X. AMONG THE ISLANDS AND THE RETURN VOYAGE
[Sidenote: The natives of Guanahani.]
We learn that, after these ceremonies on the shore, the natives began fearlessly to gather about the strangers. Columbus, by causing red caps, strings of beads, and other trinkets to be distributed among them, made an easy conquest of their friendship. Later the men swam out to the ship to exchange their balls of thread, their javelins, and parrots for whatever they could get in return.
The description which Columbus gives us in his journal of the appearance and condition of these new people is the earliest, of course, in our knowledge of them. His record is interesting for the effect which the creatures had upon him, and for the statement of their condition before the Spaniards had set an impress upon their unfortunate race.
They struck Columbus as, on the whole, a very poor people, going naked, and, judging from a single girl whom he saw, this nudity was the practice of the women. They all seemed young, not over thirty, well made, with fine shapes and faces. Their hair was coarse, and combed short over the forehead; but hung long behind. The bodies of many were differently colored with pigments of many hues, though of some only the face, the eyes, or the nose were painted. Columbus was satisfied that they had no knowledge of edged weapons, because they grasped his sword by the blade and cut themselves. Their javelins were sticks pointed with fishbones. When he observed scars on their bodies, they managed to explain to him that enemies, whom the Admiral supposed to come from the continent, sometimes invaded their island, and that such wounds were received in defending themselves. They appeared to him to have no religion, which satisfied him that the task of converting them to Christianity would not be difficult. They learned readily to pronounce such words as were repeated to them.
[Sidenote: 1492. October 13.]
[Sidenote: Affinities of the Lucayans.]
On the next day after landing, Saturday, Columbus describes again the throng that came to the shore, and was struck with their broad foreheads. He deemed it a natural coincidence, being in the latitude of the Canaries, that the natives had the complexion prevalent among the natives of those islands. In this he anticipated the conclusions of the anthropologists, who have found in the skulls preserved in caves both in the Bahamas and in the Canaries, such striking similarities as have led to the supposition that ocean currents may have borne across the sea some of the old Guanche stock of the Canaries, itself very likely the remnant of the people of the European river-drift.
Professor W. K. Brooks, of the Johns Hopkins University, who has recently published in the Popular Science Monthly (November, 1889) a study of the bones of the Lucayans as found in caves in the Bahamas, reports that these relics indicate a muscular, heavy people, about the size of the average European, with protuberant square jaws, sloping eyes, and very round skulls, but artificially flattened on the forehead,--a result singularly confirming Columbus's description of broader heads than he had ever seen.
[Sidenote: Hammocks.]
"The Ceboynas," says a recent writer on these Indians, "gave us the hammock, and this one Lucayan word is their only monument," for a population larger than inhabits these islands to-day were in twelve years swept from the surface of the earth by a system devised by Columbus.
[Sidenote: Canoes.]
The Admiral also describes their canoes, made in a wonderful manner of a single tree-trunk, and large enough to hold forty or forty-five men, though some were so small as to carry a single person only. Their oars are shaped like the wooden shovels with which bakers slip their loaves into ovens. If a canoe upsets, it is righted as they swim.
[Sidenote: Gold among them.]
Columbus was attracted by bits of gold dangling at the nose of some among them. By signs he soon learned that a greater abundance of this metal could be found on an island to the south; but they seemed unable to direct him with any precision how to reach that island, or at least it was not easy so to interpret any of their signs. "Poor wretches!" exclaims Helps, "if they had possessed the slightest gift of prophecy, they would have thrown these baubles into the deepest sea."
[Sidenote: Columbus traffics with them.]
They pointed in all directions, but towards the east as the way to other lands; and implied that those enemies who came from the northwest often passed to the south after gold. He found that broken dishes and bits of glass served as well for traffic with them as more valuable articles, and balls of threads of cotton, grown on the island, seemed their most merchantable commodity.
[Sidenote: 1492. October 14, sails towards Cipango.]
With this rude foretaste, Columbus determined to push on for the richer Cipango. On the next day he coasted along the island in his boats, discovering two or three villages, where the inhabitants were friendly. They seemed to think that the strangers had come from heaven,--at least Columbus so interpreted their prostrations and uplifted hands. Columbus, fearful of the reefs parallel to the shore, kept outside of them, and as he moved along, saw a point of land which a ditch might convert into an island. He thought this would afford a good site for a fort, if there was need of one.
[Sidenote: 1492. October 14.]
[Sidenote: Columbus proposes to enslave the natives.]
[Sidenote: 1492. October 15.]
[Sidenote: 1492. October 16.]
It was on this Sunday that Columbus, in what he thought doubtless the spirit of the day in dealing with heathens, gives us his first intimation of the desirability of using force to make these poor creatures serve their new masters. On returning to the ships and setting sail, he soon found that he was in an archipelago. He had seized some natives, who were now on board. These repeated to him the names of more than a hundred islands. He describes those within sight as level, fertile, and populous, and he determined to steer for what seemed the largest. He stood off and on during the night of the 14th, and by noon of the 15th he had reached this other island, which he found at the easterly end to run five leagues north and south, and to extend east and west a distance of ten leagues. Lured by a still larger island farther west he pushed on, and skirting the shore reached its western extremity. He cast anchor there at sunset, and named the island Santa Maria de la Concepcion. The natives on board told him that the people here wore gold bracelets. Columbus thought this story might be a device of his prisoners to obtain opportunities to escape. On the next day, he repeated the forms of landing and taking possession. Two of the prisoners contrived to escape. One of them jumped overboard and was rescued by a native canoe. The Spaniards overtook the canoe, but not till its occupants had escaped. A single man, coming off in another canoe, was seized and taken on board; but Columbus thought him a good messenger of amity, and loading him with presents, "not worth four maravedis," he put him ashore. Columbus watched the liberated savage, and judged from the wonder of the crowds which surrounded him that his ruse of friendship had been well played.
[Sidenote: Columbus sees a large island.]
Another large island appeared westerly about nine leagues, famous for its gold ornaments, as his prisoners again declared. It is significant that in his journal, since he discovered the bits of gold at San Salvador, Columbus has not a word to say of reclaiming the benighted heathen; but he constantly repeats his hope "with the help of our Lord," of finding gold. On the way thither he had picked up a second single man in a canoe, who had apparently followed him from San Salvador. He determined to bestow some favors upon him and let him go, as he had done with the other.
[Sidenote: 1492. October 16.]
This new island, which he reached October 16, and called Fernandina, he found to be about twenty-eight leagues long, with a safer shore than the others. He anchored near a village, where the man whom he had set free had already come, bringing good reports of the stranger, and so the Spaniards got a kind reception. Great numbers of natives came off in canoes, to whom the men gave trinkets and molasses. He took on board some water, the natives assisting the crew. Getting an impression that the island contained a mine of gold, he resolved to follow the coast, and find Samaot, where the gold was said to be. Columbus thought he saw some improvement in the natives over those he had seen before, remarking upon the cotton cloth with which they partly covered their persons. He was surprised to find that distinct branches of the same tree bore different leaves. A single tree, as he says, will show as many as five or six varieties, not done by grafting, but a natural growth. He wondered at the brilliant fish, and found no land creatures but parrots and lizards, though a boy of the company told him that he had seen a snake. On Wednesday he started to sail around the island. In a little haven, where they tarried awhile, they first entered the native houses.
[Sidenote: Hammocks.]
They found everything in them neat, with nets extended between posts, which they called hamacs,--a name soon adopted by sailors for swinging-beds. The houses were shaped like tents, with high chimneys, but not more than twelve or fifteen together. Dogs were running about them, but they could not bark. Columbus endeavored to buy a bit of gold, cut or stamped, which was hanging from a man's nose; but the savage refused his offers.
[Sidenote: 1492. October 19.]
The ships continued their course about the island, the weather not altogether favorable; but on October 19 they veered away to another island to the west of Fernandina, which Columbus named Isabella, after his Queen. This he pronounced the most beautiful he had seen; and he remarks on the interior region of it being higher than in the other islands, and the source of streams. The breezes from the shore brought him odors, and when he landed he became conscious that his botanical knowledge did not aid him in selecting such dyestuffs, medicines, and spices as would command high prices in Spain. He saw a hideous reptile, and the canonizers, after their amusing fashion, tell us that "to see and attack him were the same thing for Columbus, for he considered it of importance to accustom Spanish intrepidity to such warfare."
[Sidenote: To find gold Columbus's main object.]
[Sidenote: 1492. October 21.]
The reptile proved inoffensive. The signs of his prisoners were interpreted to repeat here the welcome tale of gold. He understood them to refer to a king decked with gold. "I do not, however," he adds, "give much credit to these accounts, for I understand the natives but imperfectly." "I am proceeding solely in quest of gold and spices," he says again.
[Sidenote: Cuba heard of.]
[Sidenote: 1492. October 24. Isabella.]
On Sunday they went ashore, and found a house from which the occupants had recently departed. The foliage was enchanting. Flocks of parrots obscured the sky. Specimens were gathered of wonderful trees. They killed a snake in a lake. They cajoled some timid natives with beads, and got their help in filling their water cask. They heard of a very large island named Colba, which had ships and sailors, as the natives were thought to say. They had little doubt that these stories referred to Cipango. They hoped the native king would bring them gold in the night; but this not happening, and being cheered by the accounts of Colba, they made up their minds that it would be a waste of time to search longer for this backward king, and so resolved to run for the big island.
[Sidenote: October 26.]
Starting from Isabella at midnight on October 24, and passing other smaller islands, they finally, on Sunday, October 26, entered a river near the easterly end of Cuba.
[Sidenote: Cuba.]
The track of Columbus from San Salvador to Cuba has been as variously disputed as the landfall; indeed, the divergent views of the landfall necessitate such later variations.
[Sidenote: Pearls.]
They landed within the river's mouth, and discovered deserted houses, which from the implements within they supposed to be the houses of fishermen. Columbus observed that the grass grew down to the water's edge; and he reasoned therefrom that the sea could never be rough. He now observed mountains, and likened them to those of Sicily. He finally supposed his prisoners to affirm by their signs that the island was too large for a canoe to sail round it in twenty days. There were the old stories of gold; but the mention of pearls appears now for the first time in the journal, which in this place, however, we have only in Las Casas's abridgment.
[Sidenote: Columbus supposes himself at Mangi.]
When the natives pointed to the interior and said, "Cubanacan," meaning, it is supposed, an inland region, Columbus imagined it was a reference to Kublai Khan; and the Cuban name of Mangon he was very ready to associate with the Mangi of Mandeville.
As he still coasted westerly he found river and village, and made more use of his prisoners than had before been possible. They seem by this time to have settled into an acquiescent spirit. He wondered in one place at statues which looked like women. He was not quite sure whether the natives kept them for the love of the beautiful, or for worship.
[Sidenote: Columbus supposes himself on the coast of Cathay.]
He found domesticated fowl; and saw a skull, which he supposed was a cow's, which was probably that of the sea-calf, a denizen of these waters. He thought the temperature cooler than in the other islands, and ascribed the change to the mountains. He observed on one of these eminences a protuberance that looked like a mosque. Such interpretation as the Spaniards could make of their prisoners' signs convinced them that if they sailed farther west they would find some potentate, and so they pushed on. Bad weather, however, delayed them, and they again opened communication with the natives. They could hear nothing of gold, but saw a silver trinket; and learned, as they thought, that news of their coming had been carried to the distant king. Columbus felt convinced that the people of these regions were banded enemies of the Great Khan, and that he had at last struck the continent of Cathay, and was skirting the shores of the Zartun and Quinsay of Marco Polo. Taking an observation, Columbus found himself to be in 21° north latitude, and as near as he could reckon, he was 1142 leagues west of Ferro. He really was 1105.
[Sidenote: 1492. November 2-5.]
[Sidenote: Cuba explored.]
[Sidenote: Tobacco.]
[Sidenote: Potatoes.]
From Friday, November 2, to Monday, November 5, two Spaniards, whom Columbus had sent into the interior, accompanied by some Indians, had made their way unmolested in their search for a king. They had been entertained here and there with ceremony, and apparently worshiped as celestial comers. The evidences of the early Spanish voyagers give pretty constant testimony that the whites were supposed to have come from the skies. Columbus had given to his envoys samples of cinnamon, pepper, and other spices, which were shown to the people. In reply, his messengers learned that such things grew to the southeast of them. Columbus later, in his first letter, speaks of cinnamon as one of the spices which they found, but it turned out to be the bark of a sort of laurel. Las Casas, in mentioning this expedition, says that the Spaniards found the natives smoking small tubes of dried leaves, filled with other leaves, which they called tobacos. Sir Arthur Helps aptly remarks on this trivial discovery by the Spaniards of a great financial resource of modern statesmen, since tobacco has in the end proved more productive to the Spanish crown than the gold which Columbus sought. The Spaniards found no large villages; but they perceived great stores of fine cotton of a long staple. They found the people eating what we must recognize as potatoes. The absence of gold gave Columbus an opportunity to wish more fervently than before for the conversion of some of these people.
[Sidenote: One-eyed and dog-faced men.]
[Sidenote: Cannibals.]
While this party was absent, Columbus found a quiet beach, and careened his ships, one at a time. In melting his tar, the wood which he used gave out a powerful odor, and he pronounced it the mastic gum, which Europe had always got from Chios. As this work was going on, the Spaniards got from the natives, as best they could, many intimations of larger wealth and commerce to the southeast. Other strange stories were told of men with one eye, and faces like dogs, and of cruel, bloodthirsty man-eaters, who fought to appease their appetite on the flesh of the slain.
[Sidenote: 1492. November 12.]
[Sidenote: Babeque.]
It was not till the 12th of November that Columbus left this hospitable haven, at daybreak, in search of a place called Babeque, "where gold was collected at night by torch-light upon the shore, and afterward hammered into bars." He the more readily retraced his track, that the coast to the westward seemed to trend northerly, and he dreaded a colder climate. He must leave for another time the sight of men with tails, who inhabited a province in that direction, as he was informed.
Again the historian recognizes how a chance turned the Spaniards away from a greater goal. If Columbus had gone on westerly and discovered the insular character of Cuba, he might have sought the main of Mexico and Yucatan, and anticipated the wonders of the conquest of Cortez. He never was undeceived in believing that Cuba was the Asiatic main.
[Sidenote: Columbus captures some natives.]
Columbus sailed back over his course with an inordinate idea of the riches of the country which he was leaving. He thought the people docile; that their simple belief in a God was easily to be enlarged into the true faith, whereby Spain might gain vassals and the church a people. He managed to entice on board, and took away, six men, seven women, and three children, condoning the act of kidnapping--the canonizers call it "retaining on board"--by a purpose to teach them the Spanish language, and open a readier avenue to their benighted souls. He allowed the men to have women to share their durance, as such ways, he says, had proved useful on the coast of Guinea.
The Admiral says in his first letter, referring to his captives, "that we immediately understood each other, either by words or signs." This was his message to expectant Europe. His journal is far from conveying that impression.
[Sidenote: 1492. November 14.]
The ships now steered east-by-south, passing mountainous lands, which on November 14 he tried to approach. After a while he discovered a harbor, which he could enter, and found it filled with lofty wooded islands, some pointed and some flat at the top. He was quite sure he had now got among the islands which are made to swarm on the Asiatic coast in the early accounts and maps. He now speaks of his practice in all his landings to set up and leave a cross. He observed, also, a promontory in the bay fit for a fortress, and caught a strange fish resembling a hog. He was at this time embayed in the King's Garden, as the archipelago is called.
[Sidenote: Pinzon deserts.]
[Sidenote: 1492. November 23.]
Shortly after this, when they had been baffled in their courses, Martin Alonso Pinzon, incited, as the record says, by his cupidity to find the stores of gold to which some of his Indian captives had directed him, disregarded the Admiral's signals, and sailed away in the "Pinta." The flagship kept a light for him all night, at the mast-head; but in the morning the caravel was out of sight. The Admiral takes occasion in his journal to remark that this was not the first act of Pinzon's insubordination. On Friday, November 23, the vessels approached a headland, which the Indians called Bohio.
[Sidenote: 1492. November 24.]
The prisoners here began to manifest fear, for it was a spot where the one-eyed people and the cannibals dwelt; but on Saturday, November 24, the ships were forced back into the gulf with the many islands, where Columbus found a desirable roadstead, which he had not before discovered.
[Sidenote: 1492. November 25.]
On Sunday, exploring in a boat, he found in a stream "certain stones which shone with spots of a golden hue; and recollecting that gold was found in the river Tagus near the sea, he entertained no doubt that this was the metal, and directed that a collection of the stones should be made to carry to the King and Queen." It becomes noticeable, as Columbus goes on, that every new place surpasses all others; the atmosphere is better; the trees are more marvelous. He now found pines fit for masts, and secured some for the "Nina."
As he coasted the next day along what he believed to be a continental coast, he tried in his journal to account for the absence of towns in so beautiful a country. That there were inhabitants he knew, for he found traces of them on going ashore. He had discovered that all the natives had a great dread of a people whom they called Caniba or Canima, and he argued that the towns were kept back from the coast to avoid the chances of the maritime attacks of this fierce people. There was no doubt in the mind of Columbus that these inroads were conducted by subjects of the Great Khan.
