These few items, then, compose practically the sum and substance of the knowledge which Columbus acquired of that land which was, second to only the continent, by far the most important of all his discoveries. They are few and meagre. It is indeed doubtful if history records an even approximately comparable instance of the disappearance of a numerous and capable people from a country of vast interest and importance, leaving behind them so few traces of themselves and so little information concerning them. For these things are not merely all that Columbus learned about Cuba. They are all that his successors learned and that the world has ever learned about Cuba as it existed prior to and at the time of the great discovery. Tobacco, hammocks, canoes, and the name of the island and the names of various places on it which have persisted in spite of the repeated attempts to substitute a new nomenclature; these are the world's memorials of pre-Columbian Cuba. The brief visits and superficial inspection which we have recorded were not, however, destined to be the full compass of the Discoverer's personal relationship to Cuba. While he did not again visit the island in life, nor give to it any of the attention which ampler knowledge would have shown him it deserved, his mortal remains were conveyed thither, and there remained for a considerable period; though by a strange fatality this fact, well authenticated as it is, has been persistently and elaborately disputed, until the tomb of Columbus has in the minds of many become almost as much a matter of speculation and uncertainty as the place of his birth. It was on Ascension Day, May 20, 1506, that Columbus died at Valladolid, in Spain, and there his body was laid to rest in the parish church of Santa Maria de la Antigua, a church of the Franciscan Fathers. The date of the first removal is unknown, and is much disputed. Some have placed it as late as the year 1513, while others, as the result of later and more assured research, declare it to have been within a year or two, or at most within three years, of his death. Of the new place of sepulture, however, there is no question. It was in a chapel of the Carthusian monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas, at Seville; where also, years afterward, were laid the remains of his son, Diego, who died at Montalban on February 23, 1526.