Columbus made five voyages to the West in all, for the way once shown proved easy enough, nor did he need to ‘press’ crews for the enterprise, but rather to guard against unwelcome stowaways. The brown-skinned Indians, gaily coloured parrots, gold nuggets, and strange roots that he brought back as witness of his first success were enough to inflame the minds and ambitions of Spaniards with such high hopes of wealth and glory that they almost fought to be allowed to join the expeditions. Vasco da Gama was rewarded for his voyage to India with a large pension and the Portuguese title of ‘Dom’: he died in honoured old age. It is sad to find that after the first triumphant return, when no glory and praise seemed too great to bestow on their hero, the Spaniards turned against Columbus. They blamed him because gold was not more abundant; because his settlers quarrelled and started feuds with the natives; because, although a very great mariner, he did not prove a ‘governor’ able to control and manage other men easily. Not a few were jealous of his genius, and determined to bring about his ruin out of spite. From his third voyage to the West Columbus was sent back by his enemies in chains, ill with wounded pride at his shameful treatment. Queen Isabel, hearing of it, instantly ordered his release, and tried to soothe his indignation; but not long afterwards she herself died, and Ferdinand, left to himself, was wholly intent on Aragonese ambitions in the Mediterranean. To him the conquest of Naples was far more important than any discovery of Cathay, and so Columbus’s complaints went unheeded and he died in poverty forgotten by all save a few. ‘After twenty years of toil and peril,’ he exclaimed bitterly, as he was borne ashore from his last voyage, ‘I do not own even a roof in Spain.’ The New World to which he had won an entrance was given the name of another, namely, of a Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, who, sailing beyond the West Indies, reached the mainland. The effect of Columbus’s discovery upon the life of Europe was momentous. No longer the Atlantic lay like a grey wall between man and the Unknown. It had become a highway, not to Cathay but to a greater West, where were riches beyond all human dreaming, ready as a harvest for the enterprising and hardworking. The central road of mediaeval commerce had been the Mediterranean, the highway of the modern world was to be the Atlantic, and the commercial future of Europe lay not with the city republics of the South but with the nations of the North and West, with Portugal and Spain, with Flanders and England, that had lain upon the fringe of the Old World but stood at the very heart of the New. _Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._