The Life of Columbus
by Edward Everett Hale · English · Gutenberg #1492 · 334,997 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Life of Columbus
Author: Edward Everett Hale
Release date: February 15, 2006 [eBook #1492]
Most recently updated: November 7, 2016
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1492
Credits: Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF COLUMBUS ***
Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
FROM HIS OWN LETTERS AND JOURNALS
AND
OTHER DOCUMENTS OF HIS TIME.
by EDWARD EVERETT HALE,
[This was originally done on the 400th Anniversary
of 1492, as was the great Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Interesting how our heroes have all been de-canonized in the
interest of Political Correctitude]
--Comments by Michael S. Hart
PREFACE.
This book contains a life of Columbus, written with the hope of
interesting all classes of readers.
His life has often been written, and it has sometimes been well written.
The great book of our countryman, Washington Irving, is a noble model
of diligent work given to a very difficult subject. And I think every
person who has dealt with the life of Columbus since Irving’s time, has
expressed his gratitude and respect for the author.
According to the custom of biographers, in that time and since, he
includes in those volumes the whole history of the West India islands,
for the period after Columbus discovered them till his death. He also
thinks it his duty to include much of the history of Spain and of the
Spanish court. I do not myself believe that it is wise to attempt, in a
book of biography, so considerable a study of the history of the time.
Whether it be wise or not, I have not attempted it in this book. I have
rather attempted to follow closely the personal fortunes of Christopher
Columbus, and, to the history around him, I have given only such space
as seemed absolutely necessary for the illustration of those fortunes.
I have followed on the lines of his own personal narrative wherever we
have it. And where this is lost I have used the absolutely contemporary
authorities. I have also consulted the later writers, those of the
next generation and the generation which followed it. But the more one
studies the life of Columbus the more one feels sure that, after the
greatness of his discovery was really known, the accounts of the time
were overlaid by what modern criticism calls myths, which had grown up
in the enthusiasm of those who honored him, and which form no part of
real history. If then the reader fails to find some stories with which
he is quite familiar in the history, he must not suppose that they are
omitted by accident, but must give to the author of the book the credit
of having used some discretion in the choice of his authorities.
When I visited Spain in 1882, I was favored by the officers of the
Spanish government with every facility for carrying my inquiry as far as
a short visit would permit. Since that time Mr. Harrisse has published
his invaluable volumes on the life of Columbus. It certainly seems as
if every document now existing, which bears upon the history, had been
collated by him. The reader will see that I have made full use of this
treasure-house.
The Congress of Americanistas, which meets every year, brings forward
many curious studies on the history of the continent, but it can
scarcely be said to have done much to advance our knowledge of the
personal life of Columbus.
The determination of the people of the United States to celebrate fitly
the great discovery which has advanced civilization and changed the face
of the world, makes it certain that a new interest has arisen in the
life of the great man to whom, in the providence of God, that discovery
was due. The author and publishers of this book offer it as their
contribution in the great celebration, with the hope that it may be of
use, especially in the direction of the studies of the young.
EDWARD E. HALE.
ROXBURY, MASS., June 1st, 1891.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1. EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS.
His Birth and Birth-place--His Early Education--His
experience at Sea-His Marriage and Residence in Lisbon--
His Plans for the Discovery of a Westward
Passage to the Indies
CHAPTER II. HIS PLANS FOR DISCOVERY.
Columbus Leaves Lisbon, and Visits Genoa--Visits Great
Spanish Dukes--For Six Years is at the Court of Ferdinand
and Isabella--The Council of Salamanca--His
Petition is at Last Granted--Squadron Made Ready
CHAPTER III. THE GREAT VOYAGE.
The Squadron Sails--Refits at Canary Islands--Hopes
and Fears of the Voyage--The Doubts of the Crew--
Land Discovered
CHAPTER IV.
The Landing on the Twelfth of October--The Natives and
their Neighbors--Search for Gold-Cuba Discovered
Columbus Coasts Along its Shores
CHAPTER V.
Landing on Cuba--The Cigar and Tobacco--Cipango and
the Great Khan--From Cuba to Hayti--Its Shores and
Harbors
CHAPTER VI.
Discovery of Hayti or Hispaniola--The Search for Gold--
Hospitality and Intelligence of the Natives--Christmas
Day--A Shipwreck--Colony to be Founded--Columbus
Sails East and Meets Martin Pinzon-The Two
Vessels Return to Europe--Storm--The Azores--
Portugal--Home
CHAPTER VII.
Columbus is Called to Meet the King and Queen--His
Magnificent Reception--Negotiations with the Pope and
with the King of Portugal--Second Expedition Ordered
--Fonseca--The Preparations at Cadiz
CHAPTER VIII.
The Second Expedition Sails From Cadiz--Touches at
Canary Islands--Discovery of Dominica and Guadeloupe
--Skirmishes with the Caribs--Porto Rico Discovered
--Hispaniola--The Fate of the Colony at La Navidad
CHAPTER IX.
The New Colony--Expeditions of Discovery--Guacanagari--
Search for Gold--Mutiny in the Colony--The
Vessels Sent Home--Columbus Marches Inland--
Collection of Gold--Fortress of St. Thomas--A New Voyage
of Discovery--Jamaica Visited--The South Shore
of Cuba Explored--Return--Evangelista Discovered
--Columbus Falls Sick--Return to Isabella
CHAPTER X. THE THIRD VOYAGE.
Letter to the King and Queen--Discovery of Trinidad and
Paria--Curious Speculation as to the Earthly Paradise
--Arrival at San Domingo--Rebellions and Mutinies in
that Island-Roldan and His Followers--Ojeda and
His Expedition--Arrival of Bobadilla--Columbus a
Prisoner
CHAPTER XI. SPAIN, 1500, 1502.
A Cordial Reception in Spain--Columbus Favorably
Received at Court--New Interest in Geographical
Discovery--His Plans for the Redemption of the Holy
Sepulchre--Preparations for a Fourth Expedition
CHAPTER XII. FOURTH VOYAGE.
The Instructions Given for the Voyage--He is to go to
the Mainland of the Indies--A Short Passage--Ovando
Forbids the Entrance of Columbus into Harbor
Bobadilla’s Squadron and Its Fate--Columbus Sails Westward
--Discovers Honduras, and Coasts Along Its Shores
--The Search for Gold--Colony Attempted and Abandoned
--The Vessels Become Unseaworthy--Refuge at
Jamaica--Mutiny Led by the Brothers Porras--Messages
to San Domingo--The Eclipse--Arrival of Relief
--Columbus Returns to San Domingo, and to Spain
CHAPTER XIII.
Two Sad Years--Isabella’s Death--Columbus at Seville--
His Illness--Letters to the King--journeys to Segovia
--Salamanca and Valladolid--His Suit There--Philip
and Juana--Columbus Executes His Will--Dies--His
Burial and the Removal of His Body--His Portraits--
His Character
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX C
THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
CHAPTER I. -- EARLY LIFE OF COLUMBUS.
HIS BIRTH AND BIRTH-PLACE--HIS EARLY EDUCATION--HIS EXPERIENCE AT
SEA--HIS MARRIAGE AND RESIDENCE IN LISBON--HIS PLANS FOR THE DISCOVERY
OF A WESTWARD PASSAGE TO THE INDIES.
Christopher Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa. The honor of his
birth-place has been claimed by many villages in that Republic, and the
house in which he was born cannot be now pointed out with certainty. But
the best authorities agree that the children and the grown people of
the world have never been mistaken when they have said: “America was
discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa.”
His name, and that of his family, is always written Colombo, in the
Italian papers which refer to them, for more than one hundred years
before his time. In Spain it was always written Colon; in France it is
written as Colomb; while in England it has always kept its Latin form,
Columbus. It has frequently been said that he himself assumed this form,
because Columba is the Latin word for “Dove,” with a fanciful feeling
that, in carrying Christian light to the West, he had taken the mission
of the dove. Thus, he had first found land where men thought there was
ocean, and he was the messenger of the Holy Spirit to those who sat in
darkness. It has also been assumed that he took the name of Christopher,
“the Christ-bearer,” for similar reasons. But there is no doubt that
he was baptized “Christopher,” and that the family name had long been
Columbo. The coincidences of name are but two more in a calendar in
which poetry delights, and of which history is full.
Christopher Columbus was the oldest son of Dominico Colombo and Suzanna
Fontanarossa. This name means Red-fountain. He bad two brothers,
Bartholomew and Diego, whom we shall meet again. Diego is the Spanish
way of writing the name which we call James.
It seems probable that Christopher was born in the year 1436, though
some writers have said that he was older than this, and some that he was
younger. The record of his birth and that of his baptism have not been
found.
His father was not a rich man, but he was able to send Christopher, as a
boy, to the University of Pavia, and here he studied grammar, geometry,
geography and navigation, astronomy and the Latin language. But this was
as a boy studies, for in his fourteenth year he left the university and
entered, in hard work, on “the larger college of the world.” If the date
given above, of his birth, is correct, this was in the year 1450, a few
years before the Turks took Constantinople, and, in their invasion of
Europe, affected the daily life of everyone, young or old, who lived in
the Mediterranean countries. From this time, for fifteen years, it
is hard to trace along the life of Columbus. It was the life of an
intelligent young seaman, going wherever there was a voyage for him. He
says himself, “I passed twenty-three years on the sea. I have seen all
the Levant, all the western coasts, and the North. I have seen England;
I have often made the voyage from Lisbon to the Guinea coast.” This he
wrote in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella. Again he says, “I went to
sea from the most tender age and have continued in a sea life to this
day. Whoever gives himself up to this art wants to know the secrets of
Nature here below. It is more than forty years that I have been thus
engaged. Wherever any one has sailed, there I have sailed.”
Whoever goes into the detail of the history of that century will come
upon the names of two relatives of his--Colon el Mozo (the Boy, or the
Younger) and his uncle, Francesco Colon, both celebrated sailors. The
latter of the two was a captain in the fleets of Louis XI of France,
and imaginative students may represent him as meeting Quentin Durward at
court. Christopher Columbus seems to have made several voyages under
the command of the younger of these relatives. He commanded the Genoese
galleys near Cyprus in a war which the Genoese had with the Venetians.
Between the years 1461 and 1463 the Genoese were acting as allies with
King John of Calabria, and Columbus had a command as captain in their
navy at that time.
“In 1477,” he says, in one of his letters, “in the month of February, I
sailed more than a hundred leagues beyond Tile.” By this he means Thule,
or Iceland. “Of this island the southern part is seventy-three degrees
from the equator, not sixty-three degrees, as some geographers pretend.”
But here he was wrong. The Southern part of Iceland is in the latitude
of sixty-three and a half degrees. “The English, chiefly those of
Bristol, carry their merchandise, to this island, which is as large as
England. When I was there the sea was not frozen, but the tides there
are so strong that they rise and fall twenty-six cubits.”
The order of his life, after his visit to Iceland, is better known.
He was no longer an adventurous sailor-boy, glad of any voyage which
offered; he was a man thirty years of age or more. He married in the
city of Lisbon and settled himself there. His wife was named Philippa.
She was the daughter of an Italian gentleman named Bartolomeo Muniz de
Perestrello, who was, like Columbus, a sailor, and was alive to all the
new interests which geography then presented to all inquiring minds.
This was in the year 1477, and the King of Portugal was pressing the
expeditions which, before the end of the century, resulted in the
discovery of the route to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope.
The young couple had to live. Neither the bride nor her husband had
any fortune, and Columbus occupied himself as a draftsman, illustrating
books, making terrestrial globes, which must have been curiously
inaccurate, since they had no Cape of Good Hope and no American
Continent, drawing charts for sale, and collecting, where he could, the
material for such study. Such charts and maps were beginning to assume
new importance in those days of geographical discovery. The value
attached to them may be judged from the statement that Vespucius paid
one hundred and thirty ducats for one map. This sum would be more than
five hundred dollars of our time.
Columbus did not give up his maritime enterprises. He made voyages to
the coast of Guinea and in other directions.
It is said that he was in command of one of the vessels of his relative
Colon el Mozo, when, in the Portuguese seas, this admiral, with his
squadron, engaged four Venetian galleys returning from Flanders. A
bloody battle followed. The ship which Christopher Columbus commanded
was engaged with a Venetian vessel, to which it set fire. There was
danger of an explosion, and Columbus himself, seeing this danger, flung
himself into the sea, seized a floating oar, and thus gained the shore.
He was not far from Lisbon, and from this time made Lisbon his home for
many years.(*)
(*) The critics challenge these dates, but there seems to be
good foundation for the story.
It seems clear that, from the time when he arrived in Lisbon, for
more than twenty years, he was at work trying to interest people in his
“great design,” of western discovery. He says himself, “I was constantly
corresponding with learned men, some ecclesiastics and some laymen,
some Latin and some Greek, some Jews and some Moors.” The astronomer
Toscanelli was one of these correspondents.
We must not suppose that the idea of the roundness of the earth was
invented by Columbus. Although there were other theories about its
shape, many intelligent men well understood that the earth was a globe,
and that the Indies, though they were always reached from Europe by
going to the East, must be on the west of Europe also. There is a
very funny story in the travels of Mandeville, in which a traveler is
represented as having gone, mostly on foot, through all the countries
of Asia, but finally determines to return to Norway, his home. In his
farthest eastern investigation, he hears some people calling their
cattle by a peculiar cry, which he had never heard before. After he
returned home, it was necessary for him to take a day’s journey westward
to look after some cattle he had lost. Finding these cattle, he also
heard the same cry of people calling cattle, which he had heard in the
extreme East, and now learned, for the first time, that he had gone
round the world on foot, to turn and come back by the same route, when
he was only a day’s journey from home, Columbus was acquainted with such
stories as this, and also had the astronomical knowledge which almost
made him know that the world was round, “and, like a ball, goes spinning
in the air.” The difficulty was to persuade other people that, because
of this roundness, it would be possible to attain Asia by sailing to the
West.
Now all the geographers of repute supposed that there was not nearly
so large a distance as there proved to be, in truth, between Europe and
Asia. Thus, in the geography of Ptolemy, which was the standard book
at that time, one hundred and thirty-five degrees, a little more than
one-third of the earth’s circumference, is given to the space between
the extreme eastern part of the Indies and the Canary Islands. In fact,
as we now know, the distance is one hundred and eighty degrees, half the
world’s circumference. Had Columbus believed there was any such immense
distance, he would never have undertaken his voyage.
Almost all the detailed knowledge of the Indies which the people of
his time had, was given by the explorations of Marco Polo, a Venetian
traveler of the thirteenth century, whose book had long been in the
possession of European readers. It is a very entertaining book now, and
may well be recommended to young people who like stories of adventure.
Marco Polo had visited the court of the Great Khan of Tartary at Pekin,
the prince who brought the Chinese Empire into very much the condition
in which it now is. He had, also, given accounts of Japan or Cipango,
which he had himself never visited. Columbus knew, therefore, that,
well east of the Indies, was the island of Cipango, and he aimed at that
island, because he supposed that that was the nearest point to Europe,
as in fact it is. And when finally he arrived at Cuba, as the reader
will see, he thought he was in Japan.
Columbus’s father-in-law had himself been the Portuguese governor of the
island of Porto Santo, where he had founded a colony. He, therefore,
was interested in western explorations, and probably from him Columbus
collected some of the statements which are known to have influenced
him, with regard to floating matters from the West, which are constantly
borne upon that island by the great currents of the sea.
The historians are fond of bringing together all the intimations which
are given in the Greek and Latin classics, and in later authors, with
regard to a land beyond Asia. Perhaps the most famous of them is that of
Seneca, “In the later years there shall come days in which Ocean shall
loose his chains, and a great land shall appear . . . and Thule shall
not be the last of the worlds.”
In a letter which Toscanelli wrote to Columbus in 1474, he inclosed a
copy of a letter which he had already sent to an officer of Alphonso V,
the King of Portugal. In writing to Columbus, he says, “I see that you
have a great and noble desire to go into that country (of the East)
where the spices come from, and in reply to your letter I send you a
copy of that which I addressed some years ago to my attached friend in
the service of the most serene King of Portugal. He had an order from
his Highness to write me on this subject. . . . If I had a globe in
my hand, I could show you what is needed. But I prefer to mark out the
route on a chart like a marine chart, which will be an assistance to
your intelligence and enterprise. On this chart I have myself drawn the
whole extremity of our western shore from Ireland as far down as the
coast of Guinea toward the South, with all the islands which are to be
found on this route. Opposite this (that is, the shores of Ireland and
Africa) I have placed directly at the West the beginning of the Indies
with the islands and places where you will land. You will see for
yourself how many miles you must keep from the arctic pole toward
the equator, and at what distance you will arrive at these regions so
fertile and productive of spices and precious stones.” In Toscanelli’s
letter, he not only indicates Japan, but, in the middle of the ocean, he
places the island of Antilia. This old name afterwards gave the name by
which the French still call the West Indies, Les Antilles. Toscanelli
gives the exact distance which Columbus will have to sail: “From Lisbon
to the famous city of Quisay (Hang-tcheou-fou, then the capital of
China) if you take the direct route toward the West, the distance will
be thirty-nine hundred miles. And from Antilia to Japan it will be two
hundred and twenty-five leagues.” Toscanelli says again, “You see that
the voyage that you wish to attempt is much legs difficult than would be
thought. You would be sure of this if you met as many people as I do who
have been in the country of spices.”
While there were so many suggestions made that it would be possible to
cross the Atlantic, there was one man who determined to do this. This
man was Christopher Columbus. But he knew well that he could not do
it alone. He must have money enough for an expedition, he must have
authority to enlist crews for that expedition, and he must have power to
govern those crews when they should arrive in the Indies. In our times
such adventures have been conducted by mercantile corporations, but in
those times no one thought of doing any such thing without the direct
assistance and support of some monarch.
It is easy now to see and to say that Columbus himself was singularly
well fitted to take the charge of the expedition of discovery. He was an
excellent sailor and at the same time he was a learned geographer and
a good mathematician. He was living in Portugal, the kings of which
country had, for many years, fostered the exploration of the coast of
Africa, and were pushing expeditions farther and farther South.
In doing this, they were, in a fashion, making new discoveries. For
Europe was wholly ignorant of the western coast of Africa, beyond the
Canaries, when their expeditions began. But all men of learning
knew that, five hundred years before the Christian era, Hanno, a
Carthaginian, had sailed round Africa under the direction of the senate
of Carthage. The efforts of the King of Portugal were to repeat the
voyage made by Hanno. In 1441, Gonzales and Tristam sailed as far as
Sierra Leone. They brought back some blacks as slaves, and this was the
beginning of the slave trade.
In 1446 the Portuguese took possession of the Azores, the most western
points of the Old World. Step by step they advanced southward, and
became familiar with the African coast. Bold navigators were eager to
find the East, and at last success came. Under the king’s orders, in
August, 1477, three caravels sailed from the Tagus, under Bartolomeo
Diaz, for southern discovery. Diaz was himself brave enough to be
willing to go on to the Red Sea, after he made the great discovery of
the Cape of Good Hope, but his crews mutinied, after he had gone much
farther than his predecessors, and compelled him to return. He passed
the southern cape of Africa and went forty miles farther. He called it
the Cape of Torments, “Cabo Tormentoso,” so terrible were the storms he
met there. But when King John heard his report he gave it that name of
good omen which it has borne ever since, the name of the “Cape of Good
Hope.”
In the midst of such endeavors to reach the East Indies by the long
voyage down the coast of Africa and across an unknown ocean, Columbus
was urging all people who cared, to try the route directly west. If
the world was round, as the sun and moon were, and as so many men of
learning believed, India or the Indies must be to the west of Portugal.
The value of direct trade with the Indies would be enormous. Europe had
already acquired a taste for the spices of India and had confidence in
the drugs of India. The silks and other articles of clothing made in
India, and the carpets of India, were well known and prized. Marco Polo
and others had given an impression that there was much gold in India;
and the pearls and precious stones of India excited the imagination of
all who read his travels.
The immense value of such a commerce may be estimated from one fact.