While he was still stretching his course along this coast, observing its harbors, seeing more signs of habitation, and attempting to hold intercourse with the frightened natives, now anchoring in some haven, and now running up adjacent rivers in a galley, he found time to jot down in this journal for the future perusal of his sovereigns some of his suspicions, prophecies, and determinations. He complains of the difficulty of understanding his prisoners, and seems conscious of his frequent misconceptions of their meaning. He says he has lost confidence in them, and somewhat innocently imagines that they would escape if they could! Then he speaks of a determination to acquire their language, which he supposes to be the same through all the region. "In this way," he adds, "we can learn the riches of the country, and make endeavors to convert these people to our religion, for they are without even the faith of an idolater." He descants upon the salubrity of the air; not one of his crew had had any illness, "except an old man, all his life a sufferer from the stone." There is at times a somewhat amusing innocence in his conclusions, as when finding a cake of wax in one of the houses, which Las Casas thinks was brought from Yucatan, he "was of the opinion that where wax was found there must be a great many other valuable commodities."
[Sidenote: 1492. December 4.]
[Sidenote: Leaves Cuba or Juana.]
[Sidenote: Bohio. Española.]
[Sidenote: Tortuga.]
The ships were now detained in their harbor for several days, during which the men made excursions, and found a populous country; they succeeded at times in getting into communication with the natives. Finally, on December 4, he left the Puerto Santo, as he called it, and coasting along easterly he reached the next day the extreme eastern end of what we now know to be Cuba, or Juana as he had named it, after Prince Juan. Cruising about, he seems to have had an apprehension that the land he had been following might not after all be the main, for he appears to have looked around the southerly side of this end of Cuba and to have seen the southwesterly trend of its coast. He observed, the same day, land in the southeast, which his Indians called Bohio, and this was subsequently named Española. Las Casas explains that Columbus here mistook the Indian word meaning house for the name of the island, which was really in their tongue called Haiti. It is significant of the difficulty in identifying the bays and headlands of the journal, that at this point Las Casas puts on one side, and Navarrete on the opposite side, of the passage dividing Cuba from Española, one of the capes which Columbus indicates. Changing his course for this lofty island, he dispatched the "Nina" to search its shore and find a harbor. That night the Admiral's ship beat about, waiting for daylight. When it came, he took his observations of the coast, and espying an island separated by a wide channel from the other land, he named this island Tortuga. Finding his way into a harbor--the present St. Nicholas--he declares that a thousand caracks could sail about in it. Here he saw, as before, large canoes, and many natives, who fled on his approach. The Spaniards soon began as they went on to observe lofty and extensive mountains, "the whole country appearing like Castile." They saw another reminder of Spain as they were rowing about a harbor, which they entered, and which was opposite Tortuga, when a skate leaped into their boat, and the Admiral records it as a first instance in which they had seen a fish similar to those of the Spanish waters. He says, too, that he heard on the shore nightingales "and other Spanish birds," mistaking of course their identity. He saw myrtles and other trees "like those of Castile." There was another obvious reference to the old country in the name of Española, which he now bestowed upon the island. He could find few of the inhabitants, and conjectured that their towns were back from the coast. The men, however, captured a handsome young woman who wore a bit of gold at her nose; and having bestowed upon her gifts, let her go. Soon after, the Admiral sent a party to a town of a thousand houses, thinking the luck of the woman would embolden the people to have a parley. The inhabitants fled in fear at first; but growing bolder came in great crowds, and brought presents of parrots.
[Sidenote: Columbus finds his latitude.]
It was here that Columbus took his latitude and found it to be 17°,--while in fact it was 20°. The journal gives numerous instances during all these explorations of the bestowing of names upon headlands and harbors, few of which have remained to this day. It was a common custom to make such use of a Saint's name on his natal day.
[Sidenote: Saints' names.]
Dr. Shea in a paper which he published in 1876, in the first volume of the American Catholic Quarterly, has emphasized the help which the Roman nomenclature of Saints' days, given to rivers and headlands, affords to the geographical student in tracking the early explorers along the coasts of the New World. This method of tracing the progress of maritime discovery suggested itself early to Oviedo, and has been appealed to by Henry C. Murphy and other modern authorities on this subject.
[Sidenote: 1492. December 14.]
[Sidenote: Tortuga.]
Finally, on Friday, December 14, they sailed out of the harbor toward Tortuga. He found this island to be under extensive cultivation like a plain of Cordoba. The wind not holding for him to take the course which he wished to run, Columbus returned to his last harbor, the Puerto de la Concepcion. Again on Saturday he left it, and standing across to Tortuga once more, he went towards the shore and proceeded up a stream in his boats. The inhabitants fled as he approached, and burning fires in Tortuga as well as in Española seemed to be signals that the Spaniards were moving.
[Sidenote: Babeque.]
During the night, proceeding along the channel between the two islands, the Admiral met and took on board a solitary Indian in his canoe. The usual gifts were put upon him, and when the ships anchored near a village, he was sent ashore with the customary effect. The beach soon swarmed with people, gathered with their king, and some came on board. The Spaniards got from them without difficulty the bits of gold which they wore at their ears and noses. One of the captive Indians who talked with the king told this "youth of twenty-one," that the Spaniards had come from heaven and were going to Babeque to find gold; and the king told the Admiral's messenger, who delivered to him a present, that if he sailed in a certain course two days he would arrive there. This is the last we hear of Babeque, a place Columbus never found, at least under that name. Humboldt remarks that Columbus mentions the name of Babeque more than fourteen times in his journal, but it cannot certainly be identified with Española, as the Historie of 1571 declares it to be. D'Avezac has since shared Humboldt's view. Las Casas hesitatingly thought it might have referred to Jamaica.
Then the journal describes the country, saying that the land is lofty, but that the highest mountains are arable, and that the trees are so luxuriant that they become black rather than green. The journal further describes this new people as stout and courageous, very different from the timid islanders of other parts, and without religion. With his usual habit of contradiction, Columbus goes on immediately to speak of their pusillanimity, saying that three Spaniards were more than a match for a thousand of them. He prefigures their fate in calling them "well-fitted to be governed and set to work to till the land and do whatsoever is necessary."
[Sidenote: 1492. December 17.]
[Sidenote: Cannibals.]
It was on Monday, December 17, while lying off Española, that the Spaniards got for the first time something more than rumor respecting the people of Caniba or the cannibals. These new evidences were certain arrows which the natives showed to them, and which they said had belonged to those man-eaters. They were pieces of cane, tipped with sticks which had been hardened by fire.
[Sidenote: Cacique.]
"They were exhibited by two Indians who had lost some flesh from their bodies, eaten out by the cannibals. This the Admiral did not believe." It was now, too, that the Spaniards found gold in larger quantities than they had seen it before. They saw some beaten into thin plates. The cacique--here this word appears for the first time--cut a plate as big as his hand into pieces and bartered them, promising to have more to exchange the next day. He gave the Spaniards to understand that there was more gold in Tortuga than in Española. It is to be remarked, also, in the Admiral's account, that while "Our Lord" is not recorded as indicating to him any method of converting the poor heathen, it was "Our Lord" who was now about to direct the Admiral to Babeque.
[Sidenote: 1492. December 18.]
The next day, December 18, the Admiral lay at anchor, both because wind failed him, and because he would be able to see the gold which the cacique had promised to bring. It also gave him an opportunity to deck his ships and fire his guns in honor of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin.
In due time the king appeared, borne on a sort of litter by his men, and boarding the ship, that chieftain found Columbus at table in his cabin. The cacique was placed beside the Admiral, and similar viands and drinks were placed before him, of which he partook. Two of his dusky followers, sitting at his feet, followed their master in the act. Columbus, observing that the hangings of his bed had attracted the attention of the savage, gave them to him, and added to the present some amber beads from his own neck, some red shoes, and a flask of orange-flower water. "This day," says the record, "little gold was obtained; but an old man indicated that at a distance of a hundred leagues or more were some islands, where much gold could be found, and in some it was so plentiful that it was collected and bolted with sieves, then melted and beaten into divers forms. One of the islands was said to be all gold, and the Admiral determined to go in the direction which this man pointed."
[Sidenote: 1492. December 20.]
[Sidenote: St. Thomas Island.]
That night they tried in vain to stand out beyond Tortuga, but on the 20th of December, the record places the ships in a harbor between a little island, which Columbus called St. Thomas, and the main island. During the following day, December 21, he surveyed the roadstead, and going about the region in his boats, he had a number of interviews with the natives, which ended with an interchange of gifts and courtesies.
[Sidenote: 1492. December 22.]
On Saturday, December 22, they encountered some people, sent by a neighboring cacique, whom the Admiral's own Indians could not readily understand, the first of this kind mentioned in the journal. Writing in regard to a party which Columbus at this time sent to visit a large town not far off, he speaks of having his secretary accompany them, in order to repress the Spaniards' greediness,--an estimate of his followers which the Admiral had not before suffered himself to record, if we can trust the Las Casas manuscript. The results of this foray were three fat geese and some bits of gold. As he entered the adventure in his journal, he dwelt on the hope of gold being on the island in abundance, and if only the spot could be found, it might be got for little or nothing. "Our Lord, in whose hands are all things, be my help," he cries. "Our Lord, in his mercy, direct me where I may find the gold mine."
[Sidenote: Cibao.]
The Admiral now learns the name of another chief officer, Nitayno, whose precise position was not apparent, but Las Casas tells us later that this word was the title of one nearest in rank to the cacique. When an Indian spoke of a place named Cibao, far to the east, where the king had banners made of plates of gold, the Admiral, in his eager confidence, had no hesitation in identifying it with Cipango and its gorgeous prince. It proved to be the place where in the end the best mines were found.
[Sidenote: 1492. December 23.]
In speaking of the next day, Sunday, December 23, Las Casas tells us that Columbus was not in the habit of sailing on Sunday, not because he was superstitious, but because he was pious; but that he did not omit the opportunity at this time of coursing the coast, "in order to display the symbols of Redemption."
[Sidenote: Columbus shipwrecked.]
Christmas found them in distress. The night before, everything looking favorable, and the vessel sailing along quietly, Columbus had gone to bed, being much in need of rest. The helmsman put a boy at the tiller and went to sleep. The rest of the crew were not slow to do the same. The vessel was in this condition, with no one but the boy awake, when, carried out of her course by the current, she struck a sand bank. The cry of the boy awakened the Admiral, and he was the first to discover the danger of their situation. He ordered out a boat's crew to carry an anchor astern, but, bewildered or frightened, the men pulled for the "Nina." The crew of that caravel warned them off, to do their duty, and sent their own boat to assist. Help, however, availed nothing. The "Santa Maria" had careened, and her seams were opening. Her mast had been cut away, but she failed to right herself. The Admiral now abandoned her and rowed to the "Nina" with his men. Communicating with the cacique in the morning, that chieftain sent many canoes to assist in unloading the ship, so that in a short time everything of value was saved. This assistance gave occasion for mutual confidences between the Spaniards and the natives. "They are a loving, uncovetous people," he enters in his journal. One wonders, with the later experience of his new friends, if the cacique could have said as much in return. The Admiral began to be convinced that "the Lord had permitted the shipwreck in order that he might choose this place for a settlement." The canonizers go further and say, "the shipwreck made him an engineer."
Irving, whose heedless embellishments of the story of these times may amuse the pastime reader, but hardly satisfy the student, was not blind to the misfortunes of what Columbus at the time called the divine interposition. "This shipwreck," Irving says, "shackled and limited all Columbus's future discoveries. It linked his fortunes for the remainder of his life to this island, which was doomed to be to him a source of cares and troubles, to involve him in a thousand perplexities, and to becloud his declining years with humiliation and disappointment."
[Sidenote: Fort built.]
The saving of his stores and the loss of his ship had indeed already suggested what some of his men had asked for, that they might be left there, while the Admiral returned to Spain with the tidings of the discovery, if--as the uncomfortable thought sprung up in his mind--he had not already been anticipated by the recreant commander of the "Pinta." Accordingly Columbus ordered the construction of a fort, with tower and ditch, and arrangements were soon made to provide bread and wine for more than a year, beside seed for the next planting-time. The ship's long-boat could be left; and a calker, carpenter, cooper, engineer, tailor, and surgeon could be found among his company, to be of the party who were to remain and "search for the gold mine." He says that he expected they would collect a ton of gold in the interval of his absence; "for I have before protested to your Highnesses," he adds as he makes an entry for his sovereigns to read, "that the profits shall go to making a conquest of Jerusalem."
[Sidenote: Garrison of La Navidad.]
We know the names of those who agreed to stay on the island. Navarrete discovered the list in a proclamation made in 1507 to pay what was due them to their next of kin. This list gives forty names, though some accounts of the voyage say they numbered a few less. The company included the Irishman and Englishman already mentioned.
[Sidenote: 1492. December 27.]
[Sidenote: December 30.]
[Sidenote: December 31.]
On the 27th of December, Columbus got the first tidings of the "Pinta" since she deserted him; and he sent a Spaniard, with Indians to handle the canoe, to a harbor at the end of the island, where he supposed Pinzon's ship to be. Columbus was now perfecting his plans for the fort, and tried to make out if Guacanagari, the king, was not trying to conceal from him the situation of the mines. On Sunday, December 30, the Spanish and native leaders vied with each other in graciousness. The savage put his crown upon the Admiral. Columbus took off his necklace and scarlet cloak and placed them on the king. He clothed the savage's naked feet with buskins and decked the dusky hand with a silver ring. On Monday, work was resumed in preparing for their return to Spain, for, with the "Pinta" gone--for the canoe sent to find her had returned unsuccessful--and the "Nina" alone remaining, it was necessary to diminish the risk attending the enterprise.
[Sidenote: 1493. January 2.]
On January 2, 1493, there was to be leave-taking of the cacique. To impart to him and to his people a dread of Spanish power, in the interests of those to be left, he made an exhibition of the force of his bombards, by sending a shot clean through the hull of the dismantled wreck. It is curious to observe how Irving, with a somewhat cheap melodramatic instinct, makes this shot tear through a beautiful grove like a bolt from heaven!
The king made some return by ordering an effigy of Columbus to be finished in gold, in ten days,--as at least so Columbus understood one of his Indians to announce the cacique's purpose.
[Sidenote: 1493. January 4.]
[Sidenote: January 6.]
Having commissioned Diego de Arana as commander and Pedro Gutierrez and Roderigo de Escoveda to act as his lieutenants of the fort and its thirty-nine men, Columbus now embarked, but not before he had addressed all sorts of good advice to those he was to leave behind,--advice that did no good, if the subsequent events are clearly divined. It was not, however, till Friday, January 4, 1493, that the wind permitted him to stand out of the harbor of the Villa de Navidad, as he had named the fort and settlement from the fact of his shipwreck there on the day of the nativity. Two days later they met the "Pinta," and Pinzon, her commander, soon boarded the Admiral to explain his absence, "saying he had left against his will." The Admiral doubted such professions; but did not think it prudent to show active resentment, as Las Casas tells us. The fact apparently was that Pinzon had not found the gold he went in search of and so he had returned to meet his commander. He had been coasting the island for over twenty days, and had been seen by the natives, who made the report to the Admiral already mentioned. Some Indians whom he had taken captive were subsequently released by the Admiral, for the usual ulterior purpose. It is curious to observe how an act of kidnapping which emulated the Admiral's, if done by Pinzon, is called by the canonizers, "joining violence to rapine."
[Sidenote: Jamaica.]
At this time Columbus records his first intelligence respecting an island, Yamaye, south of Cuba, which seems to have been Jamaica, where, as he learned, gold was to be found in grains of the size of beans, while in Española the grains were nearly the size of kernels of wheat. He was also informed of an island to the east, inhabited by women only. He also understood that the people of the continent to the south were clothed, and did not go naked like those of the islands.
Both vessels now having made a harbor, and the "Nina" beginning to leak, a day was spent in calking her seams. Columbus was not without apprehension that the two brothers, Martin Alonso Pinzon of the "Pinta," and Vicente Jañez Pinzon who had commanded the "Nina," might now with their adherents combine for mischief. He was accordingly all the more anxious to hasten his departure, without further following the coast of Española. Going up a river to replenish his water, he found on taking the casks on board that the crevices of the hoops had gathered fine bits of gold from the stream. This led him to count the neighboring streams, which he supposed might also contain gold.
[Sidenote: Columbus sees mermaids.]
It was not only gold which he saw. Three mermaids stood high out of the water, with not very comely faces to be sure, but similar to those of human beings; and he recalled having seen the like on the pepper coast in Guinea. The commentators suppose they may have been sea-calves indistinctly seen.
[Sidenote: 1493. January 10. The ships sail for Spain.]
[Sidenote: January 12. Caribs.]
The two ships started once more on the 10th, sometimes lying to at night for fear of shoals, making and naming cape after cape. On the 12th, entering a harbor, Columbus discovered an Indian, whom he took for a Carib, as he had learned to call the cannibals which he so often heard of. His own Indians did not wholly understand this strange savage. When they sent him ashore the Spaniards found fifty-five Indians armed with bows and wooden swords. They were prevailed upon at first to hold communication; but soon showed a less friendly spirit, and Columbus for the first time records a fight, in which several of the natives were wounded. An island to the eastward was now supposed to be the Carib region, and he desired to capture some of its natives. Navarrete supposes that Porto Rico is here referred to. He also observed, as his vessels went easterly, that he was encountering some of the same sort of seaweed which he had sailed through when steering west, and it occurred to him that perhaps these islands stretched easterly, so as really to be not far distant from the Canaries. It may be observed that this propinquity of the new islands to those of the Atlantic, longer known, was not wholly eradicated from the maps till well into the earlier years of the sixteenth century.
[Sidenote: Caribs and Amazons.]
They had secured some additional Indians near where they had had their fight, and one of them now directed Columbus towards the island of the Caribs. The leaks of the vessels increasing and his crews desponding, Columbus soon thought it more prudent to shift his course for Spain direct, supposing at the same time that it would take him near Matinino, where the tribe of women lived. He had gotten the story somehow, very likely by a credulous adaptation of Marco Polo, that the Caribs visited this island once a year and reclaimed the male offspring, leaving the female young to keep up the tribe.
