The opposite side was presented by Dom Pedro de Meneses with so much eloquence and power that the impression he made quite surpassed that of the colder reasonings of the bishop. What followed was apparently prompted by a consciousness that the advocates of the scheme were likely to be successful. The bishop now proposed a very unworthy scheme. He asked that Columbus might be kept in suspense while a vessel should be secretly despatched by the king to discover whether there was any foundation for his theory. The king appears not to have been above the adoption of so base a proposition. Columbus was required to furnish for the consideration of the council a plan of his proposed voyage, together with the charts and maps with which he intended to guide his course. A small vessel was despatched, ostensibly to the Cape de Verde islands, but with private instructions to proceed on the route pointed out by Columbus. The officer had no heart in the enterprise, and it was a complete failure. Sailing westward for several days, they encountered storms, and the sailors, losing their courage, returned to ridicule the project as impossible. When these facts came to be known, they produced a very natural impression on the mind of Columbus. Disgusted with the treatment he had received from the Portuguese, he quitted Lisbon for Spain at a date which cannot be determined with precision, but probably in the latter part of the year 1484 or in the early part of 1485. His departure had to be secret, lest he should be detained either by the king or his creditors. Color is given to the supposition that he was under grave charges of some kind by the fact that King John, when, some years later, inviting him to return to Portugal, deemed it necessary to insure him “against arrest on account of any process, civil or criminal, that might be pending against him.” Now, in considering all these accounts, it is not difficult to imagine that in his efforts to promote his great schemes, Columbus had been kept in poverty. But the reasons for his leaving in secret, and even his movements on leaving Portugal, are involved in uncertainty.