When, a generation after this time, one ship only of all the squadron of
Magellan returned to Cadiz, after the first voyage round the world, she
was loaded with spices from the Moluccas. These spices were sold by
the Spanish government for so large a sum of money that the king was
remunerated for the whole cost of the expedition, and even made a very
large profit from a transaction which had cost a great deal in its
outfit.
Columbus was able, therefore, to offer mercantile adventurers the
promise of great profit in case of success; and at this time kings were
willing to take their share of such profits as might accrue.
The letter of Toscanelli, the Italian geographer, which has been spoken
of, was addressed to Alphonso V, the King of Portugal. To him and
his successor, John the Second, Columbus explained the probability of
success, and each of them, as it would seem, had confidence in it.
But King John made the great mistake of intrusting Columbus’s plan to
another person for experiment. He was selfish enough, and mean enough,
to fit out a ship privately and intrust its command to another seaman,
bidding him sail west in search of the Indies, while he pretended that
he was on a voyage to the Cape de Verde Islands. He was, in fact,
to follow the route indicated by Columbus. The vessel sailed. But,
fortunately for the fame of Columbus, she met a terrible storm, and
her officers, in terror, turned from the unknown ocean and returned to
Lisbon. Columbus himself tells this story. It was in disgust with the
bad faith the king showed in this transaction that he left Lisbon to
offer his great project to the King and Queen of Spain.
In a similar way, a generation afterward, Magellan, who was in the
service of the King of Portugal, was disgusted by insults which he
received at his court, and exiled himself to Spain. He offered to the
Spanish king his plan for sailing round the world and it was accepted.
He sailed in a Spanish fleet, and to his discoveries Spain owes the
possession of the Philippine Islands. Twice, therefore, did kings of
Portugal lose for themselves, their children and their kingdom, the fame
and the recompense which belong to such great discoveries.
The wife of Columbus had died and he was without a home. He left Lisbon
with his only son, Diego, in or near the end of the year 1484.
CHAPTER II. -- HIS PLANS FOR DISCOVERY.
COLUMBUS LEAVES LISBON, AND VISITS GENOA--VISITS GREAT SPANISH
DUKES--FOR SIX YEARS IS AT THE COURT OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA--THE
COUNCIL OF SALAMANCA--HIS PETITION IS AT LAST GRANTED--SQUADRON MADE
READY.
It has been supposed that when Columbus left Lisbon he was oppressed by
debts. At a subsequent period, when King John wanted to recall him, he
offered to protect him against any creditors. But on the other hand, it
is thought that at this time he visited Genoa, and made some provision
for the comfort of his father, who was now an old man. Christopher
Columbus, himself, according to the usual opinion regarding his birth,
was now almost fifty years old.
It is probable that at this time he urged on his countrymen, the
Genoese, the importance of his great plan; and tried to interest them
to make the great endeavor, for the purpose of reaching the Indies by a
western route. As it proved, the discovery of the route by the Cape
of Good Hope was, commercially, a great injury to Genoa and the other
maritime cities of Italy. Before this time, the eastern trade of Europe
came by the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Italian cities.
Columbus’s offer to Genoa was therefore one which, if her statesmen
could have foreseen the future, they would have considered eagerly.
But Genoa was greatly depressed at this period. In her wars with the
Turks she had been, on the whole, not successful. She had lost Caffa,
her station in the Crimea, and her possessions in the Archipelago were
threatened. The government did not accept Columbus’s proposals, and he
was obliged to return with them to Spain. He went first to distinguished
noblemen, in the South of Spain, who were of liberal and adventurous
disposition. One was the Duke of Medina Celi, and one the Duke of Medina
Sidonia. Each of these grandees entertained him at their courts, and
heard his proposals.
The Duke of Medina Celi was so much interested in them, that at one time
he proposed to give Columbus the direction of four vessels which he
had in the harbor of Cadiz. But, of a sudden, he changed his mind. The
enterprise was so vast, he said, that it should be under the direction
of the crown. And, without losing confidence in it, he gave to Columbus
an introduction to the king and queen, in which he cordially recommended
him to their patronage.
This king and queen were King Ferdinand of Aragon, and Queen Isabella of
Castile. The marriage of these two had united Spain. Their affection for
each other made the union real, and the energy, courage and wisdom of
both made their reign successful and glorious. Of all its glories the
greatest, as it has proved, was connected with the life and discoveries
of the sailor who was now to approach them. He had been disloyally
treated by Portugal, he had been dismissed by Genoa. He had not
succeeded with the great dukes. Now he was to press his adventure upon
a king and queen who were engaged in a difficult war with the Moors, who
still held a considerable part of the peninsula of Spain.
The king and queen were residing at Cordova, a rich and beautiful city,
which they had taken from the Moors. Under their rule Cordova had been
the most important seat of learning in Europe. Here Columbus tarried at
the house of Alonso de Quintinilla, who became an ardent convert to
his theory, and introduced him to important friends. By their agency,
arrangements were made, in which Columbus should present his views to
the king. The time was not such as he could have wished. All Cordova was
alive with the preparation for a great campaign against the enemy. But
King Ferdinand made arrangements to hear Columbus; it does not appear
that, at the first hearing, Isabella was present at the interview. But
Ferdinand, although in the midst of his military cares, was interested
in the proposals made by Columbus. He liked the man. He was pleased by
the modesty and dignity with which he brought forward his proposals.
Columbus spoke, as he tells us, as one specially appointed by God
Himself to carry out this discovery. The king did not, however, at once
adopt the scheme, but gave out that a council of men of learning should
be called together to consider it.
Columbus himself says that he entered the service of the sovereigns
January 26, 1486. The council to which he was referred was held in
the university city of Salamanca, in that year. It gave to him a full
opportunity to explain his theory. It consisted of a fair representation
of the learning of the time. But most of the men who met had formed
their opinions on the subjects involved, and were too old to change
them. A part of them were priests of the church, in the habit of looking
to sacred Scripture as their only authority, when the pope had given no
instruction in detail. Of these some took literally expressions in the
Old Testament, which they supposed to be fatal to the plans of Columbus.
Such was the phrase in the 104th Psalm, that God stretches out the
heavens like a curtain. The expression in the book of Hebrews, that the
heavens are extended as a tent, was also quoted, in the same view.
Quotations from the early Fathers of the church were more fatal to the
new plan than those from the Scripture.
On the other hand there were men who cordially supported Columbus’s
wishes, and there were more when the congress parted than when it met.
Its sessions occupied a considerable part of the summer, but it was not
for years that it rendered any decision.
The king, queen and court, meanwhile, were occupied in war with the
Moors. Columbus was once and again summoned to attend the court, and
more than once money was advanced to him to enable him to do so. Once he
began new negotiations with King John, and from him he received a letter
inviting him to return to Portugal. He received a similar letter
from King Henry VII of England inviting him to his court. Nothing was
determined on in Spain. To this day, the people of that country are
thought to have a habit of postponement to tomorrow of that which
perplexes them. In 1489, according to Ortiz de Zuniga, Columbus fought
in battle in the king’s army.
When, however, in the winter of 1490, it was announced that the army
was to take the field again, never to leave its camp till Grenada had
fallen, Columbus felt that he must make one last endeavor. He insisted
that he must have an answer regarding his plans of discovery. The
confessor of the queen, Fernando da Talavera, was commanded to obtain
the definite answer of the men of learning. Alas! it was fatal to
Columbus’s hopes. They said that it was not right that great princes
should undertake such enterprises on grounds as weak as those which he
relied upon.
The sovereigns themselves, however, were more favorable; so was a
minority of the council of Salamanca. And the confessor was instructed
to tell him that their expenses in the war forbade them from sending him
out as a discoverer, but that, when that was well over, they had hopes
that they might commission him. This was the end of five years of
solicitation, in which he had put his trust in princes. Columbus
regarded the answer, as well he might, as only a courtly measure of
refusal. And he retired in disgust from the court at Seville.
He determined to lay his plans before the King of France. He was
traveling with this purpose, with his son, Diego, now a boy of ten or
twelve years of age, when he arrived at night at the hospitable
convent of Saint Mary of Rabida, which has been made celebrated by that
incident. It is about three miles south of what was then the seaport of
Palos, one of the active ports of commercial Spain. The convent stands
on level ground high above the sea; but a steep road runs down to the
shore of the ocean. Some of its windows and corridors look out upon
the ocean on the west and south, and the inmates still show the room in
which Columbus used to write, and the inkstand which served his purposes
while he lived there. It is maintained as a monument of history by the
Spanish government.
At the door of this convent he asked for bread and water for his boy.
The prior of the convent was named Juan Perez de Marchena. He was
attracted by the appearance of Columbus, still more by his conversation,
and invited him to remain as their guest.
When he learned that his new friend was about to offer to France the
advantages of a discovery so great as that proposed, he begged him to
make one effort more at home. He sent for some friends, Fernandos, a
physician at Palos, and for the brothers Pinzon, who now appear for the
first time in a story where their part is distinguished. Together they
all persuaded Columbus to send one messenger more to wait upon their
sovereigns. The man sent was Rodriguez, a pilot of Lepe, who found
access to the queen because Juan Perez, the prior, had formerly been her
confessor. She had confidence in him, as she had, indeed, in Columbus.
And in fourteen days the friendly pilot came back from Santa Fe with a
kind letter from the queen to her friend, bidding him return at once to
court. Perez de Marchena saddled his mule at once and before midnight
was on his way to see his royal mistress.
Santa Fe was half camp, half city. It had been built in what is called
the Vega, the great fruitful plain which extends for many miles to the
westward of Grenada. The court and army were here as they pressed
their attack on that city. Perez de Marchena had ready access to Queen
Isabella, and pressed his suit well. He was supported by one of her
favorites, the Marquesa de Moya. In reply to their solicitations,
she asked that Columbus should return to her, and ordered that twenty
thousand maravedis should be sent to him for his traveling expenses.
This sum was immediately sent by Perez to his friend. Columbus bought a
mule, exchanged his worn clothes for better ones, and started, as he was
bidden, for the camp.
He arrived there just after the great victory, by which the king and
queen had obtained their wish--had taken the noble city of Grenada and
ended Moorish rule in Spain. King, queen, court and army were preparing
to enter the Alhambra in triumph. Whoever tries to imagine the scene, in
which the great procession entered through the gates, so long sealed, or
of the moment when the royal banner of Spain was first flying out upon
the Tower of the Vela, must remember that Columbus, elate, at last, with
hopes for his own great discovery, saw the triumph and joined in the
display.
But his success was not immediate, even now. Fernando de Talavera,
who had had the direction of the wise council of Salamanca, was now
Archbishop of Grenada, whose see had been conferred on him after the
victory. He was not the friend of Columbus. And when, at what seemed the
final interview with king and queen, he heard Columbus claim the right
to one-tenth of all the profits of the enterprise, he protested against
such lavish recompense of an adventurer. He was now the confessor of
Isabella, as Juan Perez, the friendly prior, had been before. Columbus,
however, was proud and firm. He would not yield to the terms prepared
by the archbishop. He preferred to break off the negotiation, and again
retired from court. He determined, as he had before, to lay his plans
before the King of France.
Spain would have lost the honor and the reward of the great discovery,
as Portugal and Genoa had lost them, but for Luis de St. Angel, and
the queen herself. St. Angel had been the friend of Columbus. He was an
important officer, the treasurer of the church revenues of Aragon.
He now insisted upon an audience from the queen. It would seem that
Ferdinand, though King of Aragon, was not present. St. Angel spoke
eloquently. The friendly Marchioness of Moya spoke eagerly and
persuasively. Isabella was at last fired with zeal. Columbus should go,
and the enterprise should be hers.
It is here that the incident belongs, represented in the statue by Mr.
Mead, and that of Miss Hosmer. The sum required for the discovery of a
world was only three thousand crowns. Two vessels were all that Columbus
asked for, with the pay of their crews. But where were three thousand
crowns? The treasury was empty, and the king was now averse to any
action. It was at this moment that Isabella said, “The enterprise is
mine, for the Crown of Castile. I pledge my jewels for the funds.”
The funds were in fact advanced by St. Angel, from the ecclesiastical
revenues under his control. They were repaid from the gold brought in
the first voyage. But, always afterward, Isabella regarded the Indies
as a Castilian possession. The most important officers in its
administration, indeed most of the emigrants, were always from Castile.
Columbus, meanwhile, was on his way back to Palos, on his mule, alone.
But at a bridge, still pointed out, a royal courier overtook him,
bidding him return. The spot has been made the scene of more than one
picture, which represents the crisis, in which the despair of one moment
changed to the glad hope which was to lead to certainty.
He returned to Isabella for the last time, before that great return in
which he came as a conqueror, to display to her the riches of the New
World. The king yielded a slow and doubtful assent. Isabella took
the enterprise in her own hands. She and Columbus agreed at once, and
articles were drawn up which gave him the place of admiral for life on
all lands he might discover; gave him one-tenth of all pearls, precious
stones, gold, silver, spices and other merchandise to be obtained in his
admiralty, and gave him the right to nominate three candidates from whom
the governor of each province should be selected by the crown. He was to
be the judge of all disputes arising from such traffic as was proposed;
and he was to have one-eighth part of the profit, and bear one-eighth
part of the cost of it.
With this glad news he returned at once to Palos. The Pinzons, who had
been such loyal friends, were to take part in the enterprise. He carried
with him a royal order, commanding the people of Palos to fit out two
caravels within ten days, and to place them and their crews at the
disposal of Columbus. The third vessel proposed was to be fitted out
by him and his friends. The crews were to be paid four months’ wages in
advance, and Columbus was to have full command, to do what he chose, if
he did not interfere with the Portuguese discoveries.
On the 23rd of May, Columbus went to the church of San Giorgio in Palos,
with his friend, the prior of St. Mary’s convent, and other important
people, and the royal order was read with great solemnity:
But it excited at first only indignation or dismay. The expedition was
most unpopular. Sailors refused to enlist, and the authorities, who had
already offended the crown, so that they had to furnish these vessels,
as it were, as a fine, refused to do what they were bidden. Other orders
from Court were necessary. But it seems to have been the courage and
determination of the Pinzons which carried the preparations through.
After weeks had been lost, Martin Alonso Pinzon and his brothers
said they would go in person on the expedition. They were well-known
merchants and seamen, and were much respected. Sailors were impressed,
by the royal authority, and the needful stores were taken in the same
way. It seems now strange that so much difficulty should have surrounded
an expedition in itself so small. But the plan met then all the
superstition, terror and other prejudice of the time.
All that Columbus asked or needed was three small vessels and their
stores and crews. The largest ships engaged were little larger than the
large yachts, whose races every summer delight the people of America.
The Gallega and the Pinta were the two largest. They were called
caravels, a name then given to the smallest three-masted vessels.
Columbus once uses it for a vessel of forty tons; but it generally
applied in Portuguese or Spanish use to a vessel, ranging one hundred
and twenty to one hundred and forty Spanish “toneles.” This word
represents a capacity about one-tenth larger than that expressed by our
English “ton.”
The reader should remember that most of the commerce of the time was the
coasting commerce of the Mediterranean, and that it was not well that
the ships should draw much water. The fleet of Columbus, as it sailed,
consisted of the Gallega (the Galician), of which he changed the name to
the Santa Maria, and of the Pinta and the Nina. Of these the first two
were of a tonnage which we should rate as about one hundred and thirty
tons. The Nina was much smaller, not more than fifty tons. One writer
says that they were all without full decks, that is, that such decks as
they had did not extend from stem to stern. But the other authorities
speak as if the Nina only was an open vessel, and the two larger were
decked. Columbus himself took command of the Santa Maria, Martin Alonso
Pinzon of the Pinta, and his brothers, Francis Martin and Vicente Yanez,
of the Nina. The whole company in all three ships numbered one hundred
and twenty men.
Mr. Harrisse shows that the expense to the crown amounted to 1,140,000
maravedis. This, as he counts it, is about sixty-four thousand dollars
of our money. To this Columbus was to add one-eighth of the cost. His
friends, the Pinzons, seem to have advanced this, and to have been
afterwards repaid. Las Casas and Herrera both say that the sum thus
added was much more than one-eighth of the cost and amounted to half a
million maravedis.
CHAPTER III. -- THE GREAT VOYAGE.
THE SQUADRON SAILS--REFITS AT CANARY ISLANDS--HOPES AND FEARS OF THE
VOYAGE--THE DOUBTS OF THE CREW--LAND DISCOVERED.
At last all was ready. That is to say, the fleet was so far ready that
Columbus was ready to start. The vessels were small, as we think of
vessels, but he was not dissatisfied. He says in the beginning of his
journal, “I armed three vessels very fit for such an enterprise.” He
had left Grenada as late as the twelfth of May. He had crossed Spain to
Palos,(*) and in less than three months had fitted out the ships and was
ready for sea.
(*) Palos is now so insignificant a place that on some
important maps of Spain it will not be found. It is on the
east side of the Tinto river; and Huelva, on the west side,
has taken its place.
The harbor of Palos is now ruined. Mud and gravel, brought down by the
River Tinto, have filled up the bay, so that even small boats cannot
approach the shore. The traveler finds, however, the island of Saltes,
quite outside the bay, much as Columbus left it. It is a small spit of
sand, covered with shells and with a few seashore herbs. His own account
of the great voyage begins with the words:
“Friday, August 3, 1492. Set sail from the bar of Saltes at 8 o’clock,
and proceeded with a strong breeze till sunset sixty miles, or fifteen
leagues south, afterward southwest and south by west, which is in the
direction of the Canaries.”
It appears, therefore, that the great voyage, the most important and
successful ever made, began on Friday, the day which is said to be so
much disliked by sailors. Columbus never alludes to this superstition.
He had always meant to sail first for the Canaries, which were the most
western land then known in the latitude of his voyage. From Lisbon to
the famous city of “Quisay,” or “Quinsay,” in Asia, Toscanelli, his
learned correspondent, supposed the distance to be less than one
thousand leagues westward. From the Canary islands, on that supposition,
the distance would be ten degrees less. The distance to Cipango, or
Japan, would be much less.
As it proved, the squadron had to make some stay at the Canaries. The
rudder of the Pinta was disabled, and she proved leaky. It was
suspected that the owners, from whom she had been forcibly taken, had
intentionally disabled her, or that possibly the crew had injured her.
But Columbus says in his journal that Martin Alonso Pinzon, captain of
the Pinta, was a man of capacity and courage, and that this quieted
his apprehensions. From the ninth of August to the second of September,
nearly four weeks were spent by the Pinta and her crew at the Grand
Canary island, and she was repaired. She proved afterwards a serviceable
vessel, the fastest of the fleet. At the Canaries they heard stories of
lands seen to the westward, to which Columbus refers in his journal. On
the sixth of September they sailed from Gomera and on the eighth they
lost sight of land. Nor did they see land again for thirty-three days.
Such was the length of the great voyage. All the time, most naturally,
they were wishing for signs, not of land perhaps, but which might show
whether this great ocean were really different from other seas. On the
whole the voyage was not a dangerous one.
According to the Admiral’s reckoning--and in his own journal Columbus
always calls himself the Admiral--its length was one thousand and
eighty-nine leagues. This was not far from right, the real distance
being, in a direct line, three thousand one hundred and forty nautical
miles, or three thousand six hundred and twenty statute miles.(*) It
would not be considered a very long voyage for small vessels now. In
general the course was west. Sometimes, for special reasons, they sailed
south of west. If they had sailed precisely west they would have struck
the shore of the United States a little north of the spot where St.
Augustine now is, about the northern line of Florida.
(*) The computations from Santa Cruz, in the Canaries, to
San Salvador give this result, as kindly made for us by
Lieutenant Mozer, of the United States navy.
Had the coast of Asia been, indeed, as near as Toscanelli and Columbus
supposed, this latitude of the Canary islands would have been quite near
the mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang river, in China, which was what Columbus
was seeking. For nearly a generation afterwards he and his followers
supposed that the coast of that region was what they had found.
