If it was prudent for Columbus to bring another foreigner to his aid, he found in Bartholomew a fitter and more courageous spirit than Diego possessed. The Admiral was pretty sure now to have an active and fearless deputy, sterner, indeed, in his habitual bearing than Columbus, and with a hardihood both of spirit and body that fitted him for command. These qualities were not suited to pacify the haughty hidalgos, but they were merits which rendered him able to confront the discontent of all settlers, and gave him the temper to stand in no fear of them. He brought to the government of an ill-assorted community a good deal that the Admiral lacked. He was soberer in his imagination; not so prone to let his wishes figure the future; more practiced, if we may believe Las Casas, in the arts of composition, and able to speak and write much more directly and comprehensibly than his brother. He managed men better, and business proceeded more regularly under his control, and he contrived to save what was possible from the wreck of disorder into which his brother's unfitness for command had thrown the colony. This is the man whom Las Casas enables us to understand, through the traits of character which he depicts. Columbus was now to create this brother his representative, in certain ways, with the title of Adelantado.
It was also no small satisfaction to the Admiral, in his present weakness, to learn of the well-being of his children, and of the continued favor with which he was held at Court, little anticipating the resentment of Ferdinand that an office of the rank of Adelantado should be created by any delegated authority.
Columbus had pursued his recent explorations in some measure to forestall what he feared the Portuguese might be led to attempt in the same direction, for he had not been unaware of the disturbance in the court at Lisbon which the papal line of demarcation had created. He was glad now to learn from his brother that his own fleet had hardly got to sea from Cadiz, in September, 1493, when the Pope, by another bull on the 26th of that month, had declared that all countries of the eastern Indies which the Spaniards might find, in case they were not already in Christian hands, should be included in the grant made to Spain. This Bull of Extension, as it was called, was a new thorn in the side of Portugal, and time would reveal its effect. Alexander had resisted all importunities to recede from his position, taken in May.