In following the Admiral along these coasts of Cuba and Española, no attempt has here been made to identify all his bays and rivers. Navarrete and the other commentators have done so, but not always with agreement.
[Sidenote: 1493. January 16.]
On the 16th, they had their last look at a distant cape of Española, and were then in the broad ocean, with seaweed and tunnies and pelicans to break its monotony. The "Pinta," having an unsound mast, lagged behind, and so the "Nina" had to slacken sail.
[Sidenote: Homeward voyage.]
Columbus now followed a course which for a long time, owing to defects in the methods of ascertaining longitude, was the mariner's readiest recourse to reach his port. This was to run up his latitudes to that of his destination, and then follow the parallel till he sighted a familiar landmark.
[Sidenote: 1493. February 10.]
[Sidenote: February 13.]
[Sidenote: A gale.]
By February 10, when they began to compare reckonings, Columbus placed his position in the latitude of Flores, while the others thought they were on a more southern course, and a hundred and fifty leagues nearer Spain. By the 12th it was apparent that a gale was coming on. The next day, February 13, the storm increased. During the following night both vessels took in all sail and scudded before the wind. They lost sight of each other's lights, and never joined company. The "Pinta" with her weak mast was blown away to the north. The Admiral's ship could bear the gale better, but as his ballast was insufficient, he had to fill his water casks with sea-water. Sensible of their peril, his crew made vows, to be kept if they were saved. They drew lots to determine who should carry a wax taper of five pounds to St. Mary of Guadalupe, and the penance fell to the Admiral. A sailor by another lot was doomed to make a pilgrimage to St. Mary of Lorette in the papal territory. A third lot was drawn for a night watch at St. Clara de Mogues, and it fell upon Columbus. Then they all vowed to pay their devotions at the nearest church of Our Lady if only they got ashore alive.
[Sidenote: A narrative of his voyage thrown overboard.]
There was one thought which more than another troubled Columbus at this moment, and this was that in case his ship foundered, the world might never know of his success, for he was apprehensive that the "Pinta" had already foundered. Not to alarm the crew, he kept from them the fact that a cask which they had seen him throw overboard contained an account of his voyage, written on parchment, rolled in a waxed cloth. He trusted to the chance of some one finding it. He placed a similar cask on the poop, to be washed off in case the ship went down. He does not mention this in the journal.
[Sidenote: 1493. January 15.]
[Sidenote: January 16. Land seen.]
[Sidenote: At the Azores.]
[Sidenote: 1493. February 18.]
After sunset on the 15th there were signs of clearing in the west, and the waves began to fall. The next morning at sunrise there was land ahead. Now came the test of their reckoning. Some thought it the rock of Cintra near Lisbon; others said Madeira; Columbus decided they were near the Azores. The land was soon made out to be an island; but a head wind thwarted them. Other land was next seen astern. While they were saying their Salve in the evening, some of the crew discerned a light to leeward, which might have been on the island first seen. Then later they saw another island, but night and the clouds obscured it too much to be recognized. The journal is blank for the 17th of February, except that under the next day, the 18th, Columbus records that after sunset of the 17th they sailed round an island to find an anchorage; but being unsuccessful in the search they beat out to sea again. In the morning of the 18th they stood in, discovered an anchorage, sent a boat ashore, and found it was St. Mary's of the Azores. Columbus was right!
[Sidenote: 1493. February 21.]
After sunset he received some provisions, which Juan de Casteñeda, the Portuguese governor of the island, had sent to him. Meanwhile three Spaniards whom Columbus sent ashore had failed to return, not a little to his disturbance, for he was aware that there might be among the Portuguese some jealousy of his success. To fulfill one of the vows made during the gale, he now sent one half his crew ashore in penitential garments to a hermitage near the shore, intending on their return to go himself with the other half. The record then reads: "The men being at their devotion, they were attacked by Casteñeda with horse and foot, and made prisoners." Not being able to see the hermitage from his anchorage, and not suspecting this event, but still anxious, he made sail and proceeded till he got a view of the spot. Now he saw the horsemen, and how presently they dismounted, and with arms in their hands, entering a boat, approached the ship. Then followed a parley, in which Columbus thought he discovered a purpose of the Portuguese to capture him, and they on their part discovered it to be not quite safe to board the Admiral. To enforce his dignity and authority as a representative of the sovereigns of Castile, he held up to the boats his commission with its royal insignia; and reminded them that his instructions had been to treat all Portuguese ships with respect, since a spirit of amity existed between the two Crowns. It behooved the Portuguese, as he told them, to be wary lest by any hostile act they brought upon themselves the indignation of those higher in authority. The lofty bearing of Casteñeda continuing, Columbus began to fear that hostilities might possibly have broken out between Spain and Portugal. So the interview ended with little satisfaction to either, and the Admiral returned to his old anchorage. The next day, to work off the lee shore, they sailed for St. Michael's, and the weather continuing stormy he found himself crippled in having but three experienced seamen among the crew which remained to him. So not seeing St. Michael's they again bore away, on Thursday the 21st, for St. Mary's, and again reached their former anchorage.
The storms of these latter days here induced Columbus in his journal to recall how placid the sea had been among those other new-found islands, and how likely it was the terrestrial] paradise was in that region, as theologians and learned philosophers had supposed. From these thoughts he was aroused by a boat from shore with a notary on board, and Columbus, after completing his entertainment of the visitors, was asked to show his royal commission. He records his belief that this was done to give the Portuguese an opportunity of retreating from their belligerent attitude. At all events it had that effect, and the Spaniards who had been restrained were at once released. It is surmised that the conduct of Casteñeda was in conformity with instructions from Lisbon, to detain Columbus should he find his way to any dependency of the Portuguese crown.
[Sidenote: 1493. February 24.]
[Sidenote: February 25.]
[Sidenote: Rock of Cintra seen.]
[Sidenote: In the Tagus.]
[Sidenote: Sends letter to the king of Portugal.]
On Sunday, the 24th, the ship again put out to sea; on Wednesday, they encountered another gale; and on the following Sunday, they were again in such peril that they made new vows. At daylight the next day, some land which they had seen in the night, not without gloomy apprehension of being driven upon it, proved to be the rock of Cintra. The mouth of the Tagus was before them, and the people of the adjacent town, observing the peril of the strange ship, offered prayers for its safety. The entrance of the river was safely made and the multitude welcomed them. Up the Tagus they went to Rastelo, and anchored at about three o'clock in the afternoon. Here Columbus learned that the wintry roughness which he had recently experienced was but a part of the general severity of the season. From this place he dispatched a messenger to Spain to convey the news of his arrival to his sovereigns, and at the same time he sent a letter to the king of Portugal, then sojourning nine leagues away. He explained in it how he had asked the hospitality of a Portuguese port, because the Spanish sovereigns had directed him to do so, if he needed supplies. He further informed the king that he had come from the "Indies," which he had reached by sailing west. He hoped he would be allowed to bring his caravel to Lisbon, to be more secure; for rumors of a lading of gold might incite reckless persons, in so lonely a place as he then lay, to deeds of violence.
[Sidenote: Name of India.]
The Historie says that Columbus had determined beforehand to call whatever land he should discover, India, because he thought India was a name to suggest riches, and to invite encouragement for his project.
While this letter to the Portuguese king was in transit, the attempt was made by certain officers of the Portuguese navy in the port of Rastelo to induce Columbus to leave his ship and give an account of himself; but he would make no compromise of the dignity of a Castilian admiral. When his resentment was known and his commission was shown, the Portuguese officers changed their policy to one of courtesy.
The next day, and on the one following, the news of his arrival being spread about, a vast multitude came in boats from all parts to see him and his Indians.
[Sidenote: 1493. March 8.]
[Sidenote: Columbus visits the king.]
On the third day, a royal messenger brought an invitation from the king to come and visit the court, which Columbus, not without apprehension, accepted. The king's steward had been sent to accompany him and provide for his entertainment on the way. On the night of the following day, he reached Val do Paraiso, where the king was. This spot was nine leagues from Lisbon, and it was supposed that his reception was not held in that city because a pest was raging there. A royal greeting was given to him. The king affected to believe that the voyage of Columbus was made to regions which the Portuguese had been allowed to occupy by a convention agreed upon with Spain in 1479. The Admiral undeceived him, and showed the king that his ships had not been near Guinea.
We have another account of this interview at Val do Paraiso, in the pages of the Portuguese historian, Barros, tinged, doubtless, with something of pique and prejudice, because the profit of the voyage had not been for the benefit of Portugal. That historian charges Columbus with extravagance, and even insolence, in his language to the king. He says that Columbus chided the monarch for the faithlessness that had lost him such an empire. He is represented as launching these rebukes so vehemently that the attending nobles were provoked to a degree which prompted whispers of assassination. That Columbus found his first harbor in the Tagus has given other of the older Portuguese writers, like Faria y Sousa, in his Europa Portuguesa, and Vasconcelles and Resende, in their lives of João II., occasion to represent that his entering it was not so much induced by stress of weather as to seek a triumph over the Portuguese king in the first flush of the news. It is also said that the resolution was formed by the king to avail himself of the knowledge of two Portuguese who were found among Columbus's men. With their aid he proposed to send an armed expedition to take possession of the new-found regions before Columbus could fit out a fleet for a second voyage. Francisco de Almeida was even selected, according to the report, to command this force. We hear, however, nothing more of it, and the Bull of Demarcation put an end to all such rivalries.
If, on the contrary, we may believe Columbus himself, in a letter which he subsequently wrote, he did not escape being suspected in Spain of having thus put himself in the power of the Portuguese in order to surrender the Indies to them.
[Sidenote: 1493. March 11. Columbus leaves the court.]
[Sidenote: Sails from the Tagus.]
[Sidenote: Reaches Palos, March 15, 1493.]
Spending Sunday at court, Columbus departed on Monday, March 11, having first dispatched messages to the King and Queen of Spain. An escort of knights was provided for him, and taking the monastery of Villafranca on his way, he kissed the hand of the Portuguese queen, who was there lodging, and journeying on, arrived at his caravel on Tuesday night. The next day he put to sea, and on Thursday morning was off Cape St. Vincent. The next morning they were off the island of Saltes, and crossing bar with the flood, he anchored on March 15, 1493, not far from noon, where he had unmoored the "Santa Maria" over seven months before.
"I made the passage thither in seventy-one days," he says in his published letter; "and back in forty-eight, during thirteen of which number I was driven about by storms."
[Sidenote: The "Pinta's" experiences.]
The "Pinta," which had parted company with the Admiral on the 14th of February, had been driven by the gale into Bayona, a port of Gallicia, in the northwest corner of Spain, whence Pinzon, its commander, had dispatched a messenger to give information of his arrival and of his intended visit to the Court. A royal order peremptorily stayed, however, his projected visit, and left the first announcement of the news to be proclaimed by Columbus himself. This is the story which later writers have borrowed from the Historie.
[Sidenote: She reaches Palos.]
[Sidenote: Death of Pinzon.]
Oviedo tells us that the "Pinta" put to sea again from the Gallician harbor, and entered the port of Palos on the same day with Columbus, but her commander, fearing arrest or other unpleasantness, kept himself concealed till Columbus had started for Barcelona. Not many days later Pinzon died in his own house in Palos. Las Casas would have us believe that his death arose from mortification at the displeasure of his sovereigns; but Harrisse points out that when Charles V. bestowed a coat-armor on the family, he recognized his merit as the discoverer of Española. There is little trustworthy information on the matter, and Muñoz, whose lack of knowledge prompts inferences on his part, represents that it was Pinzon's request to explain his desertion of Columbus, which was neglected by the Court, and impressed him with the royal displeasure.
XI. COLUMBUS IN SPAIN AGAIN; MARCH TO SEPTEMBER, 1493
Peter Martyr tells us of the common ignorance and dread pervading the ordinary ranks of society, before and during the absence of Columbus, in respect to all that part of the earth's circumference which the sun looked upon beyond Gades, till it again cast its rays upon the Golden Chersonesus. During this absence from the known and habitable regions of the globe, that orb was thought to sweep over the ominous and foreboding Sea of Darkness. No one could tell how wide that sea was. The learned disagreed in their estimates. A conception, far under the actual condition, had played no small part in making the voyage of Columbus possible. Men possessed legends of its mysteries. Fables of its many islands were repeated; but no one then living was credibly thought to have tested its glooms except by sailing a little beyond the outermost of the Azores.
[Sidenote: Palos aroused at the return of Columbus.]
It calls for no stretch of the imagination to picture the public sentiment in little Palos during the months of anxiety which many households had endured since that August morning, when in its dim light Columbus, the Pinzons, and all their companions had been wafted gently out to sea by the current and the breeze. The winter had been unusually savage and weird. The navigators to the Atlantic islands had reported rough passages, and the ocean had broken wildly for long intervals along the rocks and sands of the peninsular shores. It is a natural movement of the mind to wrap the absent in the gloom of the present hour; and while Columbus had been passing along the gentle waters of the new archipelago, his actual experiences had been in strange contrast to the turmoil of the sea as it washed the European shores. He had indeed suffered on his return voyage the full tumultuousness of the elements, and we can hardly fail to recognize the disquiet of mind and falling of heart which those savage gales must have given to the kin and friends of the untraceable wanderers.
The stories, then, which we have of the thanksgiving and jubilation of the people of Palos, when the "Nina" was descried passing the bar of the river, fall readily among the accepted truths of history. We can imagine how despondency vanished amid the acclaims of exultation; how multitudes hung upon the words of strange revelations; how the gaping populace wondered at the bedecked Indians; and how throngs of people opened a way that Columbus might lead the votive procession to the church. The canonizers of course read between the lines of the records that it was to the Church of Rabida that Columbus with his men now betook themselves. It matters little.
There was much to mar the delight of some in the households. Comforting reports must be told of those who were left at La Navidad. No one had died, unless the gale had submerged the "Pinta" and her crew. She had not been seen since the "Nina" parted with her in the gale.
The story of her rescue has already been told. She entered the river before the rejoicings of the day were over, and relieved the remaining anxiety.
[Sidenote: The Court at Barcelona.]
The Spanish Court was known to be at this time at Barcelona, the Catalan port on the Mediterranean. Columbus's first impulse was to proceed thither in his caravel; but his recent hazards made him prudent, and so dispatching a messenger to the Court, he proceeded to Seville to wait their majesties' commands. Of the native prisoners which he had brought away, one had died at sea, three were too sick to follow him, and were left at Palos, while six accompanied him on his journey.
[Sidenote: 1493. March 30. Columbus summoned to Court.]
The messenger with such startling news had sped quickly; and Columbus did not wait long for a response to his letter. The document (March 30) showed that the event had made a deep impression on the Court. The new domain of the west dwarfed for a while the conquests from the Moors. There was great eagerness to complete the title, and gather its wealth. Columbus was accordingly instructed to set in motion at once measures for a new expedition, and then to appear at Court and explain to the monarchs what action on their part was needful. The demand was promptly answered; and having organized the necessary arrangements in Seville for the preparation of a fleet, he departed for Barcelona to make homage to his sovereigns. His Indians accompanied him. Porters bore his various wonders from the new islands. His story had preceded him, and town after town vied with each other in welcoming him, and passing him on to new amazements and honors.
[Sidenote: 1493. April. In Barcelona.]
[Sidenote: Received by the sovereigns.]
By the middle of April he approached Barcelona, and was met by throngs of people, who conducted him into the city. His Indians, arrayed in effective if not accustomed ornament of gold, led the line. Bearers of all the marvels of the Indies followed, with their forty parrots and other strange birds of liveliest plumage, with the skins of unknown animals, with priceless plants that would now supplant the eastern spices, and with the precious ornaments of the dusky kings and princes whom he had met. Next, on horseback, came Columbus himself, conspicuous amid the mounted chivalry of Spain. Thus the procession marched on, through crowded streets, amid the shouts of lookers-on, to the alcazar of the Moorish kings in the Calle Ancha, at this time the residence of the Bishop of Urgil, where it is supposed Ferdinand and Isabella had caused their thrones to be set up, with a canopy of brocaded gold drooping about them. Here the monarchs awaited the coming of Columbus.
[Sidenote: King Ferdinand.]
[Sidenote: Queen Isabella.]
Ferdinand, as the accounts picture him, was a man whose moderate stature was helped by his erectness and robes to a decided dignity of carriage. His expression in the ruddy glow of his complexion, clearness of eye, and loftiness of brow, grew gracious in any pleasurable excitement. The Queen was a very suitable companion, grave and graceful in her demeanor. Her blue eyes and auburn tresses comported with her outwardly benign air, and one looked sharply to see anything of her firmness and courage in the prevailing sweetness of her manner. The heir apparent, Prince Juan, was seated by their side. The dignitaries of the Court were grouped about.
[Sidenote: Columbus before the Court.]
Las Casas tells us how commanding Columbus looked when he entered the room, surrounded by a brilliant company of cavaliers. When he approached the royal dais, both monarchs rose to receive him standing; and when he stooped to kiss their hands, they gently and graciously lifted him, and made him sit as they did. They then asked to be told of what he had seen.
As Columbus proceeded in his narrative, he pointed out the visible objects of his speech,--the Indians, the birds, the skins, the barbaric ornaments, and the stores of gold. We are told of the prayer of the sovereigns at the close, in which all joined; and of the chanted Te Deum from the choir of the royal chapel, which bore the thoughts of every one, says the narrator, on the wings of melody to celestial delights. This ceremony ended, Columbus was conducted like a royal guest to the lodgings which had been provided for him.