It was on Saturday, the eighth of September, that they lost sight of
Teneriffe. On the eleventh they saw a large piece of the mast of a ship
afloat. On the fourteenth they saw a “tropic-bird,” which the sailors
thought was never seen more than twenty-five leagues from land; but
it must be remembered, that, outside of the Mediterranean, few of the
sailors had ever been farther themselves. On the sixteenth they began
to meet “large patches of weeds, very green, which appeared to have been
recently washed away from land.” This was their first knowledge of the
“Sargasso sea,” a curious tract in mid-Atlantic which is always green
with floating seaweeds. “The continent we shall find farther on,” wrote
the confident Admiral.
An observation of the sun on the seventeenth proved what had been
suspected before, that the needles of the compasses were not pointing
precisely to the north. The variation of the needle, since that time,
has been a recognized fact. But this observation at so critical a time
first disclosed it. The crew were naturally alarmed. Here was evidence
that, in the great ocean, common laws were not to be relied upon. But
they had great respect for Columbus’s knowledge of such subjects. He
told them that it was not the north which had changed, nor the needle,
which was true to the north, but the polar star revolved, like other
stars, and for the time they were satisfied.
The same day they saw weeds which he was sure were land weeds. From them
he took a living crab, whose unintentional voyage eastward was a great
encouragement to the bolder adventurer westward. Columbus kept the crab,
saying that such were never found eighty leagues from land. In fact
this poor crab was at least nine hundred and seventy leagues from the
Bahamas, as this same journal proves. On the eighteenth the Pinta ran
ahead of the other vessels, Martin Alonso was so sure that he should
reach land that night. But it was not to come so soon.
Columbus every day announced to his crew a less distance as the result
of the day than they had really sailed. For he was afraid of their
distrust, and did not dare let them know how far they were from home.
The private journal, therefore, has such entries as this, “Sailed more
than fifty-five leagues, wrote down only forty-eight.” That is, he wrote
on the daily log, which was open to inspection, a distance some leagues
less than they had really made.
On the twentieth pelicans are spoken of, on the twenty-first “such
abundance of weeds that the ocean seemed covered with them,” “the sea
smooth as a river, and the finest air in the world. Saw a whale, an
indication of land, as they always keep near the coast.” To later times,
this note, also, shows how ignorant Columbus then was of mid-ocean.
On the twenty-second, to the Admiral’s relief, there was a head wind;
for the crew began to think that with perpetual east winds they would
never return to Spain. They had been in what are known as the trade
winds. On the twenty-third the smoother water gave place to a rough sea,
and he writes that this “was favorable to me, as it happened formerly to
Moses when he led the Jews from Egypt.”
The next day, thanks to the headwinds, their progress was less. On the
twenty-fifth, Pinzon, of the Pinta, felt sure that they were near the
outer islands of Asia as they appeared on the Toscanelli map, and at
sunset called out with joy that he saw land, claiming a reward for such
news. The crews of both vessels sang “Glory to God in the highest,” and
the crew of the little Nina were sure that the bank was land. On this
occasion they changed from a western course to the southwest. But alas!
the land was a fog-bank and the reward never came to Martin Pinzon. On
the twenty-sixth, again “the sea was like a river.” This was Wednesday.
In three days they sailed sixty-nine leagues. Saturday was calm. They
saw a bird called “‘Rabihorcado,’ which never alights at sea, nor goes
twenty leagues from land,” wrote the confident Columbus; “Nothing is
wanting but the singing of the nightingale,” he says.
Sunday, the thirtieth, brought “tropic-birds” again, “a very clear sign
of land.” Monday the journal shows them seven hundred and seven leagues
from Ferro. Tuesday a white gull was the only visitor. Wednesday they
had pardelas and great quantities of seaweed. Columbus began to be sure
that they had passed “the islands” and were nearing the continent of
Asia. Thursday they had a flock of pardelas, two pelicans, a rabihorcado
and a gull. Friday, the fifth of October, brought pardelas and
flying-fishes.
We have copied these simple intimations from the journal to show how
constantly Columbus supposed that he was near the coast of Asia. On the
sixth of October Pinzon asked that the course might be changed to the
southwest. But Columbus held on. On the seventh the Nina was ahead, and
fired a gun and hoisted her flag in token that she saw land. But again
they were disappointed. Columbus gave directions to keep close order
at sunrise and sunset. The next day he did change the course to west
southwest, following flights of birds from the north which went in that
direction. On the eighth “the sea was like the river at Seville,” the
weeds were very few and they took land birds on board the ships. On the
ninth they sailed southwest five leagues, and then with a change of wind
went west by north. All night they heard the birds of passage passing.
On the tenth of October the men made remonstrance, which has been
exaggerated in history into a revolt. It is said, in books of authority,
that Columbus begged them to sail west only three days more. But in the
private journal of the tenth he says simply: “The seamen complained
of the length of the voyage. They did not wish to go any farther. The
Admiral did his best to renew their courage, and reminded them of the
profits which would come to them. He added, boldly, that no complaints
would change his purpose, that he had set out to go to the Indies, and
that with the Lord’s assistance he should keep on until he came there.”
This is the only passage in the journal which has any resemblance to the
account of the mutiny.
If it happened, as Oviedo says, three days before the discovery, it
would have been on the eighth of October. On that day the entry is,
“Steered west southwest, and sailed day and night eleven or twelve
leagues--at times, during the night, fifteen miles an hour--if the log
can be relied upon. Found the sea like the river at Seville, thanks to
God. The air was as soft as that of Seville in April, and so fragrant
that it was delicious to breathe it. The weeds appeared very fresh. Many
land birds, one of which they took, flying towards the southwest, also
grajaos, ducks and a pelican were seen.”
This is not the account of a mutiny. And the discovery of Columbus’s own
journal makes that certain, which was probable before, that the romantic
account of the despair of the crews was embroidered on the narrative
after the event, and by people who wanted to improve the story. It was,
perhaps, borrowed from a story of Diaz’s voyage. We have followed the
daily record to show how constantly they supposed, on the other hand,
that they were always nearing land.
With the eleventh of October, came certainty. The eleventh is sometimes
spoken of as the day of discovery, and sometimes the twelfth, when they
landed on the first island of the new world.
The whole original record of the discovery is this: “Oct. 11, course
to west and southwest. Heavier sea than they had known, pardelas and a
green branch near the caravel of the Admiral. From the Pinta they see a
branch of a tree, a stake and a smaller stake, which they draw in, and
which appears to have been cut with iron, and a piece of cane. Besides
these, there is a land shrub and a little bit of board. The crew of
the Nina saw other signs of land and a branch covered with thorns and
flowers. With these tokens every-one breathes again and is delighted.
They sail twenty-seven leagues on this course.
“The Admiral orders that they shall resume a westerly course at sunset.
They make twelve miles each hour; up till two hours after midnight they
made ninety miles.
“The Pinta, the best sailer of the three, was ahead. She makes signals,
already agreed upon, that she has discovered land. A sailor named
Rodrigo de Triana was the first to see this land. For the Admiral being
on the castle of the poop of the ship at ten at night really saw a
light, but it was so shut in by darkness that he did not like to say
that it was a sign of land. Still he called up Pedro Gutierrez, the
king’s chamberlain, and said to him that there seemed to be a light,
and asked him to look. He did so and saw it. He said the same to Rodrigo
Sanchez of Segovia, who had been sent by the king and queen as inspector
in the fleet, but he saw nothing, being indeed in a place where he could
see nothing.
“After the Admiral spoke of it, the light was seen once or twice. It was
like a wax candle, raised and lowered, which would appear to few to be
a sign of land. But the Admiral was certain that it was a sign of land.
Therefore when they said the ‘Salve,’ which all the sailors are used to
say and sing in their fashion, the Admiral ordered them to look out well
from the forecastle, and he would give at once a silk jacket to the man
who first saw land, besides the other rewards which the sovereigns had
ordered, which were 10,000 maravedis, to be paid as an annuity forever
to the man who saw it first.
“At two hours after midnight land appeared, from which they were about
two leagues off.”
This is the one account of the discovery written at the time. It
is worth copying and reading at full in its little details, for it
contrasts curiously with the embellished accounts which appear in the
next generation. Thus the historian Oviedo says, in a dramatic way:
“One of the ship boys on the largest ship, a native of Lepe, cried
‘Fire!’ ‘Land!’ Immediately a servant of Columbus replied, ‘The Admiral
had said that already.’ Soon after, Columbus said, ‘I said so some time
ago, and that I saw that fire on the land.’” And so indeed it happened
that Thursday, at two hours after midnight, the Admiral called a
gentleman named Escobedos, officer of the wardrobe of the king, and told
him that he saw fire. And at the break of day, at the time Columbus
had predicted the day before, they saw from the largest ship the island
which the Indians call Guanahani to the north of them.
“And the first man to see the land, when day came, was Rodrigo of
Triana, on the eleventh day of October, 1492.” Nothing is more certain
than that this was really on the twelfth.
The reward for first seeing land was eventually awarded to Columbus, and
it was regularly paid him through his life. It was the annual payment
of 10,000 maravedis. A maravedi was then a little less than six cents
of our currency. The annuity was, therefore, about six hundred dollars a
year.
The worth of a maravedi varied, from time to time, so that the
calculations of the value of any number of maravedis are very confusing.
Before the coin went out of use it was worth only half a cent.
CHAPTER IV. -- THE LANDING ON THE TWELFTH OF OCTOBER
--THE NATIVES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS--SEARCH FOR GOLD--CUBA
DISCOVERED--COLUMBUS COASTS ALONG ITS SHORES.
It was on Friday, the twelfth of October, that they saw this island,
which was an island of the Lucayos group, called, says Las Casas, “in
the tongue of the Indians, Guanahani.” Soon they saw people naked, and
the Admiral went ashore in the armed boat, with Martin Alonzo Pinzon
and, Vicente Yanez, his brother, who was captain of the Nina. The
Admiral unfurled the Royal Standard, and the captain’s two standards of
the Greek Cross, which the Admiral raised on all the ships as a sign,
with an F. and a Y.; over each letter a crown; one on one side of the
{“iron cross symbol”} and the other on the other. When they were ashore
they saw very green trees and much water, and fruits of different kinds.
“The Admiral called the two captains and the others who went ashore,
and Rodrigo Descovedo, Notary of the whole fleet, and Rodrigo Sanchez of
Segovia, and he said that they must give him their faith and witness how
he took possession before all others, as in fact he did take possession
of the said island for the king and the queen, his lord and lady. . . .
Soon many people of the island assembled. These which follow are
the very words of the Admiral, in his book of his first navigation and
discovery of these Indies.”
October 11-12. “So that they may feel great friendship for us, and
because I knew that they were a people who would be better delivered
and converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force, I gave to some of
them red caps and glass bells which they put round their necks, and many
other things of little value, in which they took much pleasure, and they
remained so friendly to us that it was wonderful.
“Afterwards they came swimming to the ship’s boats where we were. And
they brought us parrots and cotton-thread in skeins, and javelins and
many other things. And they bartered them with us for other things,
which we gave them, such as little glass beads and little bells. In
short, they took everything, and gave of what they had with good
will. But it seemed to me that they were a people very destitute of
everything.
“They all went as naked as their mothers bore them, and the women as
well, although I only saw one who was really young. And all the men I
saw were young, for I saw none more than thirty years of age; very well
made, with very handsome persons, and very good faces; their hair thick
like the hairs of horses’ tails, and cut short. They bring their hair
above their eyebrows, except a little behind, which they wear long, and
never cut. Some of them paint themselves blackish (and they are of the
color of the inhabitants of the Canaries, neither black nor white), and
some paint themselves white, and some red, and some with whatever they
can get. And some of them paint their faces, and some all their bodies,
and some only the eyes, and some only the nose.
“They do not bear arms nor do they know them, for I showed them
swords and they took them by the edge, and they cut themselves through
ignorance. They have no iron at all; their javelins are rods without
iron, and some of them have a fish’s tooth at the end, and some of
them other things. They are all of good stature, and good graceful
appearance, well made. I saw some who had scars of wounds in their
bodies, and I made signs to them (to ask) what that was, and they showed
me how people came there from other islands which lay around, and tried
to take them captive and they defended themselves. And I believed, and I
(still) believe, that they came there from the mainland to take them for
captives.
“They would be good servants, and of good disposition, for I see that
they repeat very quickly everything which is said to them. And I believe
that they could easily be made Christians, for it seems to me that they
have no belief. I, if it please our Lord, will take six of them to your
Highnesses at the time of my departure, so that they may learn to
talk. No wild creature of any sort have I seen, except parrots, in this
island.”
All these are the words of the Admiral, says Las Casas. The journal of
the next day is in these words:
Saturday, October 13. “As soon as the day broke, many of these men came
to the beach, all young, as I have said, and all of good stature, a very
handsome race. Their hair is not woolly, but straight and coarse, like
horse hair, and all with much wider foreheads and heads than any other
people I have seen up to this time. And their eyes are very fine and
not small, and they are not black at all, but of the color of the Canary
Islanders. And nothing else could be expected, since it is on one line
of latitude with the Island of Ferro, in the Canaries.
“They came to the ship with almadias,(*) which are made of the trunk
of a tree, like a long boat, and all of one piece--and made in a very
wonderful manner in the fashion of the country--and large enough for
some of them to hold forty or forty-five men. And others are smaller,
down to such as hold one man alone. They row with a shovel like a
baker’s, and it goes wonderfully well. And if it overturns, immediately
they all go to swimming and they right it, and bale it with calabashes
which they carry.
(*) Arabic word for raft or float; here it means canoes.
“They brought skeins of spun cotton, and parrots, and javelins, and
other little things which it would be wearisome to write down, and they
gave everything for whatever was given to them.
“And I strove attentively to learn whether there were gold. And I saw
that some of them had a little piece of gold hung in a hole which they
have in their noses. And by signs I was able to understand that going to
the south, or going round the island to the southward, there was a king
there who had great vessels of it, and had very much of it. I tried
to persuade them to go there; and afterward I saw that they did not
understand about going.(*)
(*) To this first found land, called by the natives
Guanahani, Columbus gave the name of San Salvador. There is,
however, great doubt whether this is the island known by
that name on the maps. Of late years the impression has
generally been that the island thus discovered is that now
known as Watling’s island. In 1860 Admiral Fox, of the
United States navy, visited all these islands, and studied
the whole question anew, visiting the islands himself and
working backwards to the account of Columbus’s subsequent
voyage, so as to fix the spot from which that voyage began.
Admiral Fox decides that the island of discovery was neither
San Salvador nor Watling’s island, but the Samana island of
the same group. The subject is so curious that we copy his
results at more length in the appendix.
“I determined to wait till the next afternoon, and then to start for the
southwest, for many of them told me that there was land to the south and
southwest and northwest, and that those from the northwest came often
to fight with them, and so to go on to the southwest to seek gold and
precious stones.
“This island is very large and very flat and with very green trees, and
many waters, and a very large lake in the midst, without any mountain.
And all of it is green, so that it is a pleasure to see it. And these
people are so gentle, and desirous to have our articles and thinking
that nothing can be given them unless they give something and do not
keep it back. They take what they can, and at once jump (into the water)
and swim (away). But all that they have they give for whatever is given
them. For they barter even for pieces of porringus, and of broken glass
cups, so that I saw sixteen skeins of cotton given for three Portuguese
centis, that is a blanca of Castile, and there was more than twenty-five
pounds of spun cotton in them. This I shall forbid, and not let anyone
take (it); but I shall have it all taken for your Highnesses, if there
is any quantity of it.
“It grows here in this island, but for a short time I could not believe
it at all. And there is found here also the gold which they wear hanging
to their noses; but so as not to lose time I mean to go to see whether I
can reach the island of Cipango.
“Now as it was night they all went ashore with their almadias.”
Sunday, October 14. “At daybreak I had the ship’s boat and the boats
of the caravels made ready, and I sailed along the island, toward the
north-northeast, to see the other port, * * * * what there was (there),
and also to see the towns, and I soon saw two or three, and the people,
who all were coming to the shore, calling us and giving thanks to God.
Some brought us water, others things to eat. Others, when they saw that
I did not care to go ashore, threw themselves into the sea and came
swimming, and we understood that they asked us if we had come from
heaven. And an old man came into the boat, and others called all (the
rest) men and women, with a loud voice: ‘Come and see the men who have
come from heaven; bring them food and drink.’
“There came many of them and many women, each one with something, giving
thanks to God, casting themselves on the ground, and raising their heads
toward heaven. And afterwards they called us with shouts to come ashore.
“But I feared (to do so), for I saw a great reef of rocks which
encircles all that island. And in it there is bottom and harbor for
as many ships as there are in all Christendom, and its entrance very
narrow. It is true that there are some shallows inside this ring, but
the sea is no rougher than in a well.
“And I was moved to see all this, this morning, so that I might be able
to give an account of it all to your Highnesses, and also (to find out)
where I might make a fortress. And I saw a piece of land formed like an
island, although it is not one, in which there were six houses, which
could be cut off in two days so as to become an island; although I do
not see that it is necessary, as this people is very ignorant of arms,
as your Highnesses will see from seven whom I had taken, to carry
them off to learn our speech and to bring them back again. But your
Highnesses, when you direct, can take them all to Castile, or keep them
captives in this same island, for with fifty men you can keep them all
subjected, and make them do whatever you like.
“And close to the said islet are groves of trees, the most beautiful I
have seen, and as green and full of leaves as those of Castile in the
months of April and May, and much water.
“I looked at all that harbor and then I returned to the ship and set
sail, and I saw so many islands that I could not decide to which I
should go first. And those men whom I had taken said to me by signs that
there were so very many that they were without number, and they repeated
by name more than a hundred. At last I set sail for the largest one, and
there I determined to go. And so I am doing, and it will be five leagues
from the island of San Salvador, and farther from some of the rest,
nearer to others. They all are very flat, without mountains and very
fertile, and all inhabited. And they make war upon each other although
they are very simple, and (they are) very beautifully formed.”
Monday, October 15, Columbus, on arriving at the island for which he had
set sail, went on to a cape, near which he anchored at about sunset. He
gave the island the name of Santa Maria de la Concepcion.(*)
(*) This is supposed to be Caico del Norte.
“At about sunset I anchored near the said cape to know if there were
gold there, for the men whom I had taken at the Island of San Salvador
told me that there they wore very large rings of gold on their legs and
arms. I think that all they said was for a trick, in order to make their
escape. However, I did not wish to pass by any island without taking
possession of it.
“And I anchored, and was there till today, Tuesday, when at the break of
day I went ashore with the armed boats, and landed.
“They (the inhabitants), who were many, as naked and in the same
condition as those of San Salvador, let us land on the island, and gave
us what we asked of them. * * *
“I set out for the ship. And there was a large almadia which had
come to board the caravel Nina, and one of the men from we Island of San
Salvador threw himself into the sea, took this boat, and made off; and
the night before, at midnight, another jumped out. And the almadia went
back so fast that there never was a boat which could come up with her,
although we had a considerable advantage. It reached the shore, and they
left the almadia, and some of my company landed after them, and they all
fled like hens.
“And the almadia, which they had left, we took to the caravel Nina, to
which from another headland there was coming another little almadia,
with a man who came to barter a skein of cotton. And some of the sailors
threw themselves into the sea, because he did not wish to enter the
caravel, and took him. And I, who was on the stern of the ship, and saw
it all, sent for him and gave him a red cap and some little green glass
beads which I put on his arm, and two small bells which I put at his
ears, and I had his almadia returned, * * * and sent him ashore.
“And I set sail at once to go to the other large island which I saw at
the west, and commanded the other almadia to be set adrift, which the
caravel Nina was towing astern. And then I saw on land, when the man
landed, to whom I had given the above mentioned things (and I had not
consented to take the skein of cotton, though he wished to give it to
me), all the others went to him and thought it a great wonder, and it
seemed to them that we were good people, and that the other man, who
had fled, had done us some harm, and that therefore we were carrying him
off. And this was why I treated the other man as I did, commanding him
to be released, and gave him the said things, so that they might have
this opinion of us, and so that another time, when your Highnesses send
here again, they may be well disposed. And all that I gave him was not
worth four maravedis.”
