"Santo Domingo, December 21, 1795. Joaquin Garcia. Friar Fernando, Archbishop of Santo Domingo. Gabriel de Aristizabal. Gregorio Savinon. Jose Francisco Hidalgo." The brief account of the remains when everything else was related with such detail leads to the logical conclusion that there was no epitaph on the vault and no inscription on the leaden plates found within. The Spanish judicial chronicler's habit of minute description would not have permitted the omission of such important particulars, if they had existed. The remains were transferred to Havana where their reception was even more solemn than their embarkation in Santo Domingo. On January 19, 1796, they were landed amid the booming of guns, conducted in state by the civil and military authorities and a large concourse to the plaza, and deposited on a magnificent bier in the shadow of the column erected where, according to tradition, the first mass was said in Havana and the first municipal council met. Here the ark was formally delivered to the Governor of Havana, who had it opened and its contents inspected, whereupon it was again closed and transferred with great pomp to the cathedral. The key was there delivered to the bishop and the remains deposited in a sepulchre with suitable bas-reliefs and inscriptions. The notarial narrative of the event goes into the most minute particulars, but the contents of the ark are merely described as "several leaden plates nearly a tercio in length, several small pieces of bone as of some deceased person, and some earth which seemed to be of that body." For over eighty years it was generally accepted in Santo Domingo, as throughout the world, that the bones of Columbus rested in the cathedral of Havana. There were, indeed, persons who handed down a tradition that the remains taken away by the Spaniards were not those of the great navigator and that these still remained under the altar platform in the Santo Domingo cathedral, but such persons were very few and no attention was paid to their allegations. Some Dominicans even called on the Spanish government to return the remains and let them be laid to rest in Dominican soil in accordance with the Discoverer's dying wish. In the meantime no one thought of the tombs of Diego Columbus or Louis Columbus, nor was it remembered that they were buried in the cathedral.