Giving the men food enough to last a year, Columbus set sail for Spain on the 3d of January, 1493, and on March 15 was safe at Palos.
Of the greatness of his discovery, Columbus had not the faintest idea.
That he had found a new world; that a continent was blocking his way to the East, never entered his mind.

He supposed he had landed on some islands off the east coast of Asia, and as that coast was called the Indies, and as the islands were reached by sailing westward, they came to be called the West Indies, and their inhabitants Indians; and the native races of the New World have ever since been called Indians.
Although Columbus in after years made three more voyages to the New World, he never found out his mistake, and died firm in the belief that he had discovered a direct route to Asia.[1] [Footnote 1: Columbus began his second voyage in September, 1493, and discovered Jamaica, Porto Rico (por'-to ree'-co), and the islands of the Caribbean Sea.

On his third voyage, in 1498, he discovered the island of Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela, and saw South America at the mouth of the Orinoco River.

During his fourth and last voyage, 1502-1504, he explored the shores of Honduras and the Isthmus of Panama in search of a strait leading to the Indian Ocean.

Of course he did not find it, and, going back to Spain, he died poor and broken-hearted on May 20, 1506.] %5.