Columbus had set sail at ten o’clock for a “large island” he mentions,
which he called Fernandina, where, from the tales of the Indian
captives, he expected to find gold. Half way between this island and
Santa Maria, he met with “a man alone in an almadia which was passing”
(from one island to the other), “and he was carrying a little of their
bread, as big as one’s fist, and a calabash of water and a piece of red
earth made into dust, and then kneaded, and some dry leaves, which must
be a thing much valued among them, since at San Salvador they brought
them to me as a present.(*) And he had a little basket of their sort, in
which he had a string of little glass bells and two blancas, by which I
knew that he came from the Island of San Salvador. * * * He came to the
ship; I took him on board, for so he asked, and made him put his almadia
in the ship, and keep all he was carrying. And I commanded to give him
bread and honey to eat, and something to drink.
(*) Was this perhaps tobacco?
“And thus I will take him over to Fernandina, and I will give him all
his property so that he may give good accounts of us, so that, if it
please our Lord, when your Highnesses send there, those who come may
receive honor, and they may give us of all they have.”
Columbus continued sailing for the island he named Fernandina, now
called Inagua Chica. There was a calm all day and he did not arrive in
time to anchor safely before dark. He therefore waited till morning, and
anchored near a town. Here the man had gone, who had been picked up the
day before, and he had given such good accounts that all night long the
ship had been boarded by almadias, bringing supplies. Columbus directed
some trifle to be given to each of the islanders, and that they should
be given “honey of sugar” to eat. He sent the ship’s boat ashore for
water and the inhabitants not only pointed it out but helped to put the
water-casks on board.
“This people,” he says, “is like those of the aforesaid islands, and
has the same speech and the same customs, except that these seem to me a
somewhat more domestic race, and more intelligent. * * * And I saw also
in this island cotton cloths made like mantles. * * *
“It is a very green island and flat and very fertile, and I have no
doubt that all the year through they sow panizo (panic-grass) and
harvest it, and so with everything else. And I saw many trees, of very
different form from ours, and many of them which had branches of many
sorts, and all on one trunk. And one branch is of one sort and one of
another, and so different that it is the greatest wonder in the world. *
* * One branch has its leaves like canes, and another like the lentisk;
and so on one tree five or six of these kinds; and all so different. Nor
are they grafted, for it might be said that grafting does it, but they
grow on the mountains, nor do these people care for them. * * *
“Here the fishes are so different from ours that it is wonderful. There
are some like cocks of the finest colors in the world, blue, yellow, red
and of all colors, and others painted in a thousand ways. And the colors
are so fine that there is no man who does not wonder at them and take
great pleasure in seeing them. Also, there are whales. As for wild
creatures on shore, I saw none of any sort, except parrots and lizards;
a boy told me that he saw a great snake. Neither sheep nor goats nor
any other animal did I see; although I have been here a very short time,
that is, half a day, but if there had been any I could not have failed
to see some of them.” * * *
Wednesday, October 17. He left the town at noon and prepared to sail
round the island. He had meant to go by the south and southeast. But as
Martin Alonzo Pinzon, captain of the Pinta, had heard, from one of
the Indians he had on board, that it would be quicker to start by the
northwest, and as the wind was favorable for this course, Columbus took
it. He found a fine harbor two leagues further on, where he found some
friendly Indians, and sent a party ashore for water. “During this time,”
he says, “I went (to look at) these trees, which were the most beautiful
things to see which have been seen; there was as much verdure in the
same degree as in the month of May in Andalusia, and all the trees were
as different from ours as the day from the night. And so (were) the
fruits, and the herbs, and the stones and everything. The truth is that
some trees had a resemblance to others which there are in Castile, but
there was a very great difference. And other trees of other sorts
were such that there is no one who could * * * liken them to others of
Castile. * * *
“The others who went for water told me how they had been in their
houses, and that they were very well swept and clean, and their beds
and furniture (made) of things which are like nets of cotton.(*) Their
houses are all like pavilions, and very high and good chimneys.(**)
(*) They are called Hamacas.
(**) Las Casas says they were not meant for smoke but as a
crown, for they have no opening below for the smoke.
“But I did not see, among many towns which I saw, any of more than
twelve or fifteen houses. * * * And there they had dogs. * * * And there
they found one man who had on his nose a piece of gold which was like
half a castellano, on which there were cut letters.(*) I blamed them for
not bargaining for it, and giving as much as was asked, to see what it
was, and whose coin it was; and they answered me that they did not dare
to barter it.”
(*) A castellano was a piece of gold, money, weighing about
one-sixth of an ounce.
He continued towards the northwest, then turned his course to the
east-southeast, east and southeast. The weather being thick and heavy,
and “threatening immediate rain. So all these days since I have been in
these Indies it has rained little or much.”
Friday, October 19. Columbus, who had not landed the day before, now
sent two caravels, one to the east and southeast and the other to the
south-southeast, while he himself, with the Santa Maria, the SHIP, as he
calls it, went to the southeast. He ordered the caravels to keep their
courses till noon, and then join him. This they did, at an island to the
east, which he named Isabella, the Indians whom he had with him calling
it Saomete. It has been supposed to be the island now called Inagua
Grande.
“All this coast,” says the Admiral, “and the part of the island which I
saw, is all nearly flat, and the island the most beautiful thing I
ever saw, for if the others are very beautiful this one is more so.” He
anchored at a cape which was so beautiful that he named it Cabo Fermoso,
the Beautiful Cape, “so green and so beautiful,” he says, “like all the
other things and lands of these islands, that I do not know where to go
first, nor can I weary my eyes with seeing such beautiful verdure and so
different from ours. And I believe that there are in them many herbs and
many trees, which are of great value in Spain for dyes (or tinctures)
and for medicines of spicery. But I do not know them, which I greatly
regret. And as I came here to this cape there came such a good and sweet
odor of flowers or trees from the land that it was the sweetest thing in
the world.”
He heard that there was a king in the interior who wore clothes and
much gold, and though, as he says, the Indians had so little gold that
whatever small quantity of it the king wore it would appear large to
them, he decided to visit him the next day. He did not do so, however,
as he found the water too shallow in his immediate neighborhood, and
then had not enough wind to go on, except at night.
Sunday morning, October 21, he anchored, apparently more to the west,
and after having dined, landed. He found but one house, from which
the inhabitants were absent; he directed that nothing in it should be
touched. He speaks again of the great beauty of the island, even greater
than that of the others he had seen. “The singing of the birds,” he
says, “seems as if a man would never seek to leave this place, and the
flocks of parrots which darken the sun, and fowls and birds of so many
kinds and so different from ours that it is wonderful. And then there
are trees of a thousand sorts, and all with fruit of their kinds.
And all have such an odor that it is wonderful, so that I am the most
afflicted man in the world not to know them.”
They killed a serpent in one of the lakes upon this island, which Las
Casas says is the Guana, or what we call the Iguana.
In seeking for good water, the Spaniards found a town, from which the
inhabitants were going to fly. But some of them rallied, and one of them
approached the visitors. Columbus gave him some little bells and glass
beads, with which he was much pleased. The Admiral asked him for water,
and they brought it gladly to the shore in calabashes.
He still wished to see the king of whom the Indians had spoken, but
meant afterward to go to “another very great island, which I believe
must be Cipango, which they call Colba.” This is probably a mistake in
the manuscript for Cuba, which is what is meant. It continues, “and
to that other island which they call Bosio” (probably Bohio) “and the
others which are on the way, I will see these in passing. * * * But
still, I am determined to go to the mainland and to the city of Quisay
and to give your Highnesses’ letters to the Grand Khan, and seek a reply
and come back with it.”
He remained at this island during the twenty-second and twenty-third of
October, waiting first for the king, who did not appear, and then for a
favorable wind. “To sail round these islands,” he says, “one needs many
sorts of wind, and it does not blow as men would like.” At midnight,
between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth, he weighed anchor in order
to start for Cuba.
“I have heard these people say that it was very large and of great
traffic,” he says, “and that there were in it gold and spices, and great
ships and merchants. And they showed me that I should go to it by the
west-southwest, and I think so. For I think that if I may trust the
signs which all the Indians of these islands have made me, and those
whom I am carrying in the ships, for by the tongue I do not understand
them, it (Cuba) is the Island of Cipango,(*) of which wonderful things
are told, and on the globes which I have seen and in the painted maps,
it is in this district.”
(*) This was the name the old geographers gave to Japan.
The next day they saw seven or eight islands, which are supposed to be
the eastern and southern keys of the Grand Bank of Bahama. He anchored
to the south of them on the twenty-sixth of October, and on the next day
sailed once more for Cuba.
On Sunday, October 28, he arrived there, in what is now called the
Puerto de Nipe; he named it the Puerto de San Salvador. Here, as he went
on, he was again charmed by the beautiful country. He found palms “of
another sort,” says Las Casas, “from those of Guinea, and from ours.” He
found the island the “most beautiful which eyes have seen, full of very
good ports and deep rivers,” and that apparently the sea is never rough
there, as the grass grows down to the water’s edge. This greenness to
the sea’s edge is still observed there. “Up till that time,” says Las
Casas, “he had not experienced in all these islands that the sea was
rough.” He had occasion to learn about it later. He mentions also that
the island is mountainous.
CHAPTER V. -- LANDING ON CUBA
--THE CIGAR AND TOBACCO--CIPANGO AND THE GREAT KHAN--FROM CUBA TO
HAYTI--ITS SHORES AND HARBORS.
When Columbus landed, at some distance farther along the coast, he found
the best houses he had yet seen, very large, like pavilions, and very
neat within; not in streets but set about here and there. They were all
built of palm branches. Here were dogs which never barked (supposed
to be the almiqui), wild birds tamed in the houses and “wonderful
arrangements of nets,(*) and fish-hooks and fishing apparatus. There
were also carved masks and other images. Not a thing was touched.” The
inhabitants had fled.
(*) These were probably hammocks.
He went on to the northwest, and saw a cape which he named Cabo de
Palmas. The Indians on board the Pinta said that beyond this cape was
a river and that at four days’ journey from this was what they called
“Cuba.” Now they had been coasting along the Island of Cuba for two or
three days. But Martin Pinzon, the captain of the Pinta, understood this
Cuba to be a city, and that this land was the mainland, running far to
the north. Columbus until he died believed that it was the mainland.
Martin Pinzon also understood that the king of that land was at war with
the Grand Khan, whom they called Cami. The Admiral determined to go to
the river the Indians mentioned, and to send to the king the letter
of the sovereigns. He meant to send with it a sailor who had been to
Guinea, and some of the Guanahani Indians. He was encouraged, probably,
by the name of Carni, in thinking that he was really near the Grand
Khan.
He did not, however, send off these messengers at once, as the wind
and the nature of the coast proved unfit for his going up the river the
Indians had spoken of. He went back to the town where he had been two
days before.
Once more he found that the people had fled, but “after a good while
a man appeared,” and the Admiral sent ashore one of the Indians he had
with him. This man shouted to the Indians on shore that they must not be
afraid, as these were good people, and did harm to no man, nor did
they belong to the Grand Khan, but they gave, of what they had, in many
islands where they had been. He now jumped into the sea and swam ashore,
and two of the inhabitants took him in their arms and brought him to a
house where they asked him questions. When he had reassured them, they
began to come out to the ships in their canoes, with “spun cotton and
others of their little things.” But the Admiral commanded that nothing
should be taken from them, so that they might know that he was seeking
nothing but gold, or, as they called it, nucay.
He saw no gold here, but one of them had a piece of wrought silver
hanging to his nose. They made signs, that before three days many
merchants would come from the inland country to trade with the
Spaniards, and that they would bring news from the king, who, according
to their signs, was four days’ journey away. “And it is certain” says
the Admiral, “that this is the mainland, and that I am before Zayto and
Quinsay, a hundred leagues more or less from both of them, and this is
clearly shown by the tide, which comes in a different manner from that
in which it has done up to this time; and yesterday when I went to the
northwest I found that it was cold.”
Always supposing that he was near Japan, which they called Cipango,
Columbus continued to sail along the northern coast of Cuba and explored
about half that shore. He then returned to the east, governed by the
assurances of the natives that on an island named Babegue he would find
men who used hammers with which to beat gold into ingots. This gold,
as he understood them, was collected on the shore at night, while the
people lighted up the darkness with candles.
At the point where he turned back, he had hauled his ships up on the
shore to repair them. From this point, on the second of November, he
sent two officers inland, one of whom was a Jew, who knew Chaldee,
Hebrew and a little Arabic, in the hope that they should find some one
who could speak these languages. With them went one of the Guanahani
Indians, and one from the neighborhood.
They returned on the night between the fifth and sixth of November.
Twelve leagues off they had found a village of about fifty large
houses, made in the form of tents. This village had about a thousand
inhabitants, according to the explorers. They had received the
ambassadors with cordial kindness, believing that they had descended
from heaven.
They even took them in their arms and thus carried them to the finest
house of all. They gave them seats, and then sat round them on the
ground in a circle. They kissed their feet and hands, and touched them,
to make sure whether they were really men of flesh and bone.
It was on this expedition that the first observation was made of that
gift of America to the world, which has worked its way so deep and far
into general use. They met men and women who “carried live coals, so
as to draw into their mouths the smoke of burning herbs.” This was the
account of the first observers. But Las Casas says that the dry herbs
were wrapped in another leaf as dry. He says that “they lighted one end
of the little stick thus formed, and sucked in or absorbed the smoke by
the other, with which,” he says, “they put their flesh to sleep, and it
nearly intoxicates them, and thus they say that they feel no fatigue.
These mosquetes, as we should call them, they call tobacos. I knew
Spaniards on this Island of Hispaniola who were accustomed to take them,
who, on being reproved for it as a vice, replied that it was not in
their power (in their hand) to leave off taking them. I do not know what
savour or profit they found in them.” This is clearly a cigar.
The third or fourth of November, then, 1892, with the addition of nine
days to change the style from old to new, may be taken by lovers of
tobacco as the fourth centennial of the day when Europeans first learned
the use of the cigar.
On the eleventh of November the repairs were completed.
He says that the Sunday before, November 11 it had seemed to him that it
would be good to take some persons, from those of that river, to carry
to the sovereigns, so that “they might learn our tongue, so as to know
what there is in the country, and so that when they come back they may
be tongues to the Christians, and receive our customs and the things of
the faith. Because I saw and know,” says the Admiral, “that this people
has no religion (secta) nor are they idolaters, but very mild and
without knowing what evil is, nor how to kill others, nor how to take
them, and without arms, and so timorous that from one of our men ten
of them fly, although they do sport with them, and ready to believe and
knowing that there is a God in heaven, and sure that we have come from
heaven; and very ready at any prayer which we tell them to repeat, and
they make the sign of the cross.
“So your Highnesses should determine to make them Christians, for I
believe that if they begin, in a short time they will have accomplished
converting to our holy faith a multitude of towns.” “Without doubt there
are in these lands the greatest quantities of gold, for not without
cause do these Indians whom I am bringing say that there are places in
these isles where they dig out gold and wear it on their necks, in their
ears and on their arms and legs, and the bracelets are very thick.
“And also there are stones and precious pearls, and unnumbered spices.
And in this Rio de Mares, from which I departed last night, without
doubt there is the greatest quantity of mastic, and there might be more
if more were desired. For the trees, if planted, take root, and there
are many of them and very great and they have the leaf like a lentisk,
and their fruit, except that the trees and the fruit are larger, is
such as Pliny describes, and I have seen in the Island of Chios in the
Archipelago.
“And I had many of these trees tapped to see if they would send out
resin, so as to draw it out. And as it rained all the time I was at the
said river, I could not get any of it, except a very little which I am
bringing to your Highnesses. And besides, it may be that it is not the
time to tap them, for I believe that this should be done at the time
when the trees begin to leave out from the winter and seek to send out
their flowers, and now they have the fruit nearly ripe.
“And also here there might be had a great store of cotton, and I believe
that it might be sold very well here without taking it to Spain, in the
great cities of the Great Khan, which will doubtless be discovered, and
many others of other lords, who will then have to serve your Highnesses.
And here will be given them other things from Spain, from the lands of
the East, since these are ours in the West.
“And here there is also aloes everywhere, although this is not a thing
to make great account of, but the mastic should be well considered,
because it is not found except in the said island of Chios, and I
believe that they get from it quite 50,000 ducats if I remember aright.
And this is the best harbor which I have seen thus far--deep and easy of
access, so that this would be a good place for a large town.”
The notes in Columbus’s journals are of the more interest and value,
because they show his impressions at the moment when he wrote. However
mistaken those impressions, he never corrects them afterwards. Although,
while he was in Cuba, he never found the Grand Khan, he never recalls
the hopes which he has expressed.
He had discovered the island on its northern side by sailing southwest
from the Lucayos or Bahamas. From the eleventh of November until the
sixth of December he was occupied in coasting along the northern shore,
eventually returning eastward, when he crossed the channel which parts
Cuba from Hayti.
The first course was east, a quarter southeast, and on the sixteenth,
they entered Port-au-Prince, and took possession, raising a cross there.
At Port-au-Prince, to his surprise, he found on a point of rock two
large logs, mortised into each other in the shape of a cross, so
“that you would have said a carpenter could not have proportioned them
better.”
On the nineteenth the course was north-northeast; on the twenty-first
they took a course south, a quarter southwest, seeking in these changes
the island of “Babeque,” which the Indians had spoken of as rich with
gold. On the day last named Pinzon left the Admiral in the Pinta, and
they did not meet again for more than a month.
Columbus touched at various points on Cuba and the neighboring islands.
He sought, without success, for pearls, and always pressed his inquiries
for gold. He was determined to find the island of Bohio, greatly to the
terror of the poor Indians, whom he had on board: they said that its
natives had but one eye, in the middle of their foreheads, and that they
were well armed and ate their prisoners.
He landed in the bay of Moa, and then, keeping near the coast, sailed
towards the Capo del Pico, now called Cape Vacz. At Puerto Santo he
was detained some days by bad weather. On the fourth of December he
continued his eastward voyage, and on the next day saw far off the
mountains of Hayti, which was the Bohio he sought for.
CHAPTER VI. -- DISCOVERY OF HAYTI OR HISPANIOLA
--THE SEARCH FOR GOLD--HOSPITALITY AND INTELLIGENCE OF THE
NATIVES--CHRISTMAS DAY--A SHIPWRECK--COLONY TO BE FOUNDED--COLUMBUS
SAILS EAST AND MEETS MARTIN PINZON--THE TWO VESSELS RETURN TO EUROPE
--STORM--THE AZORES--PORTUGAL--HOME.
On the sixth of December they crossed from the eastern cape of Cuba
to the northwestern point of the island, which we call Hayti or San
Domingo. He says he gave it this name because “the plains appeared to
him almost exactly like those of Castile, but yet more beautiful.”
He coasted eastward along the northern side of the island, hoping that
it might be the continent, and always inquiring for gold when he landed;
but the Indians, as before, referred him to yet another land, still
further south, which they still called Bohio. It was not surrounded by
water, they said. The word “caniba,” which is the origin of our word
“cannibal,” and refers to the fierce Caribs, came often into their talk.
The sound of the syllable can made Columbus more sure that he was now
approaching the dominions of the Grand Khan of eastern Asia, of whom
Marco Polo had informed Europe so fully.
On the twelfth of the month, after a landing in which a cross had been
erected, three sailors went inland, pursuing the Indians. They captured
a young woman whom they brought to the fleet. She wore a large ring of
gold in her nose. She was able to understand the other Indians whom
they had on board. Columbus dressed her, gave her some imitation pearls,
rings and other finery, and then put her on shore with three Indians and
three of his own men.
The men returned the next day without going to the Indian village.
Columbus then sent out nine men, with an Indian, who found a town of a
thousand huts about four and a half leagues from the ship. They thought
the population was three thousand. The village in Cuba is spoken of as
having twenty people to a house. Here the houses were smaller or the
count of the numbers extravagant. The people approached the explorers
carefully, and with tokens of respect. Soon they gained confidence
and brought out food for them: fish, and bread made from roots, “which
tasted exactly as if it were made of chestnuts.”
