When Columbus arrived, at the end of August, at the island of Española, where he intended to recruit his failing health, he found the colonists rebelling against the authority of his brother Bartolomé, whom he had left there as adelantado, or lieutenant-governor, when he sailed for Spain in 1496. Columbus at once took steps to put an end to the sedition. Meanwhile complaints were sent to their Spanish majesties, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who, to adjust the differences existing between the two contending factions, sent Francisco de Bobadilla to Española to discover the cause of the insurrection and to punish by fine and imprisonment those whom he should find culpable. Summoning the admiral to appear before him at San Domingo, he, as soon as Columbus arrived, ordered him to be put in irons and to be confined in the fortress. Having drawn up certain charges against Columbus, he sent him in chains to Spain. About the middle of November, 1500, the vessel arrived at Cadiz. When the news of Columbus’s humiliation at the hands of Bobadilla became known, the people everywhere censured the latter for the unwarranted abasement of the distinguished discoverer. The king and queen immediately sent orders for Columbus to be set at liberty, and afterward received him with many gracious acknowledgments of his important services, and publicly declared that Bobadilla should account to them for his ill treatment.[205] When the information contained in Columbus’s letter respecting the large and valuable pearls possessed by the people of Paria became known in Spain a number of capitalists immediately fitted out a fleet to go to the Land of Pearls. The command of the vessels was given to Alonso de Hojeda, who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. The cosmographer, Juan de la Cosa, and Amerigo Vespucci went with Hojeda. Vespucci, in his account of the voyage, says: “We departed from the port of Cadiz, three ships in company, on the sixteenth day of May, 1499.... In forty-four days we arrived at a new land, which we judged to be main-land, and the continuation of that previously mentioned. It lay in the torrid zone south of the equator, where the south pole is elevated five degrees.” They sailed from their first place of anchorage and ran southeastwardly along the coast forty leagues. The strong currents running from the southeast to the northwest hindered the progress of the vessels so much that the explorers determined to change their course and to sail to the northwest. Following the trend of the coast in this direction, they, after sailing some time, reached a beautiful bay, at the entrance of which was a large island. About eighty leagues beyond this harbor they entered another, where they went on land and obtained one hundred and fifty pearls and some gold from the friendly natives. At another place the inhabitants of the country “had their cheeks stuffed with a green herb which they were continually chewing as animals chew their cud, so