It has been a question if the details of this reception, which are put by Irving in imaginative fullness, and are commonly told on such a thread of incidents as have been related, are warranted by the scant accounts which are furnished us in the Historie, in Las Casas, and in Peter Martyr, particularly since the incident does not seem to have made enough of an impression at the time to have been noticed at all in the Dietaria of the city, a record of events embodying those of far inferior interest as we would now value them. Mr. George Sumner carefully scanned this record many years ago, and could find not the slightest reference to the festivities. He fancies that the incidents in the mind of the recorder may have lost their significance through an Aragonese jealousy of the supremacy of Leon and Castile.
It is certainly true that in Peter Martyr, the contemporary observer of this supposed pageantry, there is nothing to warrant the exuberance of later writers. Martyr simply says that Columbus was allowed to sit in the sovereigns' presence.
Whatever the fact as to details, it seems quite evident that this season at Barcelona made the only unalloyed days of happiness, freed of anxiety, which Columbus ever experienced. He was observed of all, and everybody was complacent to him. His will was apparently law to King and subject. Las Casas tells us that he passed among the admiring throngs with his face wreathed with smiles of content. An equal complacency of delight and expectation settled upon all with whom he talked of the wonders of the land which he had found. They dreamed as he did of entering into golden cities with their hundred bridges, that might cause new exultations, to which the present were as nothing. It was a fatal lure to the proud Spanish nature, and no one was doomed to expiate the folly of the delusion more poignantly than Columbus himself.
[Sidenote: Spread of the news.]
Now that India had been found by the west, as was believed, and Barcelona was very likely palpitating with the thought, the news spread in every direction. What were the discoveries of the Phoenicians to this? What questions of ethnology, language, species, migrations, phenomena of all sorts, in man and in the natural world, were pressing upon the mind, as the results were considered? Were not these parrots which Columbus had exhibited such as Pliny tells us are in Asia?
The great event had fallen in the midst of geographical development, and was understood at last. Marco Polo and the others had told their marvels of the east. The navigators of Prince Henry had found new wonders on the sea. Regiomontanus, Behaim, and Toscanelli had not communed in vain with cosmographical problems. Even errors had been stepping-stones; as when the belief in the easterly over-extension of Asia had pictured it near enough in the west to convince men that the hazard of the Sea of Darkness was not so great after all.
[Sidenote: Peter Martyr records the event.]
Spain was then the centre of much activity of mind. "I am here," records Peter Martyr, "at the source of this welcome intelligence from the new found lands, and as the historian of such events, I may hope to go down to posterity as their recorder." We must remember this profession when we try to account for his meagre record of the reception at Barcelona.
That part of the letter of Peter Martyr, dated at Barcelona, on the ides of May, 1493, which conveyed to his correspondent the first tidings of Columbus's return, is in these words, as translated by Harrisse: "A certain Christopher Colonus, a Ligurian, returned from the antipodes. He had obtained for that purpose three ships from my sovereigns, with much difficulty, because the ideas which he expressed were considered extravagant. He came back and brought specimens of many precious things, especially gold, which those regions naturally produce." Martyr also tells us that when Pomponius Laetus got such news, he could scarcely refrain "from tears of joy at so unlooked-for an event." "What more delicious food for an ingenious mind!" said Martyr to him in return. "To talk with people who have seen all this is elevating to the mind." The confidence of Martyr, however, in the belief of Columbus that the true Indies had been found was not marked. He speaks of the islands as adjacent to, and not themselves, the East.
[Sidenote: The news in England.]
Sebastian Cabot remembered the time when these marvelous tidings reached the court of Henry VII. in London, and he tells us that it was accounted a "thing more divine than human."
[Sidenote: Columbus's first letter.]
A letter which Columbus had written and early dispatched to Barcelona, nearly in duplicate, to the treasurers of the two crowns was promptly translated into Latin, and was sent to Italy to be issued in numerous editions, to be copied in turn by the Paris and Antwerp printers, and a little more sluggishly by those of Germany.
[Sidenote: Influence of the event.]
There is, however, singularly little commenting on these events that passed into print and has come down to us; and we may well doubt if the effect on the public mind, beyond certain learned circles, was at all commensurate with what we may now imagine the recognition of so important an event ought to have been. Nordenskiöld, studying the cartography and literature of the early discoveries in America in his Facsimile Atlas, is forced to the conclusion that "scarcely any discovery of importance was ever received with so much indifference, even in circles where sufficient genius and statesmanship ought to have prevailed to appreciate the changes they foreshadowed in the development of the economical and political conditions of mankind."
[Sidenote: 1493. June 19. Carjaval's oration.]
It happened on June 19, 1493, but a few weeks after the Pope had made his first public recognition of the discovery, that the Spanish ambassador at the Papal Court, Bernardin de Carjaval, referred in an oration to "the unknown lands, lately found, lying towards the Indies;" and at about the same time there was but a mere reference to the event in the Los Tratados of Doctor Alonso Ortis, published at Seville.
[Sidenote: Columbus in favor.]
While this strange bruit was thus spreading more or less, we get some glimpses of the personal life of Columbus during these days of his sojourn in Barcelona. We hear of him riding through the streets on horseback, on one side of the King, with Prince Juan on the other.
[Sidenote: Reward for first seeing land.]
We find record of his being awarded the pension of thirty crowns, as the first discoverer of land, by virtue of the mysterious light, and Irving thinks that we may condone this theft from the brave sailor who unquestionably saw land the first, by remembering that "Columbus's whole ambition was involved." It seems to others that his whole character was involved.
[Sidenote: Story of the egg.]
We find him a guest at a banquet given by Cardinal Mendoza, and the well-known story of his making an egg stand upright, by chipping one end of it, is associated with this merriment of the table. An impertinent question of a shallow courtier had induced Columbus to show a table full of guests that it was easy enough to do anything when the way was pointed out. The story, except as belonging to a traditional stock of anecdotes, dating far back of Columbus, always ready for an application, has no authority earlier than Benzoni, and loses its point in the destruction of the end on which the aim was to make it stand. This has been so palpable to some of the repeaters of the story that they have supposed that the feat was accomplished, not by cracking the end of the egg, but by using a quick motion which broke the sack which holds the yolk, so that that weightier substance settled at one end, and balanced the egg in an upright position.
So passed the time with the new-made hero, in drinking, as Irving expresses it, "the honeyed draught of popularity before enmity and detraction had time to drug it with bitterness."
[Sidenote: 1493. May 20. Receives a coat of arms.]
We find the sovereigns bestowing upon him, on the 20th of May, a coat of arms, which shows a castle and a lion in the upper quarters, and in those below, a group of golden islands in a sea of waves, on the one hand, and the arms to which his family had been entitled, on the other. Humboldt speaks of this archipelago as the first map of America, but he apparently knew only Oviedo's description of the arms, for the latter places the islands in a gulf formed by a mainland, and in this fashion they are grouped in a blazon of the arms which is preserved at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Paris--a duplicate being at Genoa. Harrisse says that this design is the original water-color, made under Columbus's eye in 1502. In this picture,--which is the earliest blazonry which has come down to us,--the other lower quarter has the five golden anchors on a blue ground, which it is claimed was adjudged to Columbus as the distinctive badge of an Admiral of Spain. The personal arms are relegated to a minor overlying shield at the lower point of the escutcheon. Oviedo also says that trees and other objects should be figured on the mainland.
The lion and castle of the original grant were simply reminders of the arms of Leon and Castile; but Columbus seems, of his own motion, so far as Harrisse can discover, to have changed the blazonry of those objects in the drawing of 1502 to agree with those of the royal arms. It was by the same arrogant license, apparently, that he introduced later the continental shore of the archipelago; and Harrisse can find no record that the anchors were ever by any authority added to his blazon, nor that the professed family arms, borne in connection, had any warrant whatever.
The earliest engraved copy of the arms is in the Historia General of Oviedo in 1535, where a profile helmet supports a crest made of a globe topped by a cross. In Oviedo's Coronica of 1547, the helmet is shown in front view. There seems to have been some wide discrepancies in the heraldic excursions of these early writers. Las Casas, for instance, puts the golden lion in a silver field,--when heraldry abhors a conjunction of metals, as much as nature abhors a vacuum. The discussion of the family arms which were added by Columbus to the escutcheon made a significant part of the arguments in the suit, many years later, of Baldassare (Balthazar) Colombo to possess the Admiral's dignities; and as Harrisse points out, the emblem of those Italian Colombos of any pretensions to nobility was invariably a dove of some kind,--a device quite distinct from those designated by Columbus. This assumption of family arms by Columbus is held by Harrisse to be simply a concession to the prejudices of his period, and to the exigencies of his new position.
The arms have been changed under the dukes of Veragua to show silver-capped waves in the sea, while a globe surmounted by a cross is placed in the midst of a gulf containing only five islands.
[Sidenote: His alleged motto.]
There is another later accompaniment of the arms, of which the origin has escaped all search. It is far more familiar than the escutcheon, on which it plays the part of a motto. It sometimes represents that Columbus found for the allied crowns a new world, and at other times that he gave one to them.
Por Castilla é por Leon Nuevo Mundo halló Colon.
A Castilla, y a Leon Nuevo Mundo dió Colon.
Oviedo is the earliest to mention this distich in 1535. It is given in the Historie, not as a motto of the arms, but as an inscription placed by the king on the tomb of Columbus some years after his death. If this is true, it does away with the claims of Gomara that Columbus himself added it to his arms.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Diplomacy of the Bull of Demarcation.]
But diplomacy had its part to play in these events. As the Christian world at that time recognized the rights of the Holy Father to confirm any trespass on the possessions of the heathen, there was a prompt effort on the part of Ferdinand to bring the matter to the attention of the Pope. As early as 1438, bulls of Martin V. and Eugene IV. had permitted the Spaniards to sail west and the Portuguese south; and a confirmation of the same had been made by Pope Nicholas the Fifth. In 1479, the rival crowns of Portugal and Spain had agreed to respect their mutual rights under these papal decisions.
The messengers whom Ferdinand sent to Rome were instructed to intimate that the actual possession which had been made in their behalf of these new regions did not require papal sanction, as they had met there no Christian occupants; but that as dutiful children of the church it would be grateful to receive such a benediction on their energies for the faith as a confirmatory bull would imply. Ferdinand had too much of wiliness in his own nature, and the practice of it was too much a part of the epoch, wholly to trust a man so notoriously perverse and obstinate as Alexander VI. was. Though Muñoz calls Alexander the friend of Ferdinand, and though the Pope was by birth an Aragonese, experience had shown that there was no certainty of his support in a matter affecting the interest of Spain.
[Sidenote: 1493. May 3. The Bull issued.]
A folio printed leaf in Gothic characters, of which the single copy sold in London in 1854 is said to be the only one known to bibliographers, made public to the world the famous Bull of Demarcation of Alexander VI., bearing date May 3, 1493. If one would believe Hakluyt, the Pope had been induced to do this act by his own option, rather than at the intercession of the Spanish monarchs. Under it, and a second bull of the day following, Spain was entitled to possess, "on condition of planting the Catholic faith," all lands not already occupied by Christian powers, west of a meridian drawn one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape de Verde Islands, evidently on the supposition that these two groups were in the same longitude, the fact being that the most westerly of the southern, and the most easterly of the northern, group possessed nearly the same meridian. Though Portugal was not mentioned in describing this line, it was understood that there was reserved to her the same privilege easterly.
There was not as yet any consideration given to the division which this great circle meridian was likely to make on the other side of the globe, where Portugal was yet to be most interested. The Cape of Good Hope had not then been doubled, and the present effect of the division was to confine the Portuguese to an exploration of the western African coast and to adjacent islands. It will be observed that in the placing of this line the magnetic phenomena which Columbus had observed on his recent voyage were not forgotten, if the coincidence can be so interpreted. Humboldt suggests that it can.
[Sidenote: Line of no variation.]
To make a physical limit serve a political one was an obvious recourse at a time when the line of no variation was thought to be unique and of a true north and south direction; but within a century the observers found three other lines, as Acosta tells us in his Historia Natural de las Indias, in 1589; and there proved to be a persistent migration of these lines, all little suited to terrestrial demarcations. Roselly de Lorgues and the canonizers, however, having given to Columbus the planning of the line in his cell at Rabida, think, with a surprising prescience on his part, and with a very convenient obliviousness on their part, that he had chosen "precisely the only point of our planet which science would choose in our day,--a mysterious demarcation made by its omnipotent Creator," in sovereign disregard, unfortunately, of the laws of his own universe!
[Sidenote: Suspicious movements in Portugal.]
Meanwhile there were movements in Portugal which Ferdinand had not failed to notice. An ambassador had come from its king, asking permission to buy certain articles of prohibited exportation for use on an African expedition which the Portuguese were fitting out. Ferdinand suspected that the true purpose of this armament was to seize the new islands, under a pretense as dishonorable as that which covered the ostensible voyage to the Cape de Verde Islands, by whose exposure Columbus had been driven into Spain. The Spanish monarch was alert enough to get quite beforehand with his royal brother. Before the ambassador of which mention has been made had come to the Spanish Court, Ferdinand had dispatched Lope de Herrera to Lisbon, armed with a conciliatory and a denunciatory letter, to use one or the other, as he might find the conditions demanded. The Portuguese historian Resende tells us that João, in order to give a wrong scent, had openly bestowed largesses on some and had secretly suborned other members of Ferdinand's cabinet, so that he did not lack for knowledge of the Spanish intentions from the latter members. He and his ambassadors were accordingly found by Ferdinand to be inexplicably prepared at every new turn of the negotiations.
In this way João had been informed of the double mission of Herrera, and could avoid the issue with him, while he sent his own ambassadors to Spain, to promise that, pending their negotiations, no vessel should sail on any voyage of discovery for sixty days. They were also to propose that instead of the papal line, one should be drawn due west from the Canaries, giving all new discoveries north to the Spaniards, and all south to the Portuguese. This new move Ferdinand turned to his own advantage, for it gave him the opportunity to enter upon a course of diplomacy which he could extend long enough to allow Columbus to get off with a new armament. He then sent a fresh embassy, with instructions to move slowly and protract the discussion, but to resort, when compelled, to a proposition for arbitration. João was foiled and he knew it. "These ambassadors," he said, "have no feet to hurry and no head to propound." The Spanish game was the best played, and the Portuguese king grew fretful under it, and intimated sometimes a purpose to proceed to violence, but he was restrained by a better wisdom. We depend mainly upon the Portuguese historians for understanding these complications, and it is to be hoped that some time the archives of the Vatican may reveal the substance of these tripartite negotiations of the papal court and the two crowns.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1493. May. Honors of Columbus confirmed.]
[Sidenote: May 28. Columbus leaves Barcelona.]
[Sidenote: June. In Seville.]
[Sidenote: Fonseca.]
Before Columbus had left Barcelona, a large gratuity had been awarded to him by his sovereigns; an order had been issued commanding free lodgings to be given to him and his followers, wherever he went, and the original stipulations as to honors and authority, made by the sovereigns at Santa Fé, had been confirmed (May 28). A royal seal was now confided to his keeping, to be set to letters patent, and to commissions that it might be found necessary to issue. It might be used even in appointing a deputy, to act in the absence of Columbus. His appointments were to hold during the royal pleasure. His own power was defined at the same time, and in particular to hold command over the entire expedition, and to conduct its future government and explorations. He left Barcelona, after leavetakings, on May 28; and his instructions, as printed by Navarrete, were signed the next day. It is not unlikely they were based on suggestions of Columbus made in a letter, without date, which has recently been printed in the Cartas de Indias (1877). Early in June, he was in Seville, and soon after he was joined by Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville, who, as representative of the Crown, had been made the chief director of the preparations. It is claimed by Harrisse that this priest has been painted by the biographers of Columbus much blacker than he really was, on the strength of the objurgations which the Historie bestows upon him. Las Casas calls him worldly; and he deserves the epithet if a dominating career of thirty years in controlling the affairs of the Indies is any evidence of fitness in such matters. His position placed him where he had purposes to thwart as well as projects to foster, and the record of this age of discovery is not without many proofs of selfish and dishonorable motives, which Fonseca might be called upon to repress. That his discrimination was not always clear-sighted may be expected; that he was sometimes perfidious may be true, but he was dealing mainly with those who could be perfidious also. That he abused his authority might also go without dispute; but so did Columbus and the rest. In the game of diamond-cut-diamond, it is not always just to single out a single victim for condemnation, as is done by Irving and the canonizers.
It was while at Seville, engaged in this work of preparation, that Fonseca sought to check the demands of Columbus as respects the number of his personal servitors. That these demands were immoderate, the character of Columbus, never cautious under incitement, warrants us in believing; and that the official guardian of the royal treasury should have views of his own is not to be wondered at. The story goes that the sovereigns forced Fonseca to yield, and that this was the offense of Columbus which could neither be forgotten nor forgiven by Fonseca, and for which severities were visited upon him and his heirs in the years to come. Irving is confident that Fonseca has escaped the condemnation which Spanish writers would willingly have put upon him, for fear of the ecclesiastical censors of the press.
[Sidenote: Council for the Indies.]
The measures which were now taken in accordance with the instructions given to Columbus, already referred to, to regulate the commerce of the Indies, with a custom house at Cadiz and a corresponding one in Española under the control of the Admiral, ripened in time into what was known as the Council for the Indies. It had been early determined (May 23) to control all emigration to the new regions, and no one was allowed to trade thither except under license from the monarchs, Columbus, or Fonseca.
[Sidenote: New fleet equipped.]