In the midst of this festival, the woman, who had been sent back from
the ship so graciously, appeared borne on the shoulders of men who were
led by her husband.
The Spaniards thought these natives of St. Domingo much whiter than
those of the other islands. Columbus says that two of the women, if
dressed in Castilian costume, would be counted to be Spaniards. He says
that the heat of the country is intense, and that if these people lived
in a cooler region they would be of lighter color.
On the fourteenth of December he continued his voyage eastward, and
on the fifteenth landed on the little island north of Hayti, which
he called Tortuga, or Turtle island. At midnight on the sixteenth he
sailed, and landed on Hispaniola again. Five hundred Indians met him,
accompanied by their king, a fine young man of about twenty years of
age. He had around him several counselors, one of whom appeared to be
his tutor. To the steady questions where gold could be found, the reply
as steady was made that it was in “the Island of Babeque.” This island,
they said, was only two days off, and they pointed out the route. The
interview ended in an offer by the king to the Admiral of all that
he had. The explorers never found this mysterious Babeque, unless, as
Bishop Las Casas guessed, Babeque and Jamaica be the same.
The king visited Columbus on his ship in the evening, and Columbus
entertained him with European food. With so cordial a beginning of
intimacy, it was natural that the visitors should spend two or three
days with these people. The king would not believe that any sovereigns
of Castile could be more powerful than the men he saw. He and those
around him all believed that they came direct from heaven.
Columbus was always asking for gold. He gave strict orders that it
should always be paid for, when it was taken. To the islanders it was
merely a matter of ornament, and they gladly exchanged it for the glass
beads, the rings or the bells, which seemed to them more ornamental. One
of the caciques or chiefs, evidently a man of distinction and authority,
had little bits of gold which he exchanged for pieces of glass. It
proved that he had clipped them off from a larger piece, and he went
back into his cabin, cut that to pieces, and then exchanged all those in
trade for the white man’s commodities. Well pleased with his bargain,
he then told the Spaniards that he would go and get much more and would
come and trade with them again.
On the eighteenth of December, the wind not serving well, they waited
the return of the chief whom they had first seen. In the afternoon he
appeared, seated in a palanquin, which was carried by four men, and
escorted by more than two hundred of his people. He was accompanied by a
counselor and preceptor who did not leave him. He came on board the ship
when Columbus was at table. He would not permit him to leave his place,
and readily took a seat at his side, when it was offered. Columbus
offered him European food and drink; he tasted of each, and then gave
what was offered to his attendants. The ceremonious Spaniards found a
remarkable dignity in his air and gestures. After the repast, one of his
servants brought a handsome belt, elegantly wrought, which he presented
to Columbus, with two small pieces of gold, also delicately wrought.
Columbus observed that this cacique looked with interest on the hangings
of his ship-bed, and made a present of them to him, in return for his
offering, with some amber beads from his own neck, some red shoes and a
flask of orange flower water.
On the nineteenth, after these agreeable hospitalities, the squadron
sailed again, and on the twentieth arrived at a harbor which Columbus
pronounced the finest he had ever seen. The reception he met here and
the impressions he formed of Hispaniola determined him to make a colony
on that island. It may be said that on this determination the course of
his after life turned. This harbor is now known as the Bay of Azul.
The men, whom he sent on shore, found a large village not far from the
shore, where they were most cordially received. The natives begged the
Europeans to stay with them, and as it proved, Columbus accepted the
invitation for a part of his crew. On the first day three different
chiefs came to visit him, in a friendly way, with their retinues.
The next day more than a hundred and twenty canoes visited the ship,
bringing with them such presents as the people thought would be
acceptable. Among these were bread from the cassava root, fish, water in
earthen jars, and the seeds of spices. These spices they would stir in
with water to make a drink which they thought healthful.
On the same day Columbus sent an embassy of six men to a large town in
the interior. The chief by giving his hand “to the secretary” pledged
himself for their safe return.
The twenty-third was Sunday. It was spent as the day before had been,
in mutual civilities. The natives would offer their presents, and say
“take, take,” in their own language. Five chiefs were among the visitors
of the day. From their accounts Columbus was satisfied that there was
much gold in the island, as indeed, to the misery and destruction of its
inhabitants, there proved to be. He thought it was larger than England.
But he was mistaken. In his journal of the next day he mentions Civao, a
land to the west, where they told him that there was gold, and again he
thought he was approaching Cipango, or Japan.
The next day he left these hospitable people, raising anchor in the
morning, and with a light land wind continued towards the west. At
eleven in the evening Columbus retired to rest. While he slept, on
Christmas Day, there occurred an accident which changed all plans for
the expedition so far as any had been formed, and from which there
followed the establishment of the ill-fated first colony. The evening
was calm when Columbus himself retired to sleep, and the master of the
vessel followed his example, entrusting the helm to one of the boys.
Every person on the ship, excepting this boy, was asleep, and he seems
to have been awake to little purpose.
The young steersman let the ship drift upon a ridge of rock, although,
as Columbus says, indignantly, there were breakers abundant to show the
danger. So soon as she struck, the boy cried out, and Columbus was
the first to wake. He says, by way of apology for himself, that for
thirty-six hours he had not slept until now. The master of the ship
followed him. But it was too late. The tide, such as there was, was
ebbing, and the Santa Maria was hopelessly aground. Columbus ordered the
masts cut away, but this did not relieve her.
He sent out his boat with directions to carry aft an anchor and cable,
but its crew escaped to the Nina with their tale of disaster. The Nina’s
people would not receive them, reproached them as traitors, and in their
own vessel came to the scene of danger. Columbus was obliged to transfer
to her the crew of the Santa Maria.
So soon as it was day, their friendly ally, Guacanagari, came on board.
With tears in his eyes, he made the kindest and most judicious offers
of assistance. He saw Columbus’s dejection, and tried to relieve him by
expressions of his sympathy. He set aside on shore two large houses to
receive the stores that were on the Santa Maria, and appointed as many
large canoes as could be used to remove these stores to the land. He
assured Columbus that not a bit of the cargo or stores should be lost,
and this loyal promise was fulfilled to the letter.
The weather continued favorable. The sea was so light that everything
on board the Santa Maria was removed safely. Then it was that Columbus,
tempted by the beauty of the place, by the friendship of the natives,
and by the evident wishes of his men, determined to leave a colony,
which should be supported by the stores of the Santa Maria, until
the rest of the party could go back to Spain and bring or send
reinforcements. The king was well pleased with this suggestion, and
promised all assistance for the plan. A vault was dug and built, in
which the stores could be placed, and on this a house was built for the
home of the colonists, so far as they cared to live within doors.
The chief sent a canoe in search of Martin Pinzon and the Pinta, to tell
them of the disaster. But the messengers returned without finding them.
At the camp, which was to be a city, all was industriously pressed, with
the assistance of the friendly natives. Columbus, having no vessel but
the little Nina left, determined to return to Europe with the news of
his discovery, and to leave nearly forty men ashore.
It would appear that the men, themselves, were eager to stay. The luxury
of the climate and the friendly overtures of the people delighted them,
They had no need to build substantial houses. So far as houses were
needed, those of the natives were sufficient. All the preparations
which Columbus thought necessary were made in the week between the
twenty-sixth of December and the second of January. On that day he
expected to sail eastward, but unfavorable winds prevented.
He landed his men again, and by the exhibition of a pretended battle
with European arms, he showed the natives the military force of their
new neighbors. He fired a shot from an arquebuse against the wreck
of the Santa Maria, so that the Indians might see the power of his
artillery. The Indian chief expressed his regret at the approaching
departure, and the Spaniards thought that one of his courtiers said that
the chief had ordered him to make a statue of pure gold as large as the
Admiral.
Columbus explained to the friendly chief that with such arms as the
sovereigns of Castile commanded they could readily destroy the dreaded
Caribs. And he thought he had made such an impression that the islanders
would be the firm friends of the colonists.
“I have bidden them build a solid tower and defense, over a vault. Not
that I think this necessary against the natives, for I am satisfied
that with a handful of people I could conquer the whole island, were it
necessary, although it is, as far as I can judge, larger than Portugal,
and twice as thickly peopled.” In this cheerful estimate of the people
Columbus was wholly wrong, as the sad events proved before the year had
gone by.
He left thirty-nine men to be the garrison of this fort; and the colony
which was to discover the mine of gold. In command he placed Diego da
Arana, Pedro Gutierres and Rodrigo de Segovia. To us, who have more
experience of colonies and colonists than he had had, it does not seem
to promise well that Rodrigo was “the king’s chamberlain and an officer
of the first lord of the household.” Of these three, Diego da Arana was
to be the governor, and the other two his lieutenants. The rest were all
sailors, but among them there were Columbus’s secretary, an alguazil, or
person commissioned in the civil service at home, an “arquebusier,” who
was also a good engineer, a tailor, a ship carpenter, a cooper and a
physician. So the little colony had its share of artificers and men of
practical skill. They all staid willingly, delighted with the prospects
of their new home.
On the third of January Columbus sailed for Europe in the little Nina.
With her own crew and the addition she received from the Santa Maria,
she must have been badly crowded. Fortunately for all parties, on
Sunday, the third day of the voyage, while they were still in sight of
land, the Pinta came in sight. Martin Pinzon came on board the Nina and
offered excuses for his absence. Columbus was not really satisfied with
them, but he affected to be, as this was no moment for a quarrel. He
believed that Pinzon had left him, that, in the Pinta, he might be alone
when he discovered the rich gold-bearing island of Babeque or Baneque.
Although the determination was made to return, another week was spent in
slow coasting, or in waiting for wind. It brought frequent opportunities
for meeting the natives, in one of which they showed a desire to take
some of their visitors captive. This would only have been a return for a
capture made by Pinzon of several of their number, whom Columbus, on
his meeting Pinzon, had freed. In this encounter two of the Indians were
wounded, one by a sword, one by an arrow. It would seem that he did not
show them the power of firearms.
This was in the Bay of Samana, which Columbus called “The Bay of
Arrows,” from the skirmish or quarrel which took place there. They then
sailed sixty-four miles cast, a quarter northeast, and thought they saw
the land of the Caribs, which he was seeking. But here, at length, his
authority over his crew failed. The men were eager to go home;--did not,
perhaps, like the idea of fight with the man-eating Caribs. There was
a good western wind, and on the evening of the sixteenth of January
Columbus gave way and they bore away for home.
Columbus had satisfied himself in this week that there were many islands
east of him which he had not hit upon, and that to the easternmost of
these, from the Canaries, the distance would prove not more than four
hundred leagues. In this supposition he was wholly wrong, though a chain
of islands does extend to the southeast.
He seems to have observed the singular regularity by which the trade
winds bore him steadily westward as he came over. He had no wish to
visit the Canary Islands again, and with more wisdom than could have
been expected, from his slight knowledge of the Atlantic winds, he bore
north. Until the fourteenth of February the voyage was prosperous and
uneventful. One day the captive Indians amused the sailors by swimming.
There is frequent mention of the green growth of the Sargasso sea. But
on the fourteenth all this changed. The simple journal thus describes
the terrible tempest which endangered the two vessels, and seemed, at
the moment, to cut off the hope of their return to Europe.
“Monday, February 14.--This night the wind increased still more; the
waves were terrible. Coming from two opposite directions, they crossed
each other, and stopped the progress of the vessel, which could neither
proceed nor get out from among them; and as they began continually to
break over the ship, the Admiral caused the main-sail to be lowered. She
proceeded thus during three hours, and made twenty miles. The sea became
heavier and heavier, and the wind more and more violent. Seeing the
danger imminent, he allowed himself to drift in whatever direction the
wind took him, because he could do nothing else. Then the Pinta, of
which Martin Alonzo Pinzon was the commander, began to drift also; but
she disappeared very soon, although all through the night the Admiral
made signals with lights to her, and she answered as long as she could,
till she was prevented, probably by the force of the tempest, and by her
deviation from the course which the Admiral followed.” Columbus did not
see the Pinta again until she arrived at Palos. He was himself driven
fifty-four miles towards the northeast.
The journal continues. “After sunrise the strength of the wind
increased, and the sea became still more terrible. The Admiral all this
time kept his mainsail lowered, so that the vessel might rise from among
the waves which washed over it, and which threatened to sink it.
The Admiral followed, at first, the direction of east-northeast, and
afterwards due northeast. He sailed about six hours in this direction,
and thus made seven leagues and a half. He gave orders that every sailor
should draw lots as to who should make a pilgrimage to Santa Maria of
Guadeloupe, to carry her a five-pound wax candle. And each one took a
vow that he to whom the lot fell should make the pilgrimage.
“For this purpose, he gave orders to take as many dry peas as there were
persons in the ship, and to cut, with a knife, a cross upon one of them,
and to put them all into a cap, and to shake them up well. The first who
put his hand in was the Admiral. He drew out the dry pea marked with the
cross; so it was upon him that the lot fell, and he regarded himself,
after that, as a pilgrim, obliged to carry into effect the vow which he
had thus taken. They drew lots a second time, to select a person to go
as pilgrim to Our Lady of Lorette, which is within the boundaries of
Ancona, making a part of the States of the Church: it is a place
where the Holy Virgin has worked and continues to work many and great
miracles. The lot having fallen this time upon a sailor of the harbor of
Santa Maria, named Pedro de Villa, the Admiral promised to give him all
the money necessary for the expenses. He decided that a third pilgrim
should be sent to watch one night at Santa Clara of Moguer, and to have
a mass said there. For this purpose, they again shook up the dry peas,
not forgetting that one which was marked with the cross, and the lot
fell once again to the Admiral himself. He then took, as did all his
crew, the vow that, on the first shore which they might reach, they
would go in their shirts, in a procession, to make a prayer in some
church in invocation of Our Lady.”
“Besides the general vows, or those taken by all in common, each man
made his own special vow, because nobody expected to escape. The storm
which they experienced was so terrible, that all regarded themselves
as lost; what increased the danger was the circumstance that the vessel
lacked ballast, because the consumption of food, water and wine had
greatly diminished her load. The hope of the continuance of weather
as fine as that which they had experienced in all the islands, was
the reason why the Admiral had not provided his vessel with the proper
amount of ballast. Moreover, his plan had been to ballast it in the
Women’s Island, whither he had from the first determined to go. The
remedy which the Admiral employed was to fill with sea water, as soon as
possible, all the empty barrels which had previously held either wine or
fresh water. In this way the difficulty was remedied.
“The Admiral tells here the reasons for fearing that our Saviour would
allow him to become the victim of this tempest, and other reasons which
made him hope that God would come to his assistance, and cause him to
arrive safe and sound, so that intelligence such as that which he was
conveying to the king and queen would not perish with him. The strong
desire which he had to be the bearer of intelligence so important, and
to prove the truth of all which he had said, and that all which he
had tried to discover had really been discovered, seemed to contribute
precisely to inspire him with the greatest fear that he could not
succeed. He confessed, himself, that every mosquito that passed before
his eyes was enough to annoy and trouble him. He attributed this to his
little faith, and his lack of confidence in Divine Providence. On the
other hand, he was re-animated by the favors which God had shown him in
granting to him so great a triumph as that which he had achieved, in
all his discoveries, in fulfilling all his wishes, and in granting that,
after having experienced in Castile so many rebuffs and disappointments,
all his hopes should at last be more than surpassed. In one word, as the
sovereign master of the universe, had, in the outset, distinguished him
in granting all his requests, before he had carried out his expedition
for God’s greatest glory, and before it had succeeded, he was compelled
to believe now that God would preserve him to complete the work which he
had begun.” Such is Las Casas’s abridgment of Columbus’s words.
“For which reasons he said he ought to have had no fear of the tempest
that was raging. But his weakness and anguish did not leave him a
moment’s calm. He also said that his greatest grief was the thought of
leaving his two boys orphans. They were at Cordova, at their studies.
What would become of them in a strange land, without father or mother?
for the king and queen, being ignorant of the services he had rendered
them in this voyage, and of the good news which he was bringing to them,
would not be bound by any consideration to serve as their protectors.
“Full of this thought, he sought, even in the storm, some means of
apprising their highnesses of the victory which the Lord had granted
him, in permitting him to discover in the Indies all which he had sought
in his voyage, and to let them know that these coasts were free from
storms, which is proved, he said, by the growth of herbage and trees
even to the edge of the sea. With this purpose, that, if he perished in
this tempest, the king and queen might have some news of his voyage, he
took a parchment and wrote on it all that he could of his discoveries,
and urgently begged that whoever found it would carry it to the king
and queen. He rolled up this parchment in a piece of waxed linen, closed
this parcel tightly, and tied it up securely; he had brought to him
a large wooden barrel, within which he placed it, without anybody’s
knowing what it was. Everybody thought the proceeding was some act of
devotion. He then caused it to be thrown into the sea.” (*)
(*) Within a few months, in the summer of 1890, a well known
English publisher has issued an interesting and ingenious
edition, of what pretended to be a facsimile of this
document. The reader is asked to believe that the lost
barrel has just now been found on the western coast of
England. But publishers and purchasers know alike that this
is only an amusing suggestion of what might have been.
The sudden and heavy showers, and the squalls which followed some time
afterwards, changed the wind, which turned to the west. They had the
wind thus abaft, and he sailed thus during five hours with the foresail
only, having always the troubled sea, and made at once two leagues and a
half towards the northeast. He had lowered the main topmast lest a wave
might carry it away.
With a heavy wind astern, so that the sea frequently broke over the
little Nina, she made eastward rapidly, and at daybreak on the fifteenth
they saw land. The Admiral knew that he had made the Azores, he had been
steadily directing the course that way; some of the seamen thought they
were at Madeira, and some hopeful ones thought they saw the rock of
Cintra in Portugal. Columbus did not land till the eighteenth, when
he sent some men on shore, upon the island of Santa Maria. His news of
discovery was at first received with enthusiasm.
But there followed a period of disagreeable negotiation with Castaneda,
the governor of the Azores. Pretending great courtesy and hospitality,
but really acting upon the orders of the king of Portugal, he did his
best to disable Columbus and even seized some of his crew and kept them
prisoners for some days. When Columbus once had them on board again,
he gave up his plans for taking ballast and water on these inhospitable
islands, and sailed for Europe.
He had again a stormy passage. Again they were in imminent danger. “But
God was good enough to save him. He caused the crew to draw lots to
send to Notre Dame de la Cintra, at the island of Huelva, a pilgrim who
should come there in his shirt. The lot fell upon himself. All the crew,
including the Admiral, vowed to fast on bread and water on the first
Saturday which should come after the arrival of the vessel. He had
proceeded sixty miles before the sails were torn; then they went under
masts and shrouds on account of the unusual strength of the wind, and
the roughness of the sea, which pressed them almost on all sides. They
saw indications of the nearness of the land; they were in fact, very
near Lisbon.”
At Lisbon, after a reception which was at first cordial, the Portuguese
officers showed an inhospitality like that of Castaneda at the Azores.
But the king himself showed more dignity and courtesy. He received the
storm-tossed Admiral with distinction, and permitted him to refit his
shattered vessel with all he needed. Columbus took this occasion to
write to his own sovereigns.
On the thirteenth he sailed again, and on the fifteenth entered the bay
and harbor of Palos, which he had left six months and a half before. He
had sailed on Friday. He had discovered America on Friday. And on Friday
he safely returned to his home.
His journal of the voyage ends with these words: “I see by this voyage
that God has wonderfully proved what I say, as anybody may convince
himself, by reading this narrative, by the signal wonders which he has
worked during the course of my voyage, and in favor of myself, who have
been for so long a time at the court of your Highnesses in opposition
and contrary to the opinions of so many distinguished personages of your
household, who all opposed me, treating my project as a dream, and my
undertaking as a chimera. And I hope still, nevertheless, in our Lord,
this voyage will bring the greatest honor to Christianity, although it
has been performed with so much ease.”
CHAPTER VII. -- COLUMBUS IS CALLED TO MEET THE KING AND QUEEN
--HIS MAGNIFICENT RECEPTION--NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE POPE AND WITH THE
KING OF PORTUGAL--SECOND EXPEDITION ORDERED--FONSECA--THE PREPARATIONS
AT CADIZ.
