COLUMBUS'S REMAINS.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1898, Page 5

COLUMBUS'S REMAINS.

THE EXHUMATION CEREMONY. [PEESS ASSOCIATION.] Washington, 27 th September. The body of Christopher Columbus has been exhumed in Havana, m the presence of General Blanco.

One of the greatest blows to Spanish pride involved in the late war was the prospect of the relics of the nation's discovererhero falling into the hands of the foe. It would now appear that this calamity is to be averted, by removal of. the remains to Spanish soil. The remains of the great discoverer (said the Daily News recently) lie buried in the choir of the Cathedral of Havana. The dead body of Columbus has been as restless as that of our own St. Becje. It has never been able to fiud a quiet resting-place. The great sailor died at Valladolid, in Spain, on Ascension Da}', 1506. He expressed a wish to be buried in the island of San Domingo. Joannes*, his wife, took incessant tare of, the dead body of her husband. She carried it about with her when she travelled. For three years the body was deposited in the church of San Francisco in Valladolid, where it found its first resting-place. In ' 1513 it was removed to Seville. There it remained for 23 years. The body was again 'disinterred and carried across the Atlantic. It found its next resting-place in San Domingo, as Columbus had wished. When the island was ceded to France, the bones were taken to Havana and solemnly buried iii the Cathedral in January, 1796. What remained of the body was placed in an urn in a niche in the left wall of the chancel and covered with a marble slab. Recently the inhabitants of San Domingo have claimed that the bouep of the discoverer of the New World still rest in their soil. The fact appears to be that when the bone? were removed to Cuba the priests of San Domingo kept back half and hid them in the south of the sacristy of their Cathedral. Here they were discovered iv 1877.