1939-11-10 — Page 21

THE CHINA MAIL, NÓVEMBER 10, 1939. TO-DAY'S STRANGE STORY OF REAL PEOPLE

NO. 81-THE MYSTERY

OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

BY JOEL C. MATHEWS

The wealth of fact

given to

the

world by Christopher Columbus is exceeded only by the plethora of doubt which he left to posterity.

a

We can view him only through thick fog of mystery. Historians can- not agree as to when he was born, just when he died or where rest his bones--whether he was hero or im- poster, genius or lunatic.

The Archbishop Found A Well- Preserved Leaden Coffin.

bones, had, after all, remained in Santo Domingo, in conformity with his deathbed request.

There immediately arose, an inter- national hubbub, the Spaniards ac- cusing the archbishop and other dignitaries of the Santo Domingo Cathedral of being the "authors and accomplices of a pious fraud," and the archbishop replying with great heat hé could prove his claims.

Tourists through the West Indies saw two separate tombs of Columbus, one in Havana and one in Santo Do- mingo, until the evacuation of Havana, in 1898, when our authorities allowed the Spaniards to take their alleged bones of the discoverer to Seville. So pilgrims must now go to both Seville and Santo Domingo before being sure that they have visited the hallowed spot where lies burried the discoverer of America.

Some say his father was an honest,

After religious ceremonies held at industrious sheepcoinber, others that

the Cathedral of Santo Domingo on this paternal parent was an itinerant

March 19, 1939, and attended by the human bones and a bullet of peddler, a vagrant, a cheat and jug-years before.

lead, Santo Dominican President and В gler. We were taught in school that The new archbishop, poking his while upon the casket were found cer- delegation from the Congress of the Christopher was a genius far ahead arm into the dark, moldy hole and tain letters, interpreted as abbrevia- United States, the bones which the of his time, whose superhuman per-finding there a well-preserved leaden tions arranged to denote that Chris-New World now accepts as those of spicuity penetrated the secrets of case, summoned the President and topher Columbus and no other lay Columbus were taken out of the physics and geography. But his fel-Cabinet of Santo Domingo, as well within. So, it was immediately an- Cathedral crypt and photographed low-Italian, Cesare Lombroso, the as all of the other local dignitaries nounced that the remains taken to under airtight glass, preparatory to famous anthropologist, branded him and foreign consuls. In their presen- Havana in 1795 had not been those being entombed in the Columbus ce he had the leaden casket removed of Christopher, but of Diego Colum- Memorial Lighthouse on the harbour and inside were discovered dust, bus, and that the great admiral's of the Dominican capital.

con-

as a lunatic, who suffered from genital paranoia, fixed ideas and re- ligious illusions, who showed pro- nounced stigmata of degeration; "liar" and boaster," who was "given to cruelty," a "profound ignoramus," whose "overwhelming conceit" caus- ed him "to draw comparisons between himself and the Saviour," to an- nounce himself as the Lord's repre- sentative under divine commission to discover David's treasure and with those sinews of war recover the Holy Sepulchre, then rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem.

We used to learn that Columbus, in his wisdom, knew the earth to be a sphere, but savants who have care- fully studied him now say that he be- lieved our old spinning top to be pear-shaped (as good spinning tops should be), the stem or apex pointing toward heaven.

Over and over again we have pitied him in his martyrdom, endured only by virtue of his consciousness of

ז'

having rendered the world a great service. But authorities who have scrutinized him profoundly now hold that he never enjoyed even the knowledge that he had discovered America, and that his madness was so far advanced that he believed his prison to be a great palace.

The deepest of the many mysteries that veil this remarkable man relate to the final resting place of his bones. Once when their profanation was threatened, they were hidden away so very carefully that no one has since been able to locate them éx- actly. It was all on account of that bold rover of the seas, Sir Francis Drake, that they got mislaid. When he came sweeping down upon. Santo Domingo, in whose cathedral they lay, the archbishop ordered all of the tombs be covered with earth. Those were days of ease and indolence and no one troubled himself about un- covering Columbus tombs until after the last one who knew the secret of its location had sought his own final resting place.

So the remains of the discoverer re- mained forgotten until Spain ceded Santo Domingo to France. Then the of Duke of Veragua, a descendant Columbus, sent to the cathedral for his illustrious ancestor's ashes. After considerable searching about among musty tombs a small vault was opened and some

dust pieces of bone and found inside were placed in a case of gold and lead. A high Mass was said over them and they were trans- ferred to the Cathedral of Havana' that they might still repose on Spanish soil. No one doubted that these transplanted remains were those of Columbus until 1877, when, in the course of repairs back at their former resting place, the old Santo Domingo Cathedral, a vault was opened in the space adjoining that from which they had been taken by the Spaniards, 81

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