The letter which Columbus sent from Lisbon to the king and queen was
everywhere published. It excited the enthusiasm first of Spain and then
of the world. This letter found in the earlier editions is now one of
the most choice curiosities of libraries. Well it may be, for it is the
first public announcement of the greatest event of modern history.
Ferdinand and Isabella directed him to wait upon them at once at court.
It happened that they were then residing at Barcelona, on the eastern
coast of Spain, so that the journey required to fulfill their wishes
carried him quite across the kingdom. It was a journey of triumph. The
people came together in throngs to meet this peaceful conqueror who
brought with him such amazing illustrations of his discovery.
The letter bearing instructions for him to proceed to Barcelona was
addressed “To Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of the Ocean Sea,
Viceroy and Governor of the islands discovered in the Indies.” So far
was he now raised above the rank of a poor adventurer, who had for seven
years attended the court in its movements, seeking an opportunity to
explain his proposals.
As he approached Barcelona he was met by a large company of people,
including many persons of rank. A little procession was formed of the
party of the Admiral. Six Indians of the islands who had survived the
voyage, led the way. They were painted according to their custom in
various colors, and ornamented with the fatal gold of their countries,
which had given to the discovery such interest in the eyes of those who
looked on.
Columbus had brought ten Indians away with him, but one had died on the
voyage and he had left three sick at Palos. Those whom he brought to
Barcelona, were baptized in presence of the king and queen.
After the Indians, were brought many curious objects which had come
from the islands, such as stuffed birds and beasts and living paroquets,
which perhaps spoke in the language of their own country, and rare
plants, so different from those of Spain. Ornaments of gold were
displayed, which would give the people some idea of the wealth of the
islands. Last of all came Columbus, elegantly mounted and surrounded by
a brilliant cavalcade of young Spaniards. The crowd of wondering people
pressed around them. Balconies and windows were crowded with women
looking on. Even the roofs were crowded with spectators.
The king and queen awaited Columbus in a large hall, where they were
seated on a rich dais covered with gold brocade. It was in the palace
known as the “Casa de la Deputacion” which the kings of Aragon made
their residence when they were in Barcelona. A body of the most
distinguished lords and ladies of Spain were in attendance. As Columbus
entered the hall the king and queen arose. He fell on his knee that he
might kiss their hands but they bade him rise and then sit and give an
account of his voyage.
Columbus spoke with dignity and simplicity which commanded respect,
while all listened with sympathy. He showed some of the treasures he
had brought, and spoke with certainty of the discoveries which had been
made, as only precursors of those yet to come. When his short narrative
was ended, all the company knelt and united in chanting the “Te Deum,”
“We Praise Thee, O God.” Las Casas, describing the joy and hope of
that occasion says, “it seems as if they had a foretaste of the joys of
paradise.”
It would seem as if those whose duty it is to prepare fit celebrations
of the periods of the great discovery, could hardly do better than
to produce on the twenty-fourth of April, 1893, a reproduction of
the solemn pageant in which, in Barcelona, four centuries before, the
Spanish court commemorated the great discovery.
From this time, for several weeks, a series of pageants and festivities
surrounded him. At no other period of his life were such honors paid to
him. It was at one of the banquets, at which he was present, that
the incident of the egg, so often told in connection with the great
discovery, took place. A flippant courtier--of that large class of
people who stay at home when great deeds are done, and afterwards
depreciate the doers of them--had the impertinence to ask Columbus, if
the adventure so much praised was not, after all, a very simple matter.
He probably said “a short voyage of four or five weeks; was it anything
more?” Columbus replied by giving him an egg which was on the table, and
asking him if he could stand it on one end. He said he could not, and
the other guests said that they could not. Columbus tapped it on the
table so as to break the end of the shell, and the egg stood erect. “It
is easy enough,” he said, “when any one has shown you how.”
It is well to remember, that if after years showed that the ruler of
Spain wearied in his gratitude, Columbus was, at the time, welcomed with
the enthusiasm which he deserved. From the very grains of gold brought
home in this first triumph, the queen, Isabella, had the golden
illumination wrought of a most beautiful missal-book.
Distinguished artists decorated the book, and the portraits of
sovereigns then on the throne appear as the representations of King
David, King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba and other royal personages. This
book she gave afterwards to her grandson, Charles V, of whom it has been
said that perhaps no man in modern times has done the world more harm.
This precious book, bearing on its gilded leaves the first fruits of
America, is now preserved in the Royal Library at Madrid.
The time was not occupied merely in shows and banquets. There was no
difficulty now, about funds for a second expedition. Directions were
given that it might be set forward as quickly as possible, and on an
imposing scale. For it was feared at court that King John of Portugal,
the successful rival of Spain, thus far, in maritime adventure, might
anticipate further discovery. The sovereigns at once sent an embassy to
the pope, not simply to announce the discovery, but to obtain from him
a decree confirming similar discoveries in the same direction. There
was at least one precedent for such action. A former pope had granted
to Portugal all the lands it might discover in Africa, south of
Cape Bojador, and the Spanish crown had assented by treaty to this
arrangement. Ferdinand and Isabella could now refer to this precedent,
in asking for a grant to them of their discoveries on the western side
of the Atlantic. The pope now reigning was Alexander II. He had not long
filled the papal chair. He was an ambitious and prudent sovereign--a
native of Spain--and, although he would gladly have pleased the king of
Portugal, he was quite unwilling to displease the Spanish sovereigns.
The Roman court received with respect the request made to them. The
pope expressed his joy at the hopes thrown out for the conversion of
the heathen, which the Spanish sovereigns had expressed, as Columbus had
always done. And so prompt were the Spanish requests, and so ready the
pope’s answer, that as early as May 3, 1493, a papal bull was issued to
meet the wishes of Spain.
This bull determined for Spain and for Portugal, that all discoveries
made west of a meridian line one hundred leagues west of the Azores
should belong to Spain. All discoveries east of that line should belong
to Portugal. No reference was made to other maritime powers, and it does
not seem to have been supposed that other states had any rights in such
matters. The line thus arranged for the two nations was changed by their
own agreement, in 1494, for a north and south line three hundred and
fifty leagues west of the Cape de Verde Islands. The difference between
the two lines was not supposed to be important.
The decision thus made was long respected. Under a mistaken impression
as to the longitude of the Philippine Islands in the East Indies, Spain
has held those islands, under this line of division, ever since their
discovery by Magellan. She considered herself entitled to all the
islands and lands between the meridian thus drawn in the Atlantic and
the similar meridian one hundred and eighty degrees away, on exactly the
other side of the world.
Under the same line of division, Portugal held, for three centuries and
more, Brazil, which projects so far eastward into the Atlantic as to
cross this line of division.
Fearful, all the time, that neither the pope’s decree, nor any diplomacy
would prevent the king of Portugal from attempting to seize lands at the
west, the Spanish court pressed with eagerness arrangements for a second
expedition. It was to be on a large and generous scale and to take out a
thousand men. For this was the first plan, though the number afterwards
was increased to fifteen hundred. To give efficiency to all the measures
of colonization, what we should call a new department of administration
was formed, and at the head of it was placed Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca.
Fonseca held this high and responsible position for thirty years. He
early conceived a great dislike of Columbus, who, in some transactions
before this expedition sailed, appealed to the sovereigns to set aside
a decision of Fonseca’s, and succeeded. For all the period while he
managed the Indian affairs of Spain, Fonseca kept his own interests
in sight more closely than those of Spain or of the colonists; and not
Columbus only, but every other official of Spain in the West Indies, had
reason to regret the appointment.
The king of Portugal and the sovereigns of Spain began complicated and
suspicious negotiations with each other regarding the new discoveries.
Eventually, as has been said, they acceded to the pope’s proposal and
decree. But, at first, distrusting each other, and concealing their
real purposes, in the worst style of the diplomacy of that time, they
attempted treaties for the adjustment between themselves of the right to
lands not yet discovered by either. Of these negotiations, the important
result was that which has been named,--the change of the meridian of
division from that proposed by the pope. It is curious now to see that
the king of Portugal proposed a line of division, which would run east
and west, so that Spain should have the new territories north of the
latitude of the Grand Canary, and Portugal all to the south.
In the midst of negotiation, the king and queen and Columbus knew
that whoever was first on the ground of discovery would have the great
advantage. There was a rumor in Spain that Portugal had already sent out
vessels to the west. Everything was pressed with alacrity at Cadiz.
The expedition was to be under Columbus’s absolute command. Seamen of
reputation were engaged to serve under him. Seventeen vessels were to
take out a colony. Horses as well as cattle and other domestic animals
were provided. Seeds and plants of different kinds were sent out, and
to this first colonization by Spain, America owes the sugar-cane, and
perhaps some other of her tropical productions.
Columbus remained in Barcelona until the twenty-third of May. But before
that time, the important orders for the expedition had been given.
He then went to Cadiz himself, and gave his personal attention to the
preparations. Applications were eagerly pressed, from all quarters, for
permission to go. Young men of high family were eager to try the great
adventure. It was necessary to enlarge the number from that at first
proposed. The increase of expense, ordered as the plans enlarged, did
not please Fonseca. To quarrels between him and Columbus at this time
have been referred the persecutions which Columbus afterwards suffered.
In this case the king sustained Columbus in all his requisitions, and
Fonseca was obliged to answer them.
So rapidly were all these preparations made, that, in a little more than
a year from the sailing of the first expedition, the second, on a scale
so much larger, was ready for sea.
CHAPTER VIII. -- THE SECOND EXPEDITION SAILS
--FROM CADIZ AT CANARY ISLANDS--DISCOVERY OF DOMINICA
AND GUADELOUPE--SKIRMISHES WITH THE CARIBS--PORTO RICO
DISCOVERED--HISPANIOLA--THE FATE OF THE COLONY AT LA NAVIDAD.
There is not in history a sharper contrast, or one more dramatic, than
that between the first voyage of Columbus and the second. In the first
voyage, three little ships left the port of Palos, most of the men of
their crews unwilling, after infinite difficulty in preparation, and in
the midst of the fears of all who stayed behind.
In the second voyage, a magnificent fleet, equipped with all that the
royal service could command, crowded with eager adventurers who are
excited by expectations of romance and of success, goes on the very same
adventure.
In the first voyage, Columbus has but just turned the corner after the
struggles and failures of eight years. He is a penniless adventurer who
has staked all his reputation on a scheme in which he has hardly any
support. In the second case, Columbus is the governor-general, for aught
he knows, of half the world, of all the countries he is to discover;
and he knows enough, and all men around him know enough, to see that his
domain may be a principality indeed.
Success brings with it its disadvantages. The world has learned since,
if it did not know it then, that one hundred and fifty sailors, used to
the hard work and deprivations of a seafaring life, would be a much
more efficient force for purposes of discovery, than a thousand and more
courtiers who have left the presence of the king and queen in the hope
of personal advancement or of romantic adventure. Those dainty people,
who would have been soldiers if there were no gunpowder, are not men to
found states; and the men who have lived in the ante-chambers of courts
are not people who co-operate sympathetically with an experienced man of
affairs like Columbus.
From this time forward this is to be but a sad history, and the sadness,
nay, the cruelty of the story, results largely from the composition of
the body of men whom Columbus took with him on this occasion. It is
no longer coopers and blacksmiths and boatswains and sailmakers who
surround him. These were officers of court, whose titles even cannot be
translated into modern language, so artificial were their habits and so
conventional the duties to which they had been accustomed. Such men it
was, who made poor Columbus endless trouble. Such men it was, who, at
the last, dragged him down from his noble position, so that he died
unhonored, dispirited and poor. To the same misfortune, probably, do we
owe it that, for a history of this voyage, we have no longer authority
so charming as the simple, gossipy journal which Columbus kept through
the first voyage, of which the greater part has happily been preserved.
It may be that he was too much pressed by his varied duties to keep up
such a journal. For it is alas! an unfortunate condition of human life,
that men are most apt to write journals when they have nothing to tell,
and that in the midst of high activity, the record of that activity is
not made by the actor. In the present case, a certain Doctor Chanca, a
native of Seville, had been taken on board Columbus’s ship, perhaps with
the wish that he should be the historian of the expedition. It may be
that in the fact that his journal was sent home is the reason why the
Admiral’s, if he kept one, has never been preserved. Doctor Chanca’s
narrative is our principal contemporary account of the voyage. From
later authorities much can be added to it, but all of them put
together are not, for the purposes of history, equal to the simple
contemporaneous statement which we could have had, had Columbus’s own
journal been preserved.
The great fleet sailed from Cadiz on the twenty-fifth day of September,
in the year 1493, rather more than thirteen months after the sailing
of the little fleet from Palos of the year before. They touched at the
Grand Canary as before, but at this time their vessels were in good
condition and there was no dissatisfaction among the crews. From
this time the voyage across the ocean was short. On the third day of
November, 11 the Sunday after All Saints Day had dawned, a pilot on the
ship cried out to the captain that he saw land. “So great was the joy
among the people, that it was marvellous to hear the shouts of pleasure
on all hands. And for this there was much reason because the people were
so much fatigued by the hard life and by the water which they drank that
they all hoped for land with much desire.”
The reader will see that this is the ejaculation of a tired landsman;
one might say, of a tired scholar, who was glad that even the short
voyage was at an end. Some of the pilots supposed that the distance
which they had run was eight hundred leagues from Ferro; others thought
it was seven hundred and eighty. As the light increased, there were
two islands in sight the first was mountainous, being the island of
“Dominica,” which still retains that name, of the Sunday when it was
discovered; the other, the island of Maria Galante, is more level, but
like the first, as it is described by Dr. Chanca, it was well wooded.
The island received its name from the ship that Columbus commanded. In
all, they discovered six islands on this day.
Finding no harbor which satisfied him in Dominica, Columbus landed on
the island of Maria Galante, and took possession of it in the name of
the king and queen. Dr. Chanca expresses the amazement which everyone
had felt on the other voyage, at the immense variety of trees, of fruits
and of flowers, which to this hour is the joy of the traveller in the
West Indies.
“In this island was such thickness of forest that it was wonderful, and
such a variety of trees, unknown to anyone, that it was terrible, some
with fruit, some with flowers, so that everything was green. * * * There
were wild fruits of different sorts, which some not very wise men tried,
and, on merely tasting them, touching them with their tongues, their
faces swelled and they had such great burning and pain that they seemed
to rage (or to have hydrophobia). They were cured with cold things.”
This fruit is supposed to have been the manchireel, which is known to
produce such effects.
They found no inhabitants on this island and went on to another, now
called Guadeloupe. It received this name from its resemblance to a
province of the same name in Spain. They drew near a mountain upon it
which “seemed to be trying to reach the sky,” upon which was a beautiful
waterfall, so white with foam that at a distance some of the sailors
thought it was not water, but white rocks. The Admiral sent a light
caravel to coast along and find harbor. This vessel discovered some
houses, and the captain went ashore and found the inhabitants in them.
They fled at once, and he entered the houses. There he found that they
had taken nothing away. There was much cotton, “spun and to be spun,”
and other goods of theirs, and he took a little of everything, among
other things, two parrots, larger and different from what had been seen
before. He also took four or five bones of the legs and arms of men.
This last discovery made the Spaniards suppose that these islands were
those of Caribs, inhabited by the cannibals of whom they had heard in
the first voyage.
They went on along the coast, passing by some little villages, from
which the inhabitants fled, “as soon as they saw the sails.” The Admiral
decided to send ashore to make investigations, and next morning “certain
captains” landed. At dinnertime some of them returned, bringing with
them a boy of fourteen, who said that he was one of the captives of the
people of the island. The others divided, and one party “took a little
boy and brought him on board.” Another party took a number of women,
some of them natives of the island, and others captives, who came of
their own accord. One captain, Diego Marquez, with his men, went off
from the others and lost his way with his party. After four days he came
out on the coast, and by following that, he succeeded in coming to the
fleet. Their friends supposed them to have been killed and eaten by the
Caribs, as, since some of them were pilots and able to set their course
by the pole-star, it seemed impossible that they should lose themselves.
During the first day Columbus spent here, many men and women came to the
water’s edge, “looking at the fleet and wondering at such a new thing;
and when any boat came ashore to talk with them, saying, ‘tayno, tayno,’
which means good. But they were all ready to run when they seemed
in danger, so that of the men only two could be taken by force or
free-will. There were taken more than twenty women of the captives, and
of their free-will came other women, born in other islands, who were
stolen away and taken by force. Certain captive boys came to us. In this
harbor we were eight days on account of the loss of the said captain.”
They found great quantities of human bones on shore, and skulls hanging
like pots or cups about the houses. They saw few men. The women said
that this was because ten canoes had gone on a robbing or kidnapping
expedition to other islands. “This people,” says Doctor Chanca,
“appeared to us more polite than those who live in the other islands
we have seen, though they all have straw houses.” But he goes on to say
that these houses are better made and provided, and that more of both
men’s and women’s work appeared in them. They had not only plenty of
spun and unspun cotton, but many cotton mantles, “so well woven that
they yield in nothing (or owe nothing) to those of our country.”
When the women, who had been found captives, were asked who the people
of the island were, they replied that they were Caribs. “When they heard
that we abhorred such people for their evil use of eating men’s flesh,
they rejoiced much.” But even in the captivity which all shared, they
showed fear of their old masters.
“The customs of this people, the Caribs,” says Dr. Chanca, “are
beastly;” and it would be difficult not to agree with him, in spite of
the “politeness” and comparative civilization he has spoken of.
They occupied three islands, and lived in harmony with each other, but
made war in their canoes on all the other islands in the neighborhood.
They used arrows in warfare, but had no iron. Some of them used
arrow-heads of tortoise shell, others sharply toothed fish-bones, which
could do a good deal of damage among unarmed men. “But for people of our
nation, they are not arms to be feared much.”
These Caribs carried off both men and women on their robbing
expeditions. They slaughtered and ate the men, and kept the women as
slaves; they were, in short, incredibly cruel. Three of the captive boys
ran away and joined the Spaniards.
They had twice sent out expeditions after the lost captain, Diego
Marquez, and another party had returned without news of him, on the
very day on which he and his men came in. They brought with them ten
captives, boys and women. They were received with great joy. “He and
those that were with him, arrived so DESTROYED BY THE MOUNTAIN, that
it was pitiful to see them. When they were asked how they had lost
themselves, they said that it was the thickness of the trees, so
great that they could not see the sky, and that some of them, who were
mariners, had climbed up the trees to look at the star (the Pole-star)
and that they never could see it.”
One of the accounts of this voyage(*) relates that the captive women,
who had taken refuge with the Spaniards, were persuaded by them to
entice some of the Caribs to the beach. “But these men, when they had
seen our people, all struck by terror, or the consciousness of their
evil deeds, looking at each other, suddenly drew together, and very
lightly, like a flight of birds, fled away to the valleys of the woods.
Our men then, not having succeeded in taking any cannibals, retired to
the ships and broke the Indians’ canoes.”
(*) That of Peter Martyr.
They left Guadeloupe on Sunday, the tenth of November. They passed
several islands, but stopped at none of them, as they were in haste to
arrive at the settlement of La Navidad in Hispaniola, made on the first
voyage. They did, however, make some stay at an island which seemed well
populated. This was that of San Martin. The Admiral sent a boat ashore
to ask what people lived on the island, and to ask his way, although,
as he afterwards found, his own calculations were so correct that he
did not need any help. The boat’s crew took some captives, and as it
was going back to the ships, a canoe came up in which were four men, two
women and a boy. They were so astonished at seeing the fleet, that they
remained, wondering what it could be, “two Lombard-shot from the ship,”
and did not see the boat till it was close to them. They now tried
to get off, but were so pressed by the boat that they could not. “The
Caribs, as soon as they saw that flight did not profit them, with much
boldness laid hands on their bows, the women as well as the men. And I
say with much boldness, because they were no more than four men and two
women, and ours more than twenty-five, of whom they wounded two. To one
they gave two arrow-shots in the breast, and to the other one in the
ribs. And if we had not had shields and tablachutas, and had not come up
quickly with the boat and overturned their canoe, they would have
shot the most of our men with their arrows. And after their canoe was
overturned, they remained in the water swimming, and at times getting
foothold, for there were some shallow places there. And our men had much
ado to take them, for they still kept on shooting as they could. And
with all this, not one of them could be taken, except one badly wounded
with a lance-thrust, who died, whom thus wounded they carried to the
ships.”