A royal order had put all ships and appurtenances in the ports of Andalusia at the demand of Fonseca and Columbus, for a reasonable compensation, and compelled all persons required for the service to embark in it on suitable pay. Two thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes, the sequestered property of banished Jews, and other resources were set apart to meet these expenses, and the treasurer was authorized to contract a loan, if necessary. To eke out the resources, this last was resorted to, and 5,000,000 maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. All the transactions relating to the procuring and dispensing of moneys had been confided to a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo; with the aid of an accountant, Juan de Soria. Everything was hurriedly gathered for the armament, for it was of the utmost importance that the preparations should move faster than the watching diplomacy.
Artillery which had been in use on shipboard for more than a century and a half was speedily amassed. The arquebuse, however, had not altogether been supplanted by the matchlock, and was yet preferred in some hands for its lightness. Military stores which had been left over from the Moorish war and were now housed in the Alhambra, at this time converted into an arsenal, were opportunely drawn upon.
[Sidenote: Beradi and Vespucius.]
The labor of an intermediary in much of this preparation fell upon Juonato Beradi, a Florentine merchant then settled in Seville, and it is interesting to know that Americus Vespucius, then a mature man of two and forty, was engaged under Beradi in this work of preparation.
[Sidenote: 1493. June 20.]
From the fact that certain horsemen and agriculturists were ordered to be in Seville on June 20, and to hold themselves in readiness to embark, it may be inferred that the sailing of some portion of the fleet may at that time have been expected at a date not much later.
[Sidenote: Isabella's interest.]
[Sidenote: Indians baptized.]
The interest of Isabella in the new expedition was almost wholly on its emotional and intellectual side. She had been greatly engrossed with the spiritual welfare of the Indians whom Columbus had taken to Barcelona. Their baptism had taken place with great state and ceremony, the King, Queen, and Prince Juan officiating as sponsors. It was intended that they should reëmbark with the new expedition. Prince Juan, however, picked out one of these Indians for his personal service, and when the fellow died, two years later, it was a source of gratification, as Herrera tells us, that at last one of his race had entered the gates of heaven! Only four of the six ever reached their native country. We know nothing of the fate of those left sick at Palos.
[Sidenote: Father Buil.]
The Pope, to further all methods for the extension of the faith, had commissioned (June 24) a Benedictine monk, Bernardo Buil (Boyle), of Catalonia, to be his apostolic vicar in the new world, and this priest was to be accompanied by eleven brothers of the order. The Queen intrusted to them the sacred vessels and vestments from her own altar. The instructions which Columbus received were to deal lovingly with the poor natives. We shall see how faithful he was to the behest.
Isabella's musings were not, however, all so piously confined. She wrote to Columbus from Segovia in August, requiring him to make provisions for bringing back to Spain specimens of the peculiar birds of the new regions, as indications of untried climates and seasons.
[Sidenote: Astronomy and navigation.]
Again, in writing to Columbus, September 5, she urged him not to rely wholly on his own great knowledge, but to take such a skillful astronomer on his voyage as Fray Antonio de Marchena,--the same whom Columbus later spoke of as being one of the two persons who had never made him a laughing-stock. Muñoz says the office of astronomer was not filled.
Dealing with the question of longitude was a matter in which there was at this time little insight, and no general agreement. Columbus, as we have seen, suspected the variation of the needle might afford the basis of a system; but he grew to apprehend, as he tells us in the narrative of his fourth voyage, that the astronomical method was the only infallible one, but whether his preference was for the opposition of planets, the occultations of stars, the changes in the moon's declination, or the comparisons of Jupiter's altitude with the lunar position,--all of which were in some form in vogue,--does not appear. The method by conveyance of time, so well known now in the use of chronometers, seems to have later been suggested by Alonso de Santa Cruz,--too late for the recognition of Columbus; but the instrumentality of water-clocks, sand-clocks, and other crude devices, like the timing of burning wicks, was too uncertain to obtain even transient sanction.
[Sidenote: Astrolabe.]
The astrolabe, for all the improvements of Behaim, was still an awkward instrument for ascertaining latitude, especially on a rolling or pitching ship, and we know that Vasco da Gama went on shore at the Cape de Verde Islands to take observations when the motion of the sea balked him on shipboard.
[Sidenote: Cross-staff and Jackstaff.]
Whether the cross-staff or Jackstaff, a seaboard implement somewhat more convenient than the astrolabe, was known to Columbus is not very clear,--probably it was not; but the navigators that soon followed him found it more manageable on rolling ships than the older instruments. It was simply a stick, along which, after one end of it was placed at the eye, a scaled crossbar was pushed until its two ends touched, the lower, the horizon, and the upper, the heavenly body whose altitude was to be taken. A scale on the stick then showed, at the point where the bar was left, the degree of latitude.
[Sidenote: Errors in latitude.]
The best of such aids, however, did not conduce to great accuracy, and the early maps, in comparison with modern, show sometimes several degrees of error in scaling from the equator. An error once committed was readily copied, and different cartographical records put in service by the professional map makers came sometimes by a process of averages to show some surprising diversities, with positive errors of considerable extent. The island of Cuba, for instance, early found place in the charts seven and eight degrees too far north, with dependent islands in equally wrong positions.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Seventeen vessels ready.]
As the preparations went on, a fleet of seventeen vessels, large and small, three of which were called transports, had, according to the best estimates, finally been put in readiness. Scillacio tells us that some of the smallest had been constructed of light draft, especially for exploring service. Horses and domestic animals of all kinds were at last gathered on board. Every kind of seed and agricultural implement, stores of commodities for barter with the Indians, and all the appurtenances of active life were accumulated. Muñoz remarks that it is evident that sugar cane, rice, and vines had not been discovered or noted by Columbus on his first voyage, or we would not have found them among the commodities provided for the second.
[Sidenote: Ojeda.]
[Sidenote: Their companies.]
In making up the company of the adventurers, there was little need of active measures to induce recruits. Many an Hidalgo and cavalier took service at their own cost. Galvano, who must have received the reports by tradition, says that such was the "desire of travel that the men were ready to leap into the sea to swim, if it had been possible, into these new found parts." Traffic, adventure, luxury, feats of arms,--all were inducements that lured one individual or another. Some there were to make names for themselves in their new fields. Such was Alonso de Ojeda, a daring youth, expert in all activities, who had served his ambition in the Moorish wars, and had been particularly favored by the Duke of Medina-Celi, the friend of Columbus.
[Sidenote: Las Casas, Ponce de Leon, La Cosa, etc.]
We find others whose names we shall again encounter. The younger brother of Columbus, Diego Colon, had come to Spain, attracted by the success of Christopher. The father and uncle of Las Casas, from whose conversations with the Admiral that historian could profit in the future, Juan Ponce de Leon, the later discoverer of Florida, Juan de la Cosa, whose map is the first we have of the New World, and Dr. Chanca, a physician of Seville, who was pensioned by the Crown, and to whom we owe one of the narratives of the voyage, were also of the company.
[Sidenote: 1,500 souls embark.]
The thousand persons to which the expedition had at first been limited became, under the pressure of eager cavaliers, nearer 1,200, and this number was eventually increased by stowaways and other hangers-on, till the number embarked was not much short of 1,500. This is Oviedo's statement. Bernaldez and Peter Martyr make the number 1,200, or thereabouts. Perhaps these were the ordinary hands, and the 300 more were officers and the like, for the statements do not render it certain how the enumerations are made. So far as we know their names, but a single companion of Columbus in his first voyage was now with him. The twenty horsemen, already mentioned are supposed to be the only mounted soldiers that embarked. Columbus says, in a letter addressed to their majesties, that "the number of colonists who desire to go thither amounts to two thousand," which would indicate that a large number were denied. The letter is undated, and may not be of a date near the sailing; if it is, it probably indicates to some degree the number of persons who were denied embarkation. As the day approached for the departure there was some uneasiness over a report of a Portuguese caravel sailing westward from Madeira, and it was proposed to send some of the fleet in advance to overtake the vessel; but after some diplomatic fence between Ferdinand and João, the disquiet ended, or at least nothing was done on either side.
At one time Columbus had hoped to embark on the 15th of August; but it was six weeks later before everything was ready.
XII. THE SECOND VOYAGE
1493-1494.
[Sidenote: The embarkation.]
The last day in port was a season of solemnity and gratulation. Coma, a Spaniard, who, if not an eyewitness, got his description from observers, thus describes the scene in a letter to Scillacio in Pavia: "The religious rites usual on such occasions were performed by the sailors; the last embraces were given; the ships were hung with brilliant cloths; streamers were wound in the rigging; and the royal standard flapped everywhere at the sterns of the vessels. The pipers and harpers held in mute astonishment the Nereids and even the Sirens with their sweet modulations. The shores reëchoed the clang of trumpets and the braying of clarions. The discharge of cannon rolled over the water. Some Venetian galleys chancing to enter the harbor joined in the jubilation, and the cheers of united nations went up with prayers for blessings on the venturing crews."
[Sidenote: 1493. September 25. The fleet sails.]
Night followed, calm or broken, restful or wearisome, as the case might be, for one or another, and when the day dawned (September 25, 1493) the note of preparation was everywhere heard. It was the same on the three great caracks, on the lesser caravels, and on the light craft, which had been especially fitted for exploration. The eager and curious mass of beings which crowded their decks were certainly a motley show. There were cavalier and priest, hidalgo and artisan, soldier and sailor. The ambitious thoughts which animated them were as various as their habits. There were those of the adventurer, with no purpose whatever but pastime, be it easy or severe. There was the greed of the speculator, counting the values of trinkets against stores of gold.
[Sidenote: Columbus's character.]
There was the brooding of the administrators, with unsolved problems of new communities in their heads. There were ears that already caught the songs of salvation from native throats. There was Columbus himself, combining all ambitions in one, looking around this harbor of Cadiz studded with his lordly fleet, spreading its creaking sails, lifting its dripping anchors. It was his to contrast it with the scene at Palos a little over a year before. This needy Genoese vested with the viceroyalty of a new world was more of an adventurer than any. He was a speculator who overstepped them all in audacious visions and golden expectancies. He was an administrator over a new government, untried and undivined. To his ears the hymns of the Church soared with a militant warning, dooming the heathen of the Indies, and appalling the Moslem hordes that imperiled the Holy Sepulchre.
[Sidenote: 1493. October 1. Canaries.]
Under the eye of this one commanding spirit, the vessels fell into a common course, and were wafted out upon the great ocean under the lead of the escorting galleys of the Venetians. The responsibility of the captain-general of the great armament had begun. He had been instructed to steer widely clear of the Portuguese coast, and he bore away in the lead directly to the southwest. On the seventh day (October 1) they reached the Gran Canaria, where they tarried to repair a leaky ship. On the 5th they anchored at Gomera. Two days were required here to complete some parts of their equipment, for the islands had already become the centre of great industries and produced largely. "They have enterprising merchants who carry their commerce to many shores," wrote Coma to Scillacio.
There were wood and water to be taken on board. A variety of domestic animals, calves, goats, sheep, and swine; some fowls, and the seed of many orchard and garden fruits, oranges, lemons, melons, and the like, were gathered from the inhabitants and stowed away in the remaining spaces of the ships.
[Sidenote: 1493. October 13. At sea.]
On the 7th the fleet sailed, but it was not till the 13th that the gentle winds had taken them beyond Ferro and the unbounded sea was about the great Admiral. He bore away much more southerly than in his first voyage, so as to strike, if he could, the islands that were so constantly spoken of, the previous year, as lying southeasterly from Española.
[Sidenote: St. Elmo's light.]
His ultimate port was, of course, the harbor of La Navidad, and he had issued sealed instructions to all his commanders, to guide any one who should part company with the fleet. The winds were favorable, but the dull sailing of the Admiral's ship restrained the rest. In ten days they had overshot the longitude of the Sargossa Sea without seeing it, leaving its floating weeds to the north. In a few days more they experienced heavy tempests. They gathered confidence from an old belief, when they saw St. Elmo waving his lambent flames about the upper rigging, while they greeted his presence with their prayers and songs.
"The fact is certain," says Coma, "that two lights shone through the darkness of the night on the topmast of the Admiral's ship. Forthwith the tempest began to abate, the sea to remit its fury, the waves their violence, and the surface of the waves became as smooth as polished marble." This sudden gale of four hours' duration came on St. Simon's eve.
The same authority represents that the protracted voyage had caused their water to run low, for the Admiral, confident of his nearness to land, and partly to reassure the timid, had caused it to be served unstintingly. "You might compare him to Moses," adds Coma, "encouraging the thirsty armies of the Israelites in the dry wastes of the wilderness."
[Sidenote: 1493. November 2.]
[Sidenote: November 3.]
[Sidenote: Dominica Island.]
[Sidenote: Marigalante.]
[Sidenote: 1493. November 3. Guadaloupe.]
On Saturday, November 2, the leaders compared reckonings. Some thought they had come 780 leagues from Ferro; others, 800. There were anxiety and weariness on board. The constant fatigue of bailing out the leaky ships had had its disheartening effect. Columbus, with a practiced eye, saw signs of land in the color of the water and the shifting winds, and he signaled every vessel to take in sail. It was a waiting night. The first light of Sunday glinted on the top of a lofty mountain ahead, descried by a watch at the Admiral's masthead. As the island was approached, the Admiral named it, in remembrance of the holy day, Dominica. The usual service with the Salve Regina was chanted throughout the fleet, which moved on steadily, bringing island after island into view. Columbus could find no good anchorage at Dominica, and leaving one vessel to continue the search, he passed on to another island, which he named from his ship, Marigalante. Here he landed, set up the royal banner in token of possession of the group,--for he had seen six islands,--and sought for inhabitants. He could find none, nor any signs of occupation. There was nothing but a tangle of wood in every direction, a sparkling mass of leafage, trembling in luxurious beauty and giving off odors of spice. Some of the men tasted an unknown fruit, and suffered an immediate inflammation about the face, which it required remedies to assuage. The next morning Columbus was attracted by the lofty volcanic peak of another island, and, sailing up to it, he could see cascades on the sides of this eminence.
"Among those who viewed this marvelous phenomena at a distance from the ships," says Coma, "it was at first a subject of dispute whether it were light reflected from masses of compact snow, or the broad surface of a smooth-worn road. At last the opinion prevailed that it was a vast river."
[Sidenote: November 4.]
Columbus remembered that he had promised the monks of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, in Estremadura, to place some token of them in this strange world, and so he gave this island the name of Guadaloupe. Landing the next day, a week of wonders followed.
[Sidenote: Cannibals.]
The exploring parties found the first village abandoned; but this had been done so hastily that some young children had been left behind. These they decked with hawks' bells, to win their returning parents. One place showed a public square surrounded by rectangular houses, made of logs and intertwined branches, and thatched with palms. They went through the houses and noted what they saw. They observed at the entrance of one some serpents carved in wood. They found netted hammocks, beside calabashes, pottery, and even skulls used for utensils of household service. They discovered cloth made of cotton; bows and bone-tipped arrows, said sometimes to be pointed with human shin-bones; domesticated fowl very like geese; tame parrots; and pineapples, whose flavor enchanted them. They found what might possibly be relics of Europe, washed hither by the equatorial currents as they set from the African coasts,--an iron pot, as they thought it (we know this from the Historie), and the stern-timber of a vessel, which they could have less easily mistaken. They found something to horrify them in human bones, the remains of a feast, as they were ready enough to believe, for they were seeking confirmation of the stories of cannibals which Columbus had heard on his first voyage. They learned that boys were fattened like capons.
The next day they captured a youth and some women, but the men eluded them. Columbus was now fully convinced that he had at last discovered the cannibals, and when it was found that one of his captains and eight men had not returned to their ship, he was under great apprehensions. He sent exploring parties into the woods. They hallooed and fired their arquebuses, but to no avail. As they threaded their way through the thickets, they came upon some villages, but the inhabitants fled, leaving their meals half cooked; and they were convinced they saw human flesh on the spit and in the pots. While this party was absent, some women belonging to the neighboring islands, captives of this savage people, came off to the ships and sought protection. Columbus decked them with rings and bells, and forced them ashore, while they begged to remain. The islanders stripped off their ornaments, and allowed them to return for more. These women said that the chief of the island and most of the warriors were absent on a predatory expedition.
[Sidenote: Ojeda's expedition.]
The party searching for the lost men returned without success, when Alonso de Ojeda offered to lead forty men into the interior for a more thorough search. This party was as unsuccessful as the other. Ojeda reported he had crossed twenty-six streams in going inland, and that the country was found everywhere abounding in odorous trees, strange and delicious fruits, and brilliant birds.
While this second party was gone, the crews took aboard a supply of water, and on Ojeda's return Columbus resolved to proceed, and was on the point of sailing, when the absent men appeared on the shore and signaled to be taken off. They had got lost in a tangled and pathless forest, and all efforts to climb high enough in trees to see the stars and determine their course had been hopeless. Finally striking the sea, they had followed the shore till they opportunely espied the fleet. They brought with them some women and boys, but reported they had seen no men.
[Sidenote: Cannibals.]
Among the accounts of these early experiences of the Spaniards with the native people, the story of cannibalism is a constant theme. To circulate such stories enhanced the wonder with which Europe was to be impressed.
[Sidenote: Caribs.]
The cruelty of the custom was not altogether unwelcome to warrant a retaliatory mercilessness. Historians have not wholly decided that this is enough to account for the most positive statements about man-eating tribes. Fears and prejudices might do much to raise such a belief, or at least to magnify the habits. Irving remarks that the preservation of parts of the human body, among the natives of Española, was looked upon as a votive service to ancestors, and it may have needed only prejudice to convert such a custom into cannibalism when found with the Caribs. The adventurousness of the nature of this fierce people and their wanderings in wars naturally served to sharpen their intellects beyond the passive unobservance of the pacific tribes on which they preyed; so they became more readily, for this reason, the possessors of any passion or vice that the European instinct craved to fasten somewhere upon a strange people.
[Sidenote: Caribs and Lucayans.]
The contiguity of these two races, the fierce Carib and the timid tribes of the more northern islands, has long puzzled the ethnologist. Irving indulged in some rambling notions of the origin of the Carib, derived from observations of the early students of the obscure relations of the American peoples. Larger inquiry and more scientific observation has since Irving's time been given to the subject, still without bringing the question to recognizable bearings. The craniology of the Caribs is scantily known, and there is much yet to be divulged. The race in its purity has long been extinct. Lucien de Rosny, in an anthropological study of the Antilles published by the French Society of Ethnology in 1886, has amassed considerable data for future deductions. It is a question with some modern examiners if the distinction between these insular peoples was not one of accident and surroundings rather than of blood.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1493. November 10. Columbus leaves Guadaloupe.]
When Columbus sailed from Guadaloupe on November 10, he steered northwest for Española, though his captives told him that the mainland lay to the south. He passed various islands, but did not cast anchor till the 14th, when he reached the island named by him Santa Cruz, and found it still a region of Caribs. It was here the Spaniards had their first fight with this fierce people in trying to capture a canoe filled with them. The white men rammed and overturned the hollowed log; but the Indians fought in the water so courageously that some of the Spanish bucklers were pierced with the native poisoned arrows, and one of the Spaniards, later, died of such a wound inflicted by one of the savage women. All the Caribs, however, were finally captured and placed in irons on board ship. One was so badly wounded that recovery was not thought possible, and he was thrown overboard. The fellow struck for the shore, and was killed by the Spanish arrows. The accounts describe their ferocious aspect, their coarse hair, their eyes circled with red paint, and the muscular parts of their limbs artificially extended by tight bands below and above.
[Sidenote: Porto Rico.]
Proceeding thence and passing a group of wild and craggy islets, which he named after St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins, Columbus at last reached the island now called Porto Rico, which his captives pointed out to him as their home and the usual field of the Carib incursions. The island struck the strangers by its size, its beautiful woods and many harbors, in one of which, at its west end, they finally anchored. There was a village close by, which, by their accounts, was trim, and not without some pretensions to skill in laying out, with its seaside terraces. The inhabitants, however, had fled. Two days later, the fleet weighed anchor and steered for La Navidad.
[Sidenote: 1493. November 22. Española.]
It was the 22d of November when the explorers made a level shore, which they later discovered to be the eastern end of Española. They passed gently along the northern coast, and at an attractive spot sent a boat ashore with the body of the Biscayan sailor who had died of the poisoned arrow, while two of the light caravels hovered near the beach to protect the burying party. Coming to the spot where Columbus had had his armed conflict with the natives the year before, and where one of the Indians who had been baptized at Barcelona was taken, this fellow, loaded with presents and decked in person, was sent on shore for the influence he might exert on his people. This supposable neophyte does not again appear in history. Only one of these native converts now remained, and the accounts say that he lived faithfully with the Spaniards. Five of the seven who embarked had died on the voyage.
[Sidenote: 1493. November 25.]
[Sidenote: 1493. November 27. Off La Navidad.]
On the 25th, while the fleet was at anchor at Monte Christo, where Columbus had found gold in the river during his first voyage, the sailors discovered some decomposed bodies, one of them showing a beard, which raised apprehensions of the fate of the men left at La Navidad. The neighboring natives came aboard for traffic with so much readiness, however, that it did much to allay suspicion. It was the 27th when, after dark, Columbus cast anchor opposite the fort, about a league from land. It was too late to see anything more than the outline of the hills. Expecting a response from the fort, he fired two cannons; but there was no sound except the echoes. The Spaniards looked in vain for lights on the shore. The darkness was mysterious and painful. Before midnight a canoe was heard approaching, and a native twice asked for the Admiral. A boat was lowered from one of the vessels, and towed the canoe to the flag-ship. The natives were not willing to board her till Columbus himself appeared at the waist, and by the light of a lantern revealed his countenance to them. This reassured them. Their leader brought presents--some accounts say ewers of gold, others say masks ornamented with gold--from the cacique, Guacanagari, whose friendly assistance had been counted upon so much to befriend the little garrison at La Navidad.
[Sidenote: Its garrison killed.]
These formalities over, Columbus inquired for Diego de Arana and his men. The young Lucayan, now Columbus's only interpreter, did the best he could with a dialect not his own to make a connected story out of the replies, which was in effect that sickness and dissension, together with the withdrawal of some to other parts of the island, had reduced the ranks of the garrison, when the fort as well as the neighboring village of Guacanagari was suddenly attacked by a mountain chieftain, Caonabo, who burned both fort and village. Those of the Spaniards who were not driven into the sea to perish had been put to death. In this fight the friendly cacique had been wounded. The visitors said that this chieftain's hurt had prevented his coming with them to greet the Admiral; but that he would come in the morning. Coma, in his account of this midnight interview, is not so explicit, and leaves the reader to infer that Columbus did not get quite so clear an apprehension of the fate of his colony.
When the dawn came, the harbor appeared desolate. Not a canoe was seen where so many sped about in the previous year. A boat was sent ashore, and found every sign that the fort had been sacked as well as destroyed. Fragments of clothing and bits of merchandise were scattered amid its blackened ruins. There were Indians lurking behind distant trees, but no one approached, and as the cacique had not kept the word which he had sent of coming himself in the morning, suspicions began to arise that the story of its destruction had not been honestly given. The new-comers passed a disturbed night with increasing mistrust, and the next morning Columbus landed and saw all for himself. He traveled farther away from the shore than those who landed on the preceding day, and gained some confirmation of the story in finding the village of the cacique a mass of blackened ruins. Cannon were again discharged, in the hopes that their reverberating echoes might reach the ears of those who were said to have abandoned the fort before the massacre. The well and ditch were cleaned out to see if any treasure had been cast into it, as Columbus had directed in case of disaster. Nothing was found, and this seemed to confirm the tale of the suddenness of the attack. Columbus and his men went still farther inland to a village; but its inmates had hurriedly fled, so that many articles of European make, stockings and a Moorish robe among them, had been left behind, spoils doubtless of the fort. Returning nearer the fort, they discovered the bodies of eleven men buried, with the grass growing above them, and enough remained of their clothing to show they were Europeans. This is Dr. Chanca's statement, who says the men had not been dead two months. Coma says that the bodies were unburied, and had lain for nearly three months in the open air; and that they were now given Christian burial.
[Sidenote: Guacanagari and Caonabo.]
Later in the day, a few of the natives were lured by friendly signs to come near enough to talk with the Lucayan interpreter. The story in much of its details was gradually drawn out, and Columbus finally possessed himself of a pretty clear conception of the course of the disastrous events. It was a tale of cruelty, avarice, and sensuality towards the natives on the part of the Spaniards, and of jealousy and brawls among themselves. No word of their governor had been sufficient to restrain their outbursts of passionate encounter, and no sense of insecurity could deter them from the most foolhardy risks while away from the fort's protection. Those who had been appointed to succeed Arana, if there were an occasion, revolted against him, and, being unsuccessful in overthrowing him, they went off with their adherents in search of the mines of Cibao. This carried them beyond the protection of Guacanagari, and into the territory of his enemy, Caonabo, a wandering Carib who had offered himself to the interior natives as their chieftain, and who had acquired a great ascendency in the island. This leader, who had learned of the dissensions among the Spaniards, was no sooner informed of the coming of these renegades within his reach than he caused them to be seized and killed. This emboldened him to join forces with another cacique, a neighbor of Guacanagari, and to attempt to drive the Spaniards from the island, since they had become a standing menace to his power, as he reasoned. The confederates marched stealthily, and stole into the vicinity of the fort in the night. Arana had but ten men within the stockade, and they kept no watch. Other Spaniards were quartered in the adjacent village. The onset was sudden and effective, and the dismal ruins of the fort and village were thought to confirm the story.
[Sidenote: Doña Catalina.]
Other confirmations followed. A caravel was sent to explore easterly, and was soon boarded by two Indians from the shore, who invited the captain, Maldonado, to visit the cacique, who lay ill at a neighboring village. The captain went, and found Guacanagari laid up with a bandaged leg. The savage told a story which agreed with the one just related, and on its being repeated to Columbus, the Admiral himself, with an imposing train, went to see the cacique. Guacanagari seemed anxious, in repeating the story, to convince the Admiral of his own loyalty to the Spaniards, and pointed to his wounds and to those of some of his people as proof. There was the usual interchange of presents, hawks' bells for gold, and similar reckonings. Before leaving, Columbus asked to have his surgeon examine the wound, which the cacique said had been occasioned by a stone striking the leg. To get more light, the chieftain went out-of-doors, leaning upon the Admiral's arm. When the bandage was removed, there was no external sign of hurt; but the cacique winced if the flesh was touched. Father Boyle, who was in the Admiral's train, thought the wound a pretense, and the story fabricated to conceal the perfidy of the cacique, and urged Columbus to make an instant example of the traitor. The Admiral was not so confident as the priest, and at all events he thought a course of pacification and procrastination was the better policy. The interview did not end, according to Coma, without some strange manifestations on the part of the cacique, which led the Spaniards for a moment to fear that a trial of arms was to come. The chief was not indisposed to try his legs enough to return with the Admiral to his ship that very evening. Here he saw the Carib prisoners, and the accounts tell us how he shuddered at the sight of them. He wondered at the horses and other strange creatures which were shown to him. Coma tells us that the Indians thought that the horses were fed on human flesh. The women who had been rescued from the Caribs attracted, perhaps, even more the attention of the savage, and particularly a lofty creature among them, whom the Spaniards had named Doña Catalina. Guacanagari was observed to talk with her more confidingly than he did with the others.
Father Boyle urged upon the Admiral that a duress similar to that of Catalina was none too good for the perfidious cacique, as the priest persisted in calling the savage, but Columbus hesitated. There was, however, little left of that mutual confidence which had characterized the relations of the Admiral and the chieftain during the trying days of the shipwreck, the year before. When the Admiral offered to hang a cross on the neck of his visitor, and the cacique understood it to be the Christian emblem, he shrank from the visible contact of a faith of which the past months had revealed its character. With this manifestation they parted, and the cacique was set ashore. Coma seems to unite the incidents of this interview on the ship with those of the meeting ashore.
[Sidenote: The cacique and Catalina.]
There comes in here, according to the received accounts, a little passage of Indian intrigue and gallantry. A messenger appeared the next day to inquire when the Admiral sailed, and later another to barter gold. This last held some talk with the Indian women, and particularly with Catalina. About midnight a light appeared on the shore, and Catalina and her companions, while the ship's company, except a watch, were sleeping, let themselves down the vessel's side, and struck out for the shore. The watch discovered the escape, but not in time to prevent the women having a considerable start. Boats pursued, but the swimmers touched the beach first. Four of them, however, were caught, but Catalina and the others escaped.
When, the next morning, Columbus sent a demand for the fugitives, it was found that Guacanagari had moved his household and all his effects into the interior of the island. The story got its fitting climax in the suspicious minds of the Spaniards, when they supposed that the fugitive beauty was with him. Here was only a fresh instance of the savage's perfidy.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Columbus abandons La Navidad.]
Columbus had before this made up his mind that the vicinity of his hapless fort was not a good site for the town which he intended to build. The ground was low, moist, and unhealthy. There were no building stones near at hand. There was need of haste in a decision. The men were weary of their confinement on shipboard. The horses and other animals suffered from a like restraint. Accordingly expeditions were sent to explore the coast, and it soon became evident that they must move beyond the limits of Guacanagari's territory, if they would find the conditions demanded. Melchior Maldonado, in command of one of these expeditions, had gone eastward until he coasted the country of another cacique. This chief at first showed hostility, but was won at last by amicable signs. From him they learned that Guacanagari had gone to the mountains. From another they got the story of the massacre of the fort, almost entirely accordant with what they had already discovered.
[Sidenote: Isabella founded.]
[Sidenote: Cibao gold mines.]
Not one of the reports from these minor explorations was satisfactory, and December 7, the entire fleet weighed anchor to proceed farther east. Stress of weather caused them to put into a harbor, which on examination seemed favorable for their building project. The roadstead was wide. A rocky point offered a site for a citadel. There were two rivers winding close by in an attractive country, and capable of running mills. Nature, as they saw it, was variegated and alluring. Flowers and fruits were in abundance. "Garden seeds came up in five days after they were sown," says Coma of their trial of the soil, "and the gardens were speedily clothed in green, producing plentifully onions and pumpkins, radishes and beets." "Vegetables," wrote Dr. Chanca, "attain a more luxuriant growth here in eight days than they would in Spain in twenty." It was also learned that the gold mines of the Cibao mountains were inland from the spot, at no great distance.
The disembarkation began. Days of busy exertion followed. Horses, livestock, provisions, munitions, and the varied merchandise were the centre of a lively scene about their encampment. This they established near a sheet of water. Artificers, herdsmen, cavaliers, priests, laborers, and placemen made up the motley groups which were seen on all sides.
[Sidenote: Sickness in the colony.]
In later years, the Spaniards regulated all the formalities and prescribed with precision the proceedings in the laying out of towns in the New World, but Columbus had no such directions. The planting of a settlement was a novel and untried method. It was a natural thought to commemorate in the new Christian city the great patroness of his undertaking, and the settlement bore from the first the name of Isabella. His engineers laid out square and street. A site for the church was marked, another for a public storehouse, another for the house of the Admiral,--all of stone. The ruins of these three buildings are the most conspicuous relics in the present solitary waste. The great mass of tenements, which were stretched along the streets back from the public square, where the main edifice stood, were as hastily run up as possible, to cover in the colony. It was time enough for solider structures later to take their places. Parties were occupied in clearing fields and setting out orchards. There were landing piers to be made at the shore. So everybody tasked bodily strength in rival endeavors. The natural results followed in so incongruous a crowd. Those not accustomed to labor broke down from its hardships. The seekers for pleasure, not finding it in the common toil, rushed into excesses, and imperiled all. The little lake, so attractive to the inexperienced, was soon, with its night vapors, the source of disease. Few knew how to protect themselves from the insidious malaria. Discomfort induced discouragement, and the mental firmness so necessary in facing strange and exacting circumstances gave way.
[Sidenote: Columbus sick.]
Forebodings added greater energy to the disease. It was not long before the colony was a camp of hospitals, about one half the people being incapacitated for labor. In the midst of all this downheartedness Columbus himself succumbed, and for some weeks was unable to direct the trying state of affairs, except as he could do so in the intervals of his lassitude.
But as the weeks went on a better condition was apparent. Work took a more steady aspect. The ships had discharged their burdens. They lay ready for the return voyage.
[Sidenote: Sends Ojeda to seek the Cibao mines.]
Columbus had depended on the exertions of the little colony at La Navidad to amass a store of gold and other precious commodities with which to laden the returning vessels. He knew the disappointment which would arise if they should carry little else than the dismal tale of disaster. Nothing lay upon his mind more weightily than this mortification and misfortune. There was nothing to be done but to seek the mines of Cibao, for the chance of sending more encouraging reports. Gold had indeed been brought in to the settlement, but only scantily; and its quantity was not suited to make real the gorgeous dreams of the East with which Spain was too familiar.
So an expedition to Cibao was organized, and Ojeda was placed in command. The force assigned to him was but fifteen men in all, but each was well armed and courageous. They expected perils, for they had to invade the territory of Caonabo, the destroyer of La Navidad.
[Sidenote: 1494. January. First mass.]
The march began early in January, 1494; perhaps just after they had celebrated their first solemn mass in a temporary chapel on January 6. For two days their progress was slow and toilsome, through forests without a sign of human life, for the savage denizens had moved back from the vicinity of the Spaniards. The men encamped, the second night, on the top of a mountain, and when the dawn broke they looked down on its further side over a broad valley, with its scattered villages. They boldly descended, and met nothing but hospitality from the villagers. Their course now lay towards and up the opposite slope of the valley. They pushed on without an obstacle.
[Sidenote: Gold found.]
[Sidenote: Gorvalan's expedition.]
The rude inhabitants of the mountains were as friendly as those of the valley. They did not see nor did they hear anything of the great Caonabo. Every stream they passed glittered with particles of gold in its sand. The natives had an expert way of separating the metal, and the Spaniards flattered them for their skill. Occasionally a nugget was found. Ojeda picked up a lump which weighed nine ounces, and Peter Martyr looked upon it wonderingly when it reached Spain. If all this was found on the surface, what must be the wealth in the bowels of these astounding mountains? The obvious answer was what Ojeda hastened back to make to Columbus. A similar story was got from a young cavalier, Gorvalan, who had been dispatched in another direction with another force. There was in all this the foundation of miracles for the glib tongue and lively imagination. One of these exuberant stories reached Coma, and Scillacio makes him say that "the most splendid thing of all (which I should be ashamed to commit to writing, if I had not received it from a trustworthy source) is that, a rock adjacent to a mountain being struck with a club, a large quantity of gold burst out, and particles of gold of indescribable brightness glittered all around the spot. Ojeda was loaded down by means of this outburst." It was stories like these which prepared the way for the future reaction in Spain.
[Sidenote: Columbus writes to the sovereigns.]
There was material now to give spirit to the dispatch to his sovereigns, and Columbus sat down to write it. It has come down to us, and is printed in Navarrete's collection, just as it was perused by the King and Queen, who entered in the margins their comments and orders. Columbus refers at the beginning to letters already written to their Highnesses, and mentions others addressed to Father Buele and to the treasurer, but they are not known. Then, speaking of the expeditions of Ojeda and Gorvalan, he begs the sovereigns to satisfy themselves of the hopeful prospects for gold by questioning Gorvalan, who was to return with the ships. He advises their Highnesses to return thanks to God for all this. Those personages write in the margin, "Their Highnesses return thanks to God!" He then explains his embarrassment from the sickness of his men,--the "greater part of all," as he adds,--and says that the Indians are very familiar, rambling about the settlement both day and night, necessitating a constant watch. As he makes excuses and gives his reasons for not doing this or that, the compliant monarchs as constantly write against the paragraphs, "He has done well." Columbus says he is building stone bulwarks for defense, and when this is done he shall provide for accumulating gold. "Exactly as should be done," chime in the monarchs. He then asks for fresh provisions to be sent to him, and tells how much they have done in planting. "Fonseca has been ordered to send further seeds," is the comment. He complains that the wine casks had been badly coopered at Seville, and that the wine had all run out, so that wine was their prime necessity. He urges that calves, heifers, asses, working mares, be sent to them; and that above all, to prevent discouragement, the supplies should arrive at Isabella by May, and that particularly medicines should come, as their stock was exhausted. He then refers to the cannibals whom he would send back, and asks that they may be made acquainted with the true faith and taught the Spanish tongue. "His suggestions are good," is the marginal royal comment.
[Sidenote: Columbus proposes a trade in slaves.]
Now comes the vital point of his dispatch. We want cattle, he says. They can be paid for in Carib slaves. Let yearly caravels conduct this trade. It will be easy, with the boats which are building, to capture a plenty of these savages. Duties can be levied on these importations of slaves. On this point he urges a reply. The monarchs see the fatality of the step, and, according to the marginal comment, suspend judgment and ask the Admiral's further thoughts. "A more distinct suggestion for the establishment of a slave trade was never proposed," is the modern comment of Arthur Helps. Columbus then adds that he has bought for the use of the colony certain of the vessels which brought them out, and these would be retained at Isabella, and used in making further discoveries. The comment is that Fonseca will pay the owners. He then intimates that more care should be exercised in the selection of placemen sent to the colony, for the enterprise had suffered already from unfitness in such matters. The monarchs promise amends. He complains that the Granada lancemen, who offered themselves in Seville mounted on fine horses, had subsequently exchanged these animals to their own personal advantage for inferior horses. He says the footmen made similar exchanges to fill their own pockets.
[Sidenote: 1404. January 30. Signs his letter.]
[Sidenote: Gold, the Christians' God!]
[Sidenote: 1494. February 2. The fleet returns to Spain.]
[Sidenote: Chanca's narrative.]
So, dating this memorial on January 30, 1494, the man who was ambitious to become the first slave-driver of the New World laid down his quill, praising God, as he asked his sovereigns to do. The poor creatures who wandered in and about among the cabins of the Spaniards were fast forming their own comments, which were quite as astute as those of the Admiral's royal masters. Holding up a piece of gold, the natives learned to say,--and Columbus had given them their first lesson in such philosophy,--"Behold the Christians' God!" Benzoni, the first traveler who came among them with his eyes open, and daring to record the truth, heard them say this. Intrusting his memorial to Antonio de Torres, and putting him in command of the twelve ships that were to return to Spain, Columbus saw the fleet sail away on February 2, 1494. There would seem to have been committed to some one on the ships two other accounts of the results of this second voyage up to this time, which have come down to us. One of these is a narrative by Dr. Chanca, the physician of the colony, whom Columbus, in his memorial to the monarchs, credits with doing good service in his profession at a sacrifice of the larger emoluments which the practice of it had brought to him in Seville. The narrative of Chanca had been sent by him to the cathedral chapter of Seville. The original is thought to be lost; but Navarrete used a transcript which belonged to a collection formed by Father Antonio de Aspa, a monk of the monastery of the Mejorada, where Columbus is known to have deposited some of his papers. Major has given us an English translation of it in his Select Letters of Columbus. Major's text will also be found in the late James Lenox's English version of the other account, which he gave to scholars in 1859.
[Sidenote: Coma's narrative.]
There is a curious misconception in this last document, which represents that Columbus had reached these new regions by the African route of the Portuguese,--a confusion doubtless arising from the imperfect knowledge which the Italian translator, Nicholas Scillacio, had of the current geographical developments. A Spaniard, Guglielmo Coma, seems to have written about the new discoveries in some letters, apparently revived in some way from somebody's personal observation, which Scillacio put into a Latin dress, and published at Pavia, or possibly at Pisa. This little tract is of the utmost rarity, and Mr. Lenox, considering the suggestion of Ronchini, that the blunder of Scillacio may have caused the destruction of the edition, replies by calling attention to the fact that it is scarcely rarer than many other of the contemporary tracts of Columbus's voyage, about which there exists no such reason.
[Sidenote: Verde's letters.]
We get also some reports by Torres himself on the affairs of the colony in various letters of a Florentine merchant, Simone Verde, to whom he had communicated them. These letters have been recently (1875) found in the archives of Florence, and have been made better known still later by Harrisse.
XIII. THE SECOND VOYAGE, CONTINUED
1494.
[Sidenote: Life in Isabella.]
The departure of the fleet made conspicuous at last a threatening faction of those whose terms of service had prevented their taking passage in the ships. This organized discontent was the natural result of a depressing feeling that all the dreams of ease and plenty which had sustained them in their embarkation were but delusions. Life in Isabella had made many of them painfully conscious of the lack of that success and comfort which had been counted upon. The failure of what in these later days is known as the commissariat was not surprising. With all our modern experience in fitting out great expeditions, we know how often the fate of such enterprises is put in jeopardy by rascally contractors. Their arts, however, are not new ones. Fonseca was not so wary, Columbus was not so exacting, that such arts could not be practiced in Seville, as to-day in London and New York. This jobbery, added to the scant experience of honest endeavor, inevitably brought misfortune and suffering through spoiled provisions and wasted supplies.
[Sidenote: Mutinous factions.]
The faction, taking advantage of this condition, had two persons for leaders, whose official position gave the body a vantage-ground. Bernal Diaz de Pisa was the comptroller of the colony, and his office permitted him to have an oversight of the Admiral's accounts. It is said that before this time he had put himself in antagonism to authority by questioning some of the doings of the Admiral. He began now to talk to the people of the Admiral's deceptive and exaggerating descriptions intended for effect in Spain, and no doubt represented them to be at least as false as they were. Diaz drew pictures that produced a prevailing gloom beyond what the facts warranted, for deceit is a game of varying extremes.
[Sidenote: Their schemes discovered.]
He was helped on by the assayer of the colony, Fermin Cado, who spoke as an authority on the poor quality of the gold, and on the Indian habit of amassing it in their families, so that the moderate extent of it which the natives had offered was not the accretions of a day, but the result of the labor of generations. With leaders acting in concert, it had been planned to seize the remaining ships, and to return to Spain. This done, the mutineers expected to justify their conduct by charges against the Admiral, and a statement of them had already been drawn up by Bernal Diaz. The mutiny, however, was discovered, and Columbus had the first of his many experiences in suppressing a revolt. Bernal Diaz was imprisoned on one of the ships, and was carried to Spain for trial. Other leaders were punished in one way and another. To prevent the chances of success in future schemes of revolt, all munitions and implements of war were placed together in one of the ships, under a supervision which Columbus thought he could trust.
The prompt action of the Admiral had not been taken without some question of his authority, or at least it was held that he had been injudicious in the exercise of it. The event left a rankling passion among many of the colonists against what was called Columbus's vindictiveness and presumptuous zeal. With it all was the feeling that a foreigner was oppressing them, and was weaving about them the meshes of his arbitrary ambition.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Columbus goes to the gold mines.]
[Sidenote: Diego Colon.]
Columbus now determined to go himself to the gold regions of the interior. He arranged that Diego, his brother,--another foreigner!--should have the command in his absence. Las Casas pictures for us this younger of the Colombos, and calls him gentle, unobtrusive, and kindly. He allows to him a priest's devotion, but does not consider him quite worldly enough in his dealings with men to secure himself against ungenerous wiles.
[Sidenote: 1494. March 12.]
It was the 12th of March when Columbus set out on his march. He conducted a military contingent of about 400 well-armed men, including what lancers he could mount. In his train followed an array of workmen, miners, artificers, and porters, with their burdens of merchandise and implements. A mass of the natives hovered about the procession.
[Sidenote: Columbus makes a road.]
[Sidenote: The Vega Real.]
Their progress was as martial as it could be made. Banners were flaunted. Drums and trumpets were sounded. Their armor was made to glisten. Crossing the low land, they came to a defile in the mountain. There was nothing before them but a tortuous native trail winding upward among the rocks and through tangled forest. It was ill suited for the passage of a heavily burdened force. Some of the younger cavaliers sprang to the front, and gathering around them woodmen and pioneers, they opened the way; and thus a road was constructed through the pass, the first made in the New World. This work of the proud cavaliers was called El puerto de los Hidalgos. The summit of the mountain afforded afresh the grateful view of the luxuriant valley which had delighted Ojeda,--royally rich as it was in every aspect, and deserving the name which Columbus now gave it of the Vega Real.
[Sidenote: Erects a cross.]
Here, on the summit of Santo Cerro, the tradition of the island goes that Columbus caused that cross to be erected which the traveler to-day looks upon in one of the side chapels of the cathedral at Santo Domingo. It stood long enough to perform many miracles, as the believers tell us, and was miraculously saved in an earthquake. De Lorgues does not dare to connect the actual erection with the holy trophy of the cathedral. Descending to the lowlands, the little army and its followers attracted the notice of the amazed natives by clangor and parade. This display was made more astounding whenever the horses were set to prancing, as they approached and passed a native hamlet. Las Casas tells us that the first horseman who dismounted was thought by the natives to have parceled out a single creature into convenient parts. The Indians, timid at first, were enticed by a show of trinkets, and played upon by the interpreters. Thus they gradually were won over to repay all kindnesses with food and drink, while they rendered many other kindly services. The army came to a large stream, and Columbus called it the River of Reeds. It was the same which, the year before, knowing it only where it emptied into the sea, he had called the River of Gold, because he had been struck with the shining particles which he found among its sands. Here they encamped. The men bathed. They found everything about them like the dales of Paradise, if we may believe their rehearsals. The landscape was very different from that which Bernal Diaz was to tell of, if only once he got the ears of the Court in Seville.
[Sidenote: Cibao mountains.]
The river was so wide and deep that the men could not ford it, so they made rafts to take over everything but the horses. These swam the current. Then the force passed on, but was confronted at last by the rugged slopes of the Cibao mountains. The soldiers clambered up the defile painfully and slowly. The pioneers had done what they could to smooth the way, but the ascent was wearying. They could occasionally turn from their toil to look back over this luxuriant valley which they were leaving, and lose their vision in its vast extent. Las Casas describes it as eighty leagues one way, and twenty or thirty the other.
[Sidenote: Fort St. Thomas.]
It was a scene of bewildering beauty that they left behind; it was one of sterile heights, scraggy pines, and rocky precipices which they entered. The leaders computed that they were eighteen leagues from Isabella, and as Columbus thought he saw signs of gold, amber, lapis lazuli, copper, and one knows not what else of wealth, all about him, he was content to establish his fortified position hereabouts, without pushing farther. He looked around, and found at the foot of one of the declivities of the interior of this mountainous region a fertile plain, with a running river, gurgling over beds of jasper and marble, and in the midst of it a little eminence, which he could easily fortify, as the river nearly surrounded it like a natural ditch. Here he built his fort. Recent travelers say that an overgrowth of trees now covers traces of its foundations. The fortress was, as he believed, so near the gold that one could see it with his eyes and touch it with his hands, and so, as Las Casas tells us, he named it St. Thomas.
The Indians had already learned to recognize the Christian's god. They found the golden deity in bits in the streams. They took the idol tenderly to his militant people. For their part, the poor natives much preferred rings and hawks' bells, and so a basis of traffic was easily found. In this way Columbus got some gold, but he more readily got stories of other spots, whither the natives pointed vaguely, where nuggets, which would dwarf all these bits, could be found. Columbus began to wonder why he never reached the best places.
[Sidenote: Country examined.]
[Sidenote: Columbus returns to Isabella.]
The Spaniards soon got to know the region better. Juan de Luxan, who had been sent out with a party to see what he could find, reported that the region was mountainous and in its upper parts sterile, to be sure, but that there were delicious valleys, and plenty of land to cultivate, and pasturing enough for herds. When he came back with these reports, the men put a good deal of heart in the work which they were bestowing on the citadel of St. Thomas, so that it was soon done. Pedro Margarite was placed in command with fifty-six men, and then Columbus started to return to Isabella.
[Sidenote: Natives of the valley.]
When the Admiral reached the valley, he met a train of supplies going forward to St. Thomas, and as there were difficulties of fording and other obstacles, he spent some time in examining the country and marking out lines of communication. This brought him into contact with the villages of the valley, and he grew better informed of the kind of people among whom his colonists were to live. He did not, however, discern that under a usually pacific demeanor there was no lack of vigorous determination in this people, which it might not be so wise to irritate to the point of vengeance. He found, too, that they had a religion, perhaps prompting to some virtues he little suspected in his own, and that they jealously guarded their idols. He discovered that experience had given them no near acquaintance with the medicinal properties of the native herbs and trees. They associated myths with places, and would tell you that the sun and moon were but creatures of their island which had escaped from one of their caverns, and that mankind had sprung from the crannies of their rocky places. The bounteousness of nature, causing little care for the future, had spread among them a love of hospitality, and Columbus found himself welcome everywhere, and continued to be so till he and his abused their privileges.
[Sidenote: 1494. March 29. Columbus in Isabella.]
On the 29th of March, Columbus was back in Isabella, to find that the plantings of January were already yielding fruits, and the colony, in its agricultural aspects, at least, was promising, for the small areas that had already been cultivated. But the tidings from the new fort in the mountains which had just come in by messenger were not so cheering, for it seemed to be the story of La Navidad repeated. The license and exactions of the garrison had stirred up the neighboring natives, and Pedro Margarite, in his message, showed his anxiety lest Caonabo should be able to mass the savages, exasperated by their wrongs, in an attack upon the post. Columbus sent a small reinforcement to St. Thomas, and dispatched a force to make a better road thither, in order to facilitate any future operations.
[Sidenote: Condition of the town.]
The Admiral's more immediate attention was demanded by the condition of Isabella. Intermittent fever and various other disturbances incident to a new turning of a reeking soil were making sad ravages in the colony. The work of building suffered in consequence. The sick engrossed the attention of men withdrawn from their active labors, or they were left to suffer from the want of such kindly aid. The humidity of the climate and a prodigal waste had brought provisions so low that an allowance even of the unwholesome stock which remained was made necessary. In order to provide against impending famine, men were taken from the public works and put to labor on a mill, in order that they might get flour. No respect was paid to persons, and cavalier and priest were forced into the common service. The Admiral was obliged to meet the necessities by compulsory measures, for even an obvious need did not prevent the indifferent from shirking, and the priest and hidalgo from asserting their privileged rights. Any authority that enforced sacrifice galled the proud spirits, and the indignity of labor caused a mortification and despair that soon thinned the ranks of the best blood of the colony. Dying voices cursed the delusion which had brought them to the New World, the victims, as they claimed, of the avarice and deceit of a hated alien to their race.
[Sidenote: Ojeda sent to St. Thomas.]
Supineness in the commander would have brought everything in the colony to a disastrous close. A steady progression of some sort might be remedial. The Admiral's active mind determined on the diversion of further exploration with such a force as could be equipped. He mustered a little army, consisting of 250 men armed with crossbows, 100 with matchlocks, 16 mounted lancemen, and 20 officers. Ojeda was put at their head, with orders to lead them to St. Thomas, which post he was to govern while Margarite took the expeditionary party and scoured the country. Navarrete has preserved for us the instructions which Columbus imparted. They counseled a considerate regard for the natives, who must, however, be made to furnish all necessaries at fair prices. Above all, every Spaniard must be prevented from engaging in private trade, since the profits of such bartering were reserved to the Crown, and it did not help Columbus in his dealings with the refractory colonists to have it known that a foreign interloper, like himself, shared this profit with the Crown. Margarite was also told that he must capture, by force or stratagem, the cacique Caonabo and his brothers.
[Sidenote: 1494. April 9.]
When Ojeda, who had started on April 9, reached the Vega Real, he learned that three Spaniards, returning from St. Thomas, had been robbed by a party of Indians, people of a neighboring cacique. Ojeda seized the offenders, the ears of one of whom he cut off, and then capturing the cacique himself and some of his family, he sent the whole party to Isabella. Columbus took prompt revenge, or made the show of doing so; but just as the sentence of execution was to be inflicted, he yielded to the importunities of another cacique, and thought to keep by it his reputation for clemency. Presently another horseman came in from St. Thomas, who, on his way, had rescued, single-handed and with the aid of the terror which his animal inspired, another party of five Spaniards, whom he had found in the hands of the same tribe.
[Sidenote: Diego and the junto.]
Such easy conquests convinced Columbus that only proper prudence was demanded to maintain the Spanish supremacy with even a diminished force. He had not forgotten the fears of the Portuguese which were harassing the Spanish Court when he left Seville, and, to anticipate them, he was anxious to make a more thorough examination of Cuba, which was a part of the neighboring main of Cathay, as he was ready to suppose. He therefore commissioned a sort of junto to rule, while in person he should conduct such an expedition by water. His brother Diego was placed in command during his absence, and he gave him four counselors, Father Boyle, Pedro Fernandez Coronel, Alonso Sanchez Carvajal, and Juan de Luxan. He took three caravels, the smallest of his little fleet, as better suited to explore, and left the two large ones behind.
[Sidenote: 1494. April 24. Columbus sails for Cuba.]
It was April 24 when Columbus sailed from Isabella, and at once he ran westerly. He stopped at his old fort, La Navidad, but found that Guacanagari avoided him, and no time could be lost in discovering why. On the 29th, he left Española behind and struck across to the Cuban shore. Here, following the southern side of that island, he anchored first in a harbor where there were preparations for a native feast; but the people fled when he landed, and the not overfed Spaniards enjoyed the repast that was abandoned. The Lucayan interpreter, who was of the party, managed after a while to allure a single Indian, more confident than the rest, to approach; and when this Cuban learned from one of a similar race the peaceful purposes of the Spaniards, he went and told others, and so in a little while Columbus was able to hold a parley with a considerable group. He caused reparation to be made for the food which his men had taken, and then exchanged farewells with the astounded folk.
[Sidenote: 1494. May 1. On the Cuban coast.]
On May 1, he raised anchor, and coasted still westerly, keeping near the shore. The country grew more populous. The amenities of his intercourse with the feast-makers had doubtless been made known along the coast, and as a result he was easily kept supplied with fresh fruits by the natives. Their canoes constantly put off from the shore as the ships glided by. He next anchored in the harbor which was probably that known to-day as St. Jago de Cuba, where he received the same hospitality, and dispensed the same store of trinkets in return.
[Sidenote: 1494. May 3. Steers for Jamaica.]
Here, as elsewhere along the route, the Lucayan had learned from the natives that a great island lay away to the south, which was the source of what gold they had. The information was too frequently repeated to be casual, and so, on May 3, Columbus boldly stood off shore, and brought his ships to a course due south.
[Sidenote: Natives of Jamaica.]
[Sidenote: A dog set upon them.]
[Sidenote: Santiago or Jamaica.]
[Sidenote: Character of natives.]
It was not long before thin blue films appeared on the horizon. They deepened and grew into peaks. It was two days before the ships were near enough to their massive forms to see the signs of habitations everywhere scattered along the shore. The vessels stood in close to the land. A native flotilla hovered about, at first with menaces, but their occupants were soon won to friendliness by kindly signs. Not so, however, in the harbor, where, on the next day, he sought shelter and an opportunity to careen a leaky ship. Here the shore swarmed with painted men, and some canoes with feathered warriors advanced to oppose a landing. They hurled their javelins without effect, and filled the air with their screams and whoops. Columbus then sent in his boats nearer the shore than his ships could go, and under cover of a discharge from his bombards a party landed, and with their crossbows put the Indians to flight. Bernaldez tells that a dog was let loose upon the savages, and this is the earliest mention of that canine warfare which the Spaniards later made so sanguinary. Columbus now landed and took possession of the island under the name of Santiago, but the name did not supplant the native Jamaica. The warning lesson had its effect, and the next day some envoys of the cacique of the region made offers of amity, which were readily accepted. For three days this friendly intercourse was kept up, with the customary exchange of gifts. The Spaniards could but observe a marked difference in the character of this new people. They were more martial and better sailors than any they had seen since they left the Carib islands. The enormous mahogany-trees of the islands furnished them with trunks, out of which they constructed the largest canoes. Columbus saw one which was ninety-six feet long and eight broad. There was also in these people a degree of merriment such as the Spaniards had not noticed before, more docility and quick apprehension, and Peter Martyr gathered from those with whom he had talked that in almost all ways they seemed a manlier and experter race. Their cloth, utensils, and implements were of a character not differing from others the explorers had seen, but of better handiwork.
As soon as he floated his ship, Columbus again stretched his course to the west, finding no further show of resistance. The native dugout sallied forth to trade from every little inlet which was passed. Finally, a youth came off and begged to be taken to the Spaniards' home, and the Historie tells us that it was not without a scene of distress that he bade his kinsfolk good-by, in spite of all their endeavors to reclaim him. Columbus was struck with the courage and confidence of the youth, and ordered special kindnesses to be shown to him. We hear nothing more of the lad.
[Sidenote: Columbus returns to Cuba.]
[Sidenote: 1494. May 18.]
[Sidenote: The Queen's Gardens.]
Reaching now the extreme westerly end of Jamaica, and finding the wind setting right for Cuba, Columbus shifted his course thither, and bore away to the north. On the 18th of May, he was once more on its coast. The people were everywhere friendly. They told him that Cuba was an island, but of such extent that they had never seen the end of it. This did not convince Columbus that it was other than the mainland. So he went on towards the west, in full confidence that he would come to Cathay, or at least, such seemed his expectation. He presently rounded a point, and saw before him a large archipelago. He was now at that point where the Cabo de la Cruz on the south and this archipelago in the northwest embay a broad gulf. The islands seemed almost without number, and they studded the sea with verdant spots. He called them the Queen's Gardens. He could get better seaway by standing further south, and so pass beyond the islands; but suspecting that they were the very islands which lay in masses along the coast of Cathay, as Marco Polo and Mandeville had said, he was prompted to risk the intricacies of their navigation; so he clung to the shore, and felt that without doubt he was verging on the territories of the Great Khan. He began soon to apprehend his risks. The channels were devious. The shoals perplexed him. There was often no room to wear ship, and the boats had to tow the caravels at intervals to clearer water. They could not proceed at all without throwing the lead. The wind was capricious, and whirled round the compass with the sun. Sudden tempests threatened danger.
With all this anxiety, there was much to beguile. Every aspect of nature was like the descriptions of the East in the travelers' tales. The Spaniards looked for inhabitants, but none were to be seen. At last they espied a village on one of the islands, but on landing (May 22), not a soul could be found,--only the spoils of the sea which a fishing people would be likely to gather. Another day, they met a canoe from which some natives were fishing. The men came on board without trepidation and gave the Spaniards what fish they wanted. They had a wonderful way of catching fish. They used a live fish much as a falcon is used in catching its quarry. This fish would fasten itself to its prey by suckers growing about the head. The native fishermen let it out with a line attached to its tail, and pulled in both the catcher and the caught when the prey had been seized. These people also told the same story of the interminable extent westerly of the Cuban coast.
[Sidenote: 1494. June 3.]
[Sidenote: Men with tails.]
Columbus now passed out from among these islands and steered towards a mountainous region, where he again landed and opened intercourse with a pacific tribe on June 3. An old cacique repeated the same story of the illimitable land, and referred to the province of Mangon as lying farther west. This name was enough to rekindle the imagination of the Admiral. Was not Mangi the richest of the provinces that Sir John Mandeville had spoken of? He learned also that a people with tails lived there, just as that veracious narrator had described, and they wore long garments to conceal that appendage. What a sight a procession of these Asiatics would make in another reception at the Spanish Court!
[Sidenote: Gulf of Xagua.]
[Sidenote: White-robed men.]
There was nothing now to impede the progress of the caravels, and on the vessels went in their westward course. Every day the crews got fresh fruits from the friendly canoes. They paid nothing for the balmy odors from the land. They next came to the Gulf of Xagua, and passing this they again sailed into shallow waters, whitened with the floating sand, which the waves kept in suspension. The course of the ships was tortuous among the bars, and they felt relieved when at last they found a place where their anchors would hold. To make sure that a way through this labyrinth could be found, Columbus sent his smallest caravel ahead, and then following her guidance, the little fleet, with great difficulty, and not without much danger at times, came out into clearer water. Later, he saw a deep bay on his right, and tacking across the opening he lay his course for some distant mountains. Here he anchored to replenish his water-casks. An archer straying into the forest came back on the run, saying that he had seen white-robed people. Here, then, thought Columbus, were the people who were concealing their tails! He sent out two parties to reconnoitre. They found nothing but a tangled wilderness. It has been suggested that the timorous and credulous archer had got half a sight of a flock of white cranes feeding in a savanna. Such is the interpretation of this story by Irving, and Humboldt tells us there is enough in his experience with the habits of these birds to make it certain that the interpretation is warranted.
[Sidenote: Columbus believes he sees the Golden Chersonesus,]
Still the Admiral went on westerly, opening communication occasionally with the shore, but to little advantage in gathering information, for the expedition had gone beyond the range of dialects where the Lucayan interpreter could be of service. The shore people continued to point west, and the most that could be made of their signs was that a powerful king reigned in that direction, and that he wore white robes. This is the story as Bernaldez gives it; and Columbus very likely thought it a premonition of Prester John. The coast still stretched to the setting sun, if Columbus divined the native signs aright, but no one could tell how far. The sea again became shallow, and the keels of the caravels stirred up the bottom. The accounts speak of wonderful crowds of tortoises covering the water, pigeons darkening the sky, and gaudy butterflies sweeping about in clouds. The shore was too low for habitation; but they saw smoke and other signs of life in the high lands of the interior. When the coast line began to trend to the southwest,--it was Marco Polo who said it would,--there could be little doubt that the Golden Chersonesus of the ancients, which we know to-day as the Malacca peninsula, must be beyond.
[Sidenote: by which he would return to Spain.]
What next? was the thought which passed through the fevered brain of the Admiral. He had an answer in his mind, and it would make a new sensation for his poor colony at Isabella to hear of him in Spain. Passing the Golden Chersonesus, had he not the alternative of steering homeward by way of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope, and so astound the Portuguese more than he did when he entered the Tagus? Or, abandoning the Indian Ocean and entering the Red Sea, could he not proceed to its northern extremity, and there, deserting his ships, join a caravan passing through Jerusalem and Jaffa, and so embark again on the Mediterranean and sail into Barcelona, a more wonderful explorer than before?
These were the sublimating thoughts that now buoyed the Admiral, as he looked along the far-stretching coast,--or at least his friend Bernaldez got this impression from his intercourse with Columbus after his return to Spain.
[Sidenote: His crew rebel.]
If the compliant spirit of his crew had not been exhausted, he would perhaps have gone on, and would have been forced by developments to a revision of his geographical faith. His vessels, unfortunately, were strained in all their seams. Their leaks had spoiled his provisions. Incessant labor had begun to tell upon the health of the crew. They much preferred the chances of a return to Isabella, with all its hazards, than a sight of Jaffa and the Mediterranean, with the untold dangers of getting there.
The Admiral, however, still pursued his course for a few days more to a point, as Humboldt holds, opposite the St. Philip Keys, when, finding the coast trending sharply to the southwest, and his crew becoming clamorous, he determined to go no farther.
[Sidenote: 1494. June 12. He turns back.]
It was now the 12th of June, 1494, and if we had nothing but the Historie to guide us, we should be ignorant of the singular turn which affairs took. Whoever wrote that book had, by the time it was written, become conscious that obliviousness was sometimes necessary to preserve the reputation of the Admiral. The strange document which interests us, however, has not been lost, and we can read it in Navarrete.
[Sidenote: Enforces an oath upon his men]
It is not difficult to understand the disquietude of Columbus's mind. He had determined to find Cathay as a counterpoise to the troubled conditions at Isabella, both to assuage the gloomy forebodings of the colonists and to reassure the public mind in Spain, which might receive, as he knew, a shock by the reports which Torres's fleet had carried to Europe. He had been forced by a mutinous crew to a determination to turn back, but his discontented companions might be complacent enough to express an opinion, if not complacent enough to run farther hazards. So Columbus committed himself to the last resort of deluded minds, when dealing with geographical or historical problems,--that of seeking to establish the truth by building monuments, placing inscriptions, and certifications under oath. He caused the eighty men who constituted the crew of his little squadron--and we find their name in Duro's Colón y Pinzón--to swear before a notary that it was possible to go from Cuba to Spain by land, across Asia.
[Sidenote: that Cuba is a continent.]
It was solemnly affirmed by this official that if any should swerve from this belief, the miserable skeptic, if an officer, should be fined 10,000 maravedis; and if a sailor, he should receive a hundred lashes and have his tongue pulled out. Such were the scarcely heroic measures that Columbus thought it necessary to employ if he would dispel any belief that all these islands of the Indies were but an ocean archipelago after all, and that the width of the unknown void between Europe and Asia, which he was so confident he had traversed, was yet undetermined. To make Cuba a continent by affidavit was easy; to make it appear the identical kingdom of the Great Khan, he hoped would follow. During his first voyage, so far as he could make out an intelligible statement from what the natives indicated, he was of the opinion that Cuba was an island. It is to be feared that he had now reached a state of mind in which he did not dare to think it an island.
If we believe the Historie,--or some passages in it, at least,--written, as we know, after the geography of the New World was fairly understood, and if we accept the evidence of the copyist, Herrera, Columbus never really supposed he was in Asia. If this is true, he took marvelous pains to deceive others by appearing to be deceived himself, as this notarial exhibition and his solemn asseveration to the Pope in 1502 show. The writers just cited say that he simply juggled the world by giving the name India to these regions, as better suited to allure emigration. Such testimony, if accepted, establishes the fraudulent character of these notarial proceedings. It is fair to say, however, that he wrote to Peter Martyr, just after the return of the caravels to Isabella, expressing a confident belief in his having come near to the region of the Ganges; and divesting the testimony of all the jugglery with which others have invested it, there seems little doubt that in this belief, at least, Columbus was sincere.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1494. June 13.]
[Sidenote: 1494. June 30.]
[Sidenote: 1494. July 7.]
On the next day, Columbus, standing to the southeast, reached a large island, the present Isle of Pines, which he called Evangelista. In endeavoring to skirt it on the south, he was entangled once more in a way that made him abandon the hope of a directer passage to Española that way, and to resolve to follow the coast back as he had come. He lost ten days in these uncertain efforts, which, with his provisions rapidly diminishing, did not conduce to reassure his crew. On June 30, trying to follow the intricacies of the channels which had perplexed him before, the Admiral's ship got a severe thump on the bottom, which for a while threatened disaster. She was pulled through, however, by main force, and after a while was speeding east in clear water. They had now sailed beyond those marshy reaches of the coast, where they were cut off from intercourse with the shore, and hoped soon to find a harbor, where food and rest might restore the strength of the crew. Their daily allowance had been reduced to a pound of mouldy bread and a swallow or two of wine. It was the 7th of July when they anchored in an acceptable harbor. Here they landed, and interchanged the customary pledges of amity with a cacique who presented himself on the shore. Men having been sent to cut down some trees, a large cross was made, and erected in a grove, and on this spot, with a crowd of natives looking on, the Spaniard celebrated high mass. A venerable Indian, who watched all the ceremonials with close attention, divining their religious nature, made known to the Admiral, through the Lucayan interpreter, something of the sustaining belief of his own people, in words that were impressive. Columbus's confidence in the incapacity of the native mind for such high conceptions as this poor Indian manifested received a grateful shock when the old man, grave in his manner and unconscious in his dignity, pictured the opposite rewards of the good and bad in another world. Then turning to the Admiral, he reminded him that wrong upon the unoffending was no passport to the blessings of the future. The historian who tells us this story, and recounts how it impressed the Admiral, does not say that its warnings troubled him much in the times to come, when the unoffending were grievously wronged. Perhaps there was something of this forgetful spirit in the taking of a young Indian away from his friends, as the chroniclers say he did, in this very harbor.
[Sidenote: 1494. July 16.]
[Sidenote: 1494. July 18.]
[Sidenote: On the coast of Jamaica.]
On July 16, Columbus left the harbor, and steering off shore to escape the intricate channels of the Queen's Gardens which he was now re-approaching, he soon found searoom, and bore away toward Española. A gale coming on, the caravels were forced in shore, and discovered an anchorage under Cabo de Cruz. Here they remained for three days, but the wind still blowing from the east, Columbus thought it a good opportunity to complete the circuit of Jamaica. He accordingly stood across towards that island. He was a month in beating to the eastward along its southern coast, for the winds were very capricious. Every night he anchored under the land, and the natives supplied him with provisions. At one place, a cacique presented himself in much feathered finery, accompanied by his wife and relatives, with a retinue bedizened in the native fashion, and doing homage to the Admiral. It was shown how effective the Lucayan's pictures of Spanish glory and prowess had been, when the cacique proposed to put himself and all his train in the Admiral's charge for passage to the great country of the Spanish King. The offer was rather embarrassing to the Admiral, with his provisions running low, and his ships not of the largest. He relieved himself by promising to conform to the wishes of the cacique at a more opportune moment.
[Sidenote: 1494. August 19.]
[Sidenote: Española.]
[Sidenote: 1494. August 23.]
[Sidenote: Alto Velo.]
By the 19th of August, Columbus had passed the easternmost extremity of Jamaica, and on the next day he was skirting the long peninsula which juts from the southwestern angle of Española. He was not, however, aware of his position till on the 23d a cacique came off to the caravels, and addressed Columbus by his title, with some words of Castilian interlarded in his speech. It was now made clear that the ships had nearly reached their goal, and nothing was left but to follow the circuit of the island. It was no easy task to do so with a wornout crew and crazy ships. The little fleet was separated in a gale, and when Columbus made the lofty rocky island which is now known as Alto Velo, resembling as it does in outline a tall ship under sail, he ran under its lee, and sent a boat ashore, with orders for the men to scale its heights, to learn if the missing caravels were anywhere to be seen. This endeavor was without result, but it was not long before the fleet was reunited. Further on, the Admiral learned from the natives that some of the Spaniards had been in that part of the island, coming from the other side. Finding thus through the native reports that all was quiet at Isabella, he landed nine men to push across the island and report his coming. Somewhat further to the east, a storm impending, he found a harbor, where the weather forced him to remain for eight days. The Admiral's vessel had succeeded in entering a roadstead, but the others lay outside, buffeting the storm,--naturally a source of constant anxiety to him.
[Sidenote: Columbus observes eclipse of the moon.]
It was while in this suspense that Columbus took advantage of an eclipse of the moon, to ascertain his longitude. His calculations made him five hours