Another account of this fight says that the canoe was commanded by one
of the women, who seemed to be a queen, who had a son “of cruel look,
robust, with a lion’s face, who followed her.” This account represents
the queen’s son to have been wounded, as well as the man who died. “The
Caribs differed from the other Indians in having long hair; the others
wore theirs braided and a hundred thousand differences made in their
heads, with crosses and other paintings of different sorts, each one
as he desires, which they do with sharp canes.” The Indians, both the
Caribs and the others, were beardless, unless by a great exception. The
Caribs, who had been taken prisoners here, had their eyes and eyebrows
blackened, “which, it seems to me, they do as an ornament, and with that
they appear more frightful.” They heard from these prisoners of much
gold at an island called Cayre.
They left San Martin on the same day, and passed the island of Santa
Cruz, and the next day (November 15) they saw a great number of islands,
which the Admiral named Santa Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins.
This seemed “a country fit for metals,” but the fleet made no stay
there. They did stop for two days at an island called Burenquen. The
Admiral named it San Juan Bautista (Saint John Baptist). It is what
we now call Porto Rico. He was not able to communicate with any of the
inhabitants, as they lived in such fear of the Caribs that they all
fled. All these islands were new to the Admiral and all “very beautiful
and of very good land, but this one seemed better than all of them.”
On Friday, the twenty-second of November, they landed at the island of
Hispaniola or Hayti which they so much desired. None of the party who
had made the first voyage were acquainted with this part of the island;
but they conjectured what it was, from what the Indian captive women
told them.
The part of the island where they arrived was called Hayti, another part
Xamana, and the third Bohio. “It is a very singular country,” says Dr.
Chanca, “where there are numberless great rivers and great mountain
ridges and great level valleys. I think the grass never dries in the
whole year. I do not think that there is any winter in this (island) nor
in the others, for at Christmas are found many birds’ nests, some with
birds, and some with eggs.” The only four-footed animals found in these
islands were what Dr. Chanca calls dogs of various colors, and one
animal like a young rabbit, which climbed trees. Many persons ate these
last and said they were very good. There were many small snakes, and few
lizards, because the Indians were so fond of eating them. “They made as
much of a feast of them as we would do of pheasants.”
“There are in this island and the others numberless birds, of those
of our country, and many others which never were seen there. Of our
domestic birds, none have ever been seen here, except that in Zuruquia
there were some ducks in the houses, most of them white as snow, and
others black.”
They coasted along this island for several days, to the place where the
Admiral had left his settlement. While passing the region of Xamana,
they set ashore one of the Indians whom they had carried off on the
first voyage. They “gave him some little things which the Admiral had
commanded him to give away.” Another account adds that of the ten Indian
men who had been carried off on the first voyage, seven had already
died on account of the change of air and food. Two of the three whom the
Admiral was bringing back, swam ashore at night. “The Admiral cared for
this but little, thinking that he should have enough interpreters among
those whom he had left in the island, and whom he hoped to find there
again.” It seems certain that one Indian remained faithful to the
Spaniards; he was named Diego Colon, after the Admiral’s brother.
On the day that the captive Indian was set ashore, a Biscayan sailor
died, who had been wounded by the Caribs in the fight between the boat’s
crew and the canoe. A boat’s crew was sent ashore to bury him, and as
they came to land there came out “many Indians, of whom some wore gold
at the neck and at the ears. They sought to come with the christians to
the ships, and they did not like to bring them, because they had not had
permission from the Admiral.” The Indians then sent two of their number
in a little canoe to one of the caravels, where they were received
kindly, and sent to speak with the Admiral.
“They said, through an interpreter, that a certain king sent them to
know what people we were, and to ask that we might be kind enough to
land, as they had much gold and would give it to him, and of what they
had to eat. The Admiral commanded silken shirts and caps and other
little things to be given them, and told them that as he was going where
Guacanagari was, he could not stop, that another time he would be able
to see him. And with that, they (the Indians) went away.”
They stopped two days at a harbor which they called Monte Christi, to
see if it were a suitable place for a town, for the Admiral did not feel
altogether satisfied with the place where the settlement of La Navidad
had been made on the first voyage. This Monte Christi was near “a great
river of very good water” (the Santiago). But it is all an inundated
region, and very unfit to live in.
“As they were going along, viewing the river and land, some of our men
found, in a place close by the river, two dead men, one with: a cord
(lazo) around his neck, and the other with one around his foot. This was
the first day. On the next day following, they found two other dead men
farther on than these others. One of these was in such a position
that it could be known that he had a plentiful beard. Some of our men
suspected more ill than good, and with reason, as the Indians are all
beardless, as I have said.”
This port was not far from the port where the Spanish settlement had
been made on the first voyage, so that there was great reason for these
anxieties. They set sail once more for the settlement, and arrived
opposite the harbor of La Navidad on the twenty-seventh of November. As
they were approaching the harbor, a canoe came towards them, with five
or six Indians on board, but, as the Admiral kept on his course without
waiting for them, they went back.
The Spaniards arrived outside the port of La Navidad so late that they
did not dare to enter it that night. “The Admiral commanded two Lombards
to be fired, to see if the christians replied, who had been left with
the said Guacanagari, (this was the friendly cacique Guacanagari of the
first voyage), for they too had Lombards,” “They never replied, nor did
fires nor signs of houses appear in that place, at which the people were
much discouraged, and they had the suspicion that was natural in such a
case.”
“Being thus all very sad, when four or five hours of the night had
passed, there came the same canoe which they had seen the evening
before. The Indians in it asked for the Admiral and the captain of one
of the caravels of the first voyage. They were taken to the Admiral’s
ship, but would not come on board until they had spoken with him and
seen him.” They asked for a light, and as soon as they knew him, they
entered the ship. They came from Guacanagari, and one of them was his
cousin.
They brought with them golden masks, one for the Admiral and another for
one of the captains who had been with him on the first voyage, probably
Vicente Yanez Pinzon. Such masks were much valued among the Indians,
and are thought to have been meant to put upon idols, so that they were
given to the Spaniards as tokens of great respect. The Indian party
remained on board for three hours, conversing with the Admiral and
apparently very glad to see him again. When they were asked about the
colonists of La Navidad, they said that they were all well, but that
some of them had died from sickness, and that others had been killed
in quarrels among themselves. Their own cacique, Guacanagari, had been
attacked by two other chiefs, Caonabo and Mayreni. They had burned his
village, and he had been wounded in the leg, so that he could not come
to meet the Spaniards that night. As the Indians went away, however,
they promised that they would bring him to visit them the next day. So
the explorers remained “consoled for that night.”
Next day, however, events were less reassuring. None of last night’s
party came back and nothing was seen of the cacique. The Spaniards,
however, thought that the Indians might have been accidentally
overturned in their canoe, as it was a small one, and as wine had been
given them several times during their visit.
While he was still waiting for them, the Admiral sent some of his men
to the place where La Navidad had stood. They found that the strong fort
with a palisade was burned down and demolished. They also found some
cloaks and other clothes which had been carried off by the Indians, who
seemed uneasy, and at first would not come near the party.
“This did not appear well” to the Spaniards, as the Admiral had told
them how many canoes had come out to visit him in that very place on
the other voyage. They tried to make friends, however, threw out to
them some bells, beads and other presents, and finally a relation of the
cacique and three others ventured to the boat, and were taken on board
ship.
These men frankly admitted that the “christians” were all dead. The
Spaniards had been told so the night before by their Indian interpreter,
but they had refused to believe him. They were now told that the King of
Canoaboa(*) and the King Mayreni had killed them and burned the village.
(*) “Canoaboa” was thought to mean “Land of Gold.”
They said, as the others had done, that Guacanagari was wounded in the
thigh and they, like the others, said they would go and summon him. The
Spaniards made them some presents, and they, too, disappeared.
Early the next morning the Admiral himself, with a party, including Dr.
Chanca, went ashore.
“And we went where the town used to be, which we saw all burnt, and the
clothes of the christians were found on the grass there. At that time
we saw no dead body. There were among us many different opinions, some
suspecting that Guacanagari himself was (concerned) in the betrayal or
death of the christians, and to others it did not appear so, as his town
was burnt, so that the thing was very doubtful.”
The Admiral directed the whole place to be searched for gold, as he had
left orders that if any quantity of it were found, it should be buried.
While this search was being made, he and a few others went to look for a
suitable place for a new settlement. They arrived at a village of seven
or eight houses, which the inhabitants deserted at once. Here they found
many things belonging to the christians, such as stockings, pieces of
cloth, and “a very pretty mantle which had not been unfolded since it
was brought from Castile.” These, the Spaniards thought, could not have
been obtained by barter. There was also one of the anchors of the ship
which had gone ashore on the first voyage.
When they returned to the site of La Navidad they found many Indians,
who had become bold enough to come to barter gold. They had shown the
place where the bodies of eleven Spaniards lay “covered already by the
grass which had grown over them.” They all “with one voice” said that
Canoaboa and Mayreni had killed them. But as, at the same time, they
complained that some of the christians had taken three Indian wives, and
some four, it seemed likely that a just resentment on the part of the
islanders had had something to do with their death.
The next day the Admiral sent out a caravel to seek for a suitable
place for a town, and he himself went out to look for one in a different
direction. He found a secure harbor and a good place for a settlement,
But he thought it too far from the place where he expected to find a
gold mine. On his return, he found the caravel he had sent out. As it
was coasting along the island, a canoe had come out to it, with two
Indians on board, one of whom was a brother of Guacanagari. This man
begged the party to come and visit the cacique. The “principal men”
accordingly went on shore, and found him in bed, apparently suffering
from his wounded thigh, which he showed them in bandages. They judged
from appearances that he was telling them the truth.
He said to them, “by signs as best he could,” that since he was thus
wounded, they were to invite the Admiral to come to visit him. As they
were going away, he gave each of them a golden jewel, as each “appeared
to him to deserve it.” “This gold,” says Dr. Chanca, “is made in very
delicate sheets, like our gold leaf, because they use it for making
masks and to plate upon bitumen. They also wear it on the head and for
earrings and nose-rings, and therefore they beat it very thin as they
only wear it for its beauty and not for its value.”
The Admiral decided to go to the cacique on the next day. He was visited
early in the day by his brother, who hurried on the visit.
The Admiral went on shore and all the best people (gente de pro) with
him, “handsomely dressed, as would be suitable in a capital city.” They
carried presents with them, as they had already received gold from him.
“When we arrived, we found him lying in his bed, according to their
custom, hanging in the air, the bed being made of cotton like a net. He
did not rise, but from the bed made a semblance of courtesy, as best he
knew how. He showed much feeling, with tears in his eyes, at the death
of the Christians, and began to talk of it, showing, as best he could,
how some died of sickness, and how others had gone to Canoaboa to seek
for the gold mine, and that they had been killed there, and how the
others had been killed in their town.”
He presented to the Admiral some gold and precious stones. One of the
accounts says that there were eight hundred beads of a stone called
ciba, one hundred of gold, a golden coronet, and three small calabashes
filled with gold dust. Columbus, in return, made him a present.
“I and a navy surgeon were there,” says Dr. Chanca. “The Admiral now
said that we were learned in the infirmities of men, and asked if he
would show us the wound. He replied that it pleased him to do so. I said
that it would be necessary, if he could, for him to go out of the house,
since with the multitudes of people it was dark, and we could not see
well. He did it immediately, as I believe, more from timidity than from
choice. The surgeon came to him and began to take off the bandage. Then
he said to the Admiral that the injury was caused by ciba, that is, by
a stone. When it was unbandaged we managed to examine it. It is certain
that he was no more injured in that leg than in the other, although he
pretended that it was very painful.”
The Spaniards did not know what to believe. But it seemed certain that
an attack of some enemy upon these Indians had taken place, and the
Admiral determined to continue upon good terms with them. Nor did he
change this policy toward Guacanagari. How far that chief had tried to
prevent the massacre will never be known. The detail of the story was
never fully drawn from the natives. The Spaniards had been cruel and
licentious in their dealing with the Indians. They had quarrelled among
themselves, and the indignant natives, in revenge, had destroyed them
all.
CHAPTER IX. -- THE NEW COLONY
--EXPEDITIONS OF DISCOVERY--GUACANAGARI--SEARCH FOR GOLD--MUTINY IN THE
COLONY--THE VESSELS SENT HOME--COLUMBUS MARCHES INLAND--COLLECTION
OF GOLD--FORTRESS OF ST. THOMAS--A NEW VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY--JAMAICA
VISITED--THE SOUTH SHORE OF CUBA EXPLORED--RETURN--EVANGELISTA
DISCOVERED--COLUMBUS FALLS SICK--RETURN TO ISABELLA.
Columbus had hoped, with reason, to send back a part of the vessels
which made up his large squadron, with gold collected in the year by
the colonists at La Navidad. In truth, when, in 1501, the system of
gold-washing-had been developed, the colony yielded twelve hundred
pounds of gold in one year. The search for gold, from the beginning,
broke up all intelligent plans for geographical discovery or for
colonization. In this case, it was almost too clear that there was
nothing but bad news to send back to Spain. Columbus went forward,
however, as well as he could, with the establishment of a new colony,
and with the search for gold.
He sent out expeditions of discovery to open relations with the natives,
and to find the best places for washing and mining for gold.
Melchior Meldonado commanded three hundred men, in the first of these
expeditions. They came to a good harbor at the mouth of a river,
where they saw a fine house, which they supposed might be the home of
Guacanagari. They met an armed party of one hundred Indians; but these
men put away their weapons when signals of peace were made, and brought
presents in token of good-will.
The house to which they went was round, with a hemispherical roof or
dome. It was thirty-two paces in diameter, divided by wicker work into
different rooms. Smaller houses, for persons of rank lower than the
chiefs, surrounded it. The natives told the explorers that Guacanagari
himself had retired to the hills.
On receiving the report of these explorers Columbus sent out Ojeda
with a hundred men, and Corvalan with a similar party in different
directions. These officers, in their report, described the operation of
gold-washing, much as it is known to explorers in mining regions to-day.
The natives made a deep ditch into which the gold bearing sand should
settle. For more important work they had flat baskets in which they
shook the sand and parted it from the gold. With the left hand they
dipped up sand, handled this skilfully or “dextrously” with the right
hand, so that in a few minutes they could give grains of gold to the
gratified explorers. Ojeda brought home to Columbus one nugget which
weighed nine ounces.
They also brought tidings of the King of Canoaboa, of whom they had
heard before, and he is called by the name of Caunebo himself.(*) He was
afterwards carried, as a prisoner or as a hostage, on the way to Spain;
but died on the passage.
(*) The name is spelled in many different ways.
Columbus was able to dispatch the returning ships, with the encouraging
reports brought in by Meldonado and Ojeda, but with very little
gold. But he was obliged to ask for fresh supplies of food for the
colony--even in the midst of the plenty which he described; for he had
found already what all such leaders find, the difficulty of training men
to use food to which they were not accustomed. He sent also his Carib
prisoners, begging that they might be trained to a knowledge of the
christian religion and of the Spanish language. He saw, already, how
much he should need interpreters. The fleet sailed on the second of
February, and its reports were, on the whole, favorably received.
Columbus chose for the new city an elevation, ten leagues east of Monte
Christi, and at first gave to his colony the name of Martha. It is the
Isabella of the subsequent history.
The colonists were delighted with the fertility of the soil under the
tropical climate. Andalusia itself had not prepared them for it. They
planted seeds of peas, beans, lettuces, cabbages and other vegetables,
and declared that they grew more in eight days than they would have
grown in twenty at home. They had fresh vegetables in sixteen days after
they planted them; but for melons, pumpkins and other fruits of that
sort, they are generous enough to allow thirty days.
They had carried out roots and suckers of the sugar-cane. In fifteen
days the shoots were a cubit high. A farmer who had planted wheat in the
beginning of February had ripe grain in the beginning of April; so that
they were sure of, at least, two crops in a year.
But the fertility of the soil was the only favorable token which the
island first exhibited. The climate was enervating and sickly. The
labor on the new city was hard and discouraging. Columbus found that his
colonists were badly fitted for their duty, or not fitted for it at
all. Court gentlemen did not want to work. Priests expected to be put
on better diet than any other people. Columbus--though he lost his
own popularity--insisted on putting all on equal fare, in sharing the
supplies he had brought from Spain. It did not require a long time to
prove that the selection of the site of the colony was unfortunate.
Columbus himself gave way to the general disease. While he was ill, a
mutiny broke out which he had to suppress by strong measures.
Bornal Diaz, who ranked as comptroller of the expedition, and Fermin
Cedo, an assayer, made a plot for seizing the remaining ships and
sailing for Europe. News of the mutiny was brought to Columbus. He
found a document in the writing of Diaz, drawn as a memorial, accusing
Columbus himself of grave crimes. He confined Diaz on board a ship to
be sent to Spain with the memorial. He punished the mutineers of lower
rank. He took the guns and naval munitions from four of the vessels, and
entrusted them all to a person in whom he had absolute confidence.
On the report of the exploring parties, four names were given to as many
divisions of the island. Junna was the most western, Attibunia the most
eastern, Jachen the northern and Naiba the southern. Columbus himself,
seeing the fortifications of the city well begun, undertook, in March,
an exploration, of the island, with a force of five hundred men.
It was in the course of this exploration that one of the natives brought
in a gold-bearing stone which weighed an ounce. He was satisfied with a
little bell in exchange. He was surprised at the wonder expressed by the
Spaniards, and showing a stone as large as a pomegranate, he said that
he had nuggets of gold as large as this at his home. Other Indians
brought in gold-bearing stones which weighed more than an ounce. At
their homes, also, but not in sight, alas, was a block of gold as large
as an infant’s head.
Columbus himself thought it best to take as many men as he could into
the mountain region. He left the new city under the care of his brother,
Diego, and with all the force of healthy men which he could muster,
making a little army of nearly five hundred men, he marched away
from the sickly seaboard into the interior. The simple natives were
astonished by the display of cavalry and other men in armor. After a few
days of a delightful march, in the beauty of spring in that country, he
entered upon the long sought Cibao. He relinquished his first idea of
founding another city here, but did build a fortress called St. Thomas,
in joking reference to Cedo and others, who had asserted that these
regions produced no gold. While building this fortress, as it was
proudly called, he sent a young cavalier named Luxan for further
exploration.
Luxan returned with stories even greater than they had heard of before,
but with no gold, “because he had no orders to do so.” He had found
ripe grapes. And at last they had found a region called Cipangi, cipan
signifying stone. This name recalled the memory of Cipango, or Japan.
With tidings as encouraging as this, Columbus returned to his city. He
appointed his brother and Pedro Margarita governors of the city, and
left with three ships for the further exploration of Cuba, which he had
left only partly examined in his first voyage. He believed that it was
the mainland of Asia. And as has been said, such was his belief till he
died, and that of his countrymen. Cuba was not known to be an island for
many years afterwards. He was now again in the career which pleased him,
and for which he was fitted. He was always ill at ease in administering
a colony, or ruling the men who were engaged in it. He was happy and
contented when he was discovering. He had been eager to follow the
southern coast of Cuba, as he had followed the north in his first
voyage. And now he had his opportunity. Having commissioned his
brother Diego and Margarita and appointed also a council of four other
gentlemen, he sailed to explore new coasts, on the twenty-fourth of
April.
He was soon tempted from his western course that he might examine
Jamaica, of which he saw the distant lines on the south. “This island,”
says the account of the time, “is larger than Sicily. It has only one
mountain, which rises from the coast on every side, little by little,
until you come to the middle of the island and the ascent is so gradual
that, whether you rise or descend, you hardly know whether you are
rising or descending.” Columbus found the island well peopled, and from
what he saw of the natives, thought them more ingenious, and better
artificers, than any Indians he had seen before. But when he proposed
to land, they generally showed themselves prepared to resist him. He
therefore deferred a full examination of the island to his return, and,
with the first favorable wind, pressed on toward the southern coast of
Cuba. He insisted on calling this the “Golden Chersonesus” of the East.
This name had been given by the old geographers to the peninsula now
known as Malacca.
Crossing the narrow channel between Jamaica and Cuba, he began coasting
that island westward. If the reader will examine the map, he will find
many small keys and islands south of Cuba, which, before any survey had
been made, seriously retarded his westward course. In every case he was
obliged to make a separate examination to be sure where the real coast
of the island was, all the time believing it was the continent of Asia.
One of the narratives says, with a pardonable exaggeration, that in all
this voyage he thus discovered seven hundred islands. His own estimate
was that he sailed two hundred and twenty-two leagues westward in the
exploration which now engaged him.
The month of May and the beginning of June were occupied with such
explorations. The natives proved friendly, as the natives of the
northern side of Cuba had proved two years before. They had, in general,
heard of the visit of the Spaniards; but their wonder and admiration
seem to have been none the less now that they saw the reality.
On one occasion the hopes of all the party, that they should find
themselves at the court of the Grand Khan, were greatly quickened. A
Spaniard had gone into a forest alone, hunting. Suddenly he saw a man
clothed in white, or thought he did, whom he supposed to be a friar of
the order of Saint Mary de Mercedes, who was with the expedition.
But, almost immediately, ten other friars dressed in the same costume,
appeared, and then as many as thirty. The Spaniard was frightened at the
multiplication of their number, it hardly appears why, as they were all
men of peace, or should have been, whatever their number. He called out
to his companions, and bade them escape. But the men in white called
out to him, and waved their hands, as if to assure him that there was no
danger. He did not trust them, however, but rushed back to the shore
and the ship, as fast as he could, to report what he had seen to the
Admiral.
Here, at last, was reason for hope that they had found one of the
Asiatic missions of the Church. Columbus at once landed a party,
instructing them to go forty miles inland, if necessary, to find people.
But this party found neither path nor roadway, although the country was
rich and fertile. Another party brought back rich bunches of grapes, and
other native fruits. But neither party saw any friars of the order of
Saint Mary. And it is now supposed that the Spaniard saw a peaceful
flock of white cranes. The traveller Humboldt describes one occasion,
in which the town of Angostura was put to alarm by the appearance of a
flock of cranes known as soldados, or “soldiers,” which were, as people
supposed, a band of Indians.
In his interviews with the natives at one point and another, upon the
coast, Columbus was delighted with their simplicity, their hospitality,
and their kindly dealing with each other. On one occasion, when the Mass
was celebrated, a large number of them were present, and joined in the
service, as well as they could, with respect and devotion. An old man
as much as eighty years old, as the Spaniards thought, brought to
the Admiral a basket full of fruit, as a present. Then he said, by an
interpreter:
“We have heard how you have enveloped, by your power, all these
countries, and how much afraid of you the people have been. But I have
to exhort you, and to tell you that there are two ways when men leave
this body. One is dark and dismal; it is for those who have injured the
race of men. The other is delightful and pleasant; it is for those who,
while alive, have loved peace and the repose of mankind. If, then, you
remember that you are mortal, and what these retributions are, you will
do no harm to any one.”
Columbus told him in reply that he had known of the two roads after
death, and that he was well pleased to find that the natives of these
lands knew of them; for he had not expected this. He said that the king
and queen of Spain had sent him with the express mission of bringing
these tidings to them. In particular, that he was charged with the
duty of punishing the Caribs and all other men of impure life, and of
rewarding and honoring all pure and innocent men. This statement so
delighted the old prophet that he was eager to accompany Columbus on a
mission so noble, and it was only by the urgent entreaty of his wife
and children that he stayed with them. He found it hard to believe that
Columbus was inferior in rank or command to any other sovereign.
The beauty of the island and the hospitality of the natives, however,
were not enough to dispose the crews to continue this exploration
further. They were all convinced that they were on the coast of Asia.
Columbus did not mean that afterwards any one should accuse him of
abandoning the discovery of that coast too soon. Calling to their
attention the distance they had sailed, he sent round a written
declaration for the signature of every person on the ships. Every man
and boy put his name to it. It expressed their certainty that they were
on the cape which made the end of the eastern Indies, and that any
one who chose could proceed thence westward to Spain by land. This
extraordinary declaration was attested officially by a notary, and still
exists.
It was executed in a bay at the extreme southwestern corner of Cuba. It
has been remarked by Munoz, that at that moment, in that place, a ship
boy at the masthead could have looked over the group of low islands and
seen the open sea, which would have shown that Cuba was an island.
The facts, which were controlling, were these, that the vessels were
leaky and the crews sick and discontented. On the thirteenth of June,
Columbus stood to the southeast. He discovered the island now known as
the Island of Pines. He called it Evangelista. He anchored here and took
in water. In an interview, not unlike that described, in which the old
Cuban expressed his desire to return with Columbus, it is said that
an Evangelistan chief made the same offer, but was withheld by the
remonstrances, of his wife and children. A similar incident is reported
in the visit to Jamaica, which soon followed. Columbus made a careful
examination of that island. Then he crossed to Hispaniola, where, from
the Indians, he received such accounts from the new town of Isabella as
assured him that all was well there.
With his own indomitable zeal, he determined now to go to the Carib
islands and administer to them the vengeance he had ready. But his own
frame was not strong enough for his will. He sank exhausted, in a sort
of lethargy. The officers of his ship, supposing he was dying, put about
the vessels and the little squadron arrived, none too soon as it proved,
at Isabella.
He was as resolute as ever in his determination to crush the Caribs, and
prevent their incursions upon those innocent islanders to whom he had
made so many promises of protection. But he fell ill, and for a short
time at least was wholly unconscious. The officers in command took
occasion of his illness, and of their right to manage the vessels, to
turn back to the city of Isabella. He arrived there “as one half dead,”
and his explorations and discoveries for this voyage were thus brought
to an end. To his great delight he found there his brother Bartholomew,
whom he had not seen for eight years. Bartholomew had accompanied Diaz
in the famous voyage in which he discovered the Cape of Good Hope.
Returning to Europe in 1488 he had gone to England, with a message from
Christopher Columbus, asking King Henry the Seventh to interest himself
in the great adventure he proposed.
The authorities differ as to the reception which Henry gave to this
great proposal. Up to the present time, no notice has been found of his
visit in the English archives. The earliest notice of America, in the
papers preserved there, is a note of a present of ten pounds “to
hym that found the new land,” who was Cabot, after his first voyage.
Bartholomew Columbus was in England on the tenth of February, 1488; how
much later is not known. Returning from England he staid in France, in
the service of Madama de Bourbon. This was either Anne of Beaujeu, or
the widow of the Admiral Louis de Bourbon. Bartholomew was living in
Paris when he heard of his brother’s great discovery.
He had now been appointed by the Spanish sovereigns to command a fleet
of three vessels, which had been sent out to provision the new colony.
He had sailed from Cadiz on the thirtieth of April, 1494, and he arrived
at Isabella on St. John’s Day of the same year.
Columbus welcomed him with delight, and immediately made him his
first-lieutenant in command of the colony. There needed a strong hand
for the management of the colony, for the quarrels which had existed
before Columbus went on his Cuban voyage had not diminished in his
absence. Pedro Margarita and Father Boil are spoken of as those who
had made the most trouble. They had come determined to make a fortune
rapidly, and they did not propose to give up such a hope to the slow
processes of ordinary colonization. Columbus knew very well that those
who had returned to Spain had carried with them complaints as to his own
course. He would have been glad on some accounts to return, himself,
at once; but he did not think that the natives of the islands were
sufficiently under the power of the new colony to be left in safety.
First of all he sent back four caravels, which had recently arrived
from Europe, with five hundred Indians whom he had taken as slaves. He
consigned them to Juan de Fonseca’s care. He was eager himself to say
that he sent them out that they might be converted, to Christianity,
and that they might learn the Spanish language and be of use as
interpreters. But, at the same time, he pointed out how easy it would
be to make a source of revenue to the Crown from such involuntary
emigration. To Isabella’s credit it is to be said, that she protested
against the whole thing immediately; and so far as appears, no further
shipments were made in exactly the same way. But these poor wretches
were not sent back to the islands, as she perhaps thought they were.
Fonseca did not hesitate to sell them, or apprentice them, to use our
modern phrase, and it is said by Bernaldez that they all died. His
bitter phrase is that Fonseca took no more care of them than if they had
been wild animals.
Columbus did not recover his health, so as to take a very active part
in affairs for five months after his arrival at San Domingo. He was well
aware that the Indians were vigorously organized, with the intention of
driving his people from the island, or treating the colony as they had
treated the colony of Navidad. He called the chief of the Cipangi, named
Guarionexius, for consultation. The interpreter Didacus, who had served
them so faithfully, married the king’s sister, and it was hoped that
this would be a bond of amity between the two nations.
Columbus sent Ojeda into the gold mountains with fifty armed men to make
an alliance with Canabao. Canabao met this party with a good deal of
perplexity. He undoubtedly knew that he had given the Spaniards good
reason for doubting him. It is said that he had put to death twenty
Spaniards by treasonable means, but it is to be remembered that this is
the statement of his enemies. He, however, came to Columbus with a large
body of his people, all armed. When he was asked why he brought so
large a force with him, he said that so great a king as he, could not go
anywhere without a fitting military escort. But Ojeda did not hesitate
to take him prisoner and carry him into Isabella, bound. As has been
said, he was eventually sent to Spain, but he died on the passage.
Columbus made another fortress, or tower, on the border of King
Guarionexius’s country, between his kingdom and Cipango. He gave to this
post the name of the “Tower of the Conception,” and meant it to be a
rallying point for the miners and others, in case of any uprising of the
natives against them. This proved to be an important centre for mining
operations. From this place, what we should call a nugget of gold,
which one of the chiefs brought in, was sent to Spain. It weighed twenty
ounces. A good deal of interest attached also to the discovery of amber,
one mass of which weighed three hundred pounds. Such discoveries renewed
the interest and hope which had been excited in Spain by the first
accounts of Hispaniola.
Columbus satisfied himself that he left the island really subdued; and
in this impression he was not mistaken. Certain that his presence in
Spain was needed, if he would maintain his own character against the
attacks of the disaffected Spaniards who had gone before him, he set
sail on the Nina on the tenth of March, taking with him as a consort
a caravel which had been built at Isabella. He did not arrive in Cadiz
till the eleventh of June, having been absent from Spain two years and
nine months.
His return to Spain at this time gave Isabella another opportunity to
show the firmness of her character, and the determination to which alone
belongs success.
The excitement and popularity which attended the return from the first
voyage had come to an end. Spain was in the period of reaction.
The disappointment which naturally follows undue expectations and
extravagant prophecies, was, in this instance, confirmed by the return
of discontented adventurers. Four hundred years have accustomed the
world to this reflex flow of disappointed colonists, unable or unwilling
to work, who come back from a new land to say that its resources have
been exaggerated. In this case, where everything was measured by the
standard of gold, it was certainly true that the supply of gold received
from the islands was very small as compared with the expenses of the
expedition which had been sent out.
Five hundred Indians, who came to be taught the language, entering Spain
as slaves, were but a poor return for the expenses in which the
nation, not to say individuals, had been involved. The people of Spain,
therefore, so far as they could show their feeling, were prejudiced
against Columbus and those who surrounded him. They heard with
incredulity the accounts of Cuba which he gave, and were quite
indifferent to the geographical theories by which he wanted to prove
that it was a part of Asia. He believed that the rich mines, which he
had really found in Hispaniola, were the same as those of Ophir. But
after five years of waiting, the Spanish public cared but little for
such conjectures.
As he arrived in Cadiz, he found three vessels, under Nino, about
to sail with supplies. These were much needed, for the relief of the
preceding year, sent out in four vessels, had been lost by shipwreck.
Columbus was able to add a letter of his own to the governor of
Isabella, begging him to conform to the wishes expressed by the king
and queen in the dispatches taken by Nino. He recommended diligence in
exploring the new mines, and that a seaport should be founded in their
neighborhood. At the same time he received a gracious letter from the
king and queen, congratulating him on his return, and asking him to
court as soon as he should recover from his fatigue.
Columbus was encouraged by the tone of this letter. He had chosen to act
as if he were in disgrace, and dressed himself in humble garb, as if
he were a Franciscan monk, wearing his beard as the brethren of those
orders do. Perhaps this was in fulfillment of one of those vows which,
as we know, he frequently made in periods of despondency.
He went to Burgos, where Ferdinand and Isabella were residing, and on
the way made such a display of treasure as he had done on the celebrated
march to Barcelona. Canabao, the fierce cacique of Hispaniola, had died
on the voyage, but his brother and nephew still lived, and he took
them to the king and queen, glittering on state occasions with golden
ornaments. One chain of gold which the brother wore, is said to
have been worth more than three thousand dollars of our time. In the
procession Columbus carried various masks and other images, made by the
Indians in fantastic shapes, which attracted the curiosity which in all
nations surrounds the idols of a foreign creed.
The sovereigns received him cordially. No reference was made to the
complaints of the adventurers who had returned. However the sovereigns
may have been impressed by these, they were still confident in Columbus
and in his merits, and do not seem to have wished to receive the partial
accounts of his accusers. On his part, he pressed the importance of a
new expedition, in order that they might annex to their dominions the
eastern part of Asia. He wanted for this purpose eight ships. He was
willing to leave two in the island of Hispaniola, and he hoped that
he might have six for a voyage of discovery. The sovereigns assented
readily to his proposal, and at the time probably intended to carry out
his wishes.
But Spain had something else to do than to annex Asia or to discover
America; and the fulfillment of the promises made so cordially in 1496,
was destined to await the exigencies of European war and diplomacy. In
fact, he did not sail upon the third expedition for nearly two years
after his arrival in Cadiz.
In the autumn of 1496, an order was given for a sum amounting to
nearly a hundred thousand dollars of our time, for the equipment of
the promised squadron. At the same time Columbus was relieved from the
necessity by which he was bound in his original contract, to furnish
at least one-eighth of the money necessary in any of these expeditions.
This burden was becoming too heavy for him to bear. It was agreed,
however, that in the event of any profit resulting to the crown, he
should be entitled to one-eighth of it for three ensuing years. This
concession must be considered as an evidence that he was still in
favor. At the end of three years both parties were to fall back upon the
original contract.
But these noble promises, which must have been so encouraging to him,
could not be fulfilled, as it proved. For the exigencies of war, the
particular money which was to be advanced to Columbus was used for the
repair of a fortress upon the frontier. Instead of this, Columbus was to
receive his money from the gold brought by Nino on his return. Alas, it
proved that a report that he had returned with so much gold, meant that
he had Indian prisoners, from the sale of whom he expected to realize
this money. And poor Columbus was virtually consigned to building
and fitting out his ship from the result of a slave-trade, which was
condemned by Isabella, and which he knew was wretchedly unprofitable.
A difficulty almost equally great resulted from the unpopularity of
the expedition. People did not volunteer eagerly, as they had done, the
minds of men being poisoned by the reports of emigrants, who had
gone out in high hope, and had returned disappointed. It even became
necessary to commute the sentences of criminals who had been sentenced
to banishment, so that they might be transported into the new
settlements, where they were to work without pay. Even these expedients
did not much hasten the progress of the expedition.
Fonseca, the steady enemy of Columbus, was placed in command again at
this time. The queen was overwhelmed with affliction by the death of
Prince Juan; and it seemed to Columbus and his friends that every petty
difficulty was placed in the way of preparation. When at length six
vessels were fitted for sea, it was only after the wear and tear of
constant opposition from officials in command; and the expedition, as it
proved, was not what Columbus had hoped for, for his purposes.
On the thirtieth of May, however, in 1498, he was able to sail. As this
was the period when the Catholic church celebrates the mystery of
the Trinity, he determined and promised that the first land which he
discovered should receive that sacred name. He was well convinced of the
existence of a continent farther south than the islands among which he
had cruised, and intended to strike that continent, as in fact he did,
in the outset of his voyage.
CHAPTER X. -- THE THIRD VOYAGE.
LETTER TO THE KING AND QUEEN--DISCOVERY OF TRINIDAD AND
PARIA--CURIOUS SPECULATION AS TO THE EARTHLY PARADISE--ARRIVAL AT
SAN DOMINGO--REBELLIONS AND MUTINIES IN THAT ISLAND--ROLDAN AND HIS
FOLLOWERS--OJEDA AND HIS EXPEDITION--ARRIVAL OF BOBADILLA--COLUMBUS A
PRISONER.
For the narrative of the third voyage, we are fortunate in having once
more a contemporary account by Columbus himself. The more important part
of his expedition was partly over when he was able to write a careful
letter to the king and queen, which is still preserved. It is lighted
up by bursts of the religious enthusiasm which governed him from the
beginning. All the more does it show the character of the man, and it
impresses upon us, what is never to be forgotten, the mixture in his
motive of the enthusiasm of a discoverer, the eager religious feeling
which might have quickened a crusader, and the prospects of what we
should call business adventure, by which he tries to conciliate persons
whose views are less exalted than his own.
In addressing the king and queen, who are called “very high and very
powerful princes,” he reminds them that his undertaking to discover the
West Indies began in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which appointed
him as a messenger for this enterprise. He asks them to remember that he
has always addressed them as with that intention.
He reminds them of the seven or eight years in which he was urging
his cause and that it was not enough that he should have showed the
religious side of it, that he was obliged to argue for the temporal view
as well. But their decision, for which he praises them indirectly, was
made, he says, in the face of the ridicule of all, excepting the two
priests, Marcheza and the Archbishop of Segovia. “And everything will
pass away excepting the word of God, who spoke so clearly of these lands
by the voice of Isaiah in so many places, affirming that His name should
be divulged to the nations from Spain.” He goes on in a review of the
earlier voyages, and after this preface gives his account of the voyage
of 1498.
They sailed from Santa Lucca the thirtieth of May, and went down to
Madeira to avoid the hostile squadron of the French who were awaiting
him at Cape St. Vincent. In the history by Herrara, of another
generation, this squadron is said to be Portuguese. From Maderia,
they passed to the Canary Islands, from which, with one ship and two
caravels, he makes his voyage, sending the other three vessels to
Hispaniola. After making the Cape de Verde Islands, he sailed southwest.
He had very hot weather for eight days, and in the hope of finding
cooler weather changed his course to the westward.
On the thirty-first of July, they made land, which proved to be the cape
now known as Galeota, the southeastern cape of the island of Trinidad.
The country was as green at this season as the orchards of Valencia in
March. Passing five leagues farther on, he lands to refit his vessels
and take on board wood and water. The next day a large canoe from the
east, with twenty-four men, well armed, appeared.
The Admiral wished to communicate with them, but they refused, although
he showed them basins and other things which he thought would attract
them. Failing in this effort, he directed some of the boys of the
crew to dance and play a tambourine on the poop of the ship. But this
conciliatory measure had as little success as the other. The natives
strung their bows, took up their shields and began to shoot the dancers.
Columbus stopped the entertainment, therefore, and ordered some balls
shot at them, upon which they left him. With the other vessel they
opened more friendly communication, but when the pilot went to Columbus
and asked leave to land with them, they went off, nor were any of them
or theirs seen again.
On his arrival at Punta de Icacocos, at the southern point of Trinidad,
he observes the very strong currents which are always noticed by
voyagers, running with as much fury as the Guadalquiver in time of
flood. In the night a terrible wave came from the south, “a hill as
high as a ship,” so that even in writing of it he feels fear. But no
misfortune came from it.
Sailing the next day, he found the water comparatively fresh. He is, in
fact, in the current produced by the great river Orinoco, which affects,
in a remarkable way, all the tide-flow of those seas. Sailing north,
he passes different points of the Island of Trinidad, and makes out the
Punta de la Pena and the mainland. He still observes the freshness of
the water and the severity of the currents.
As he sails farther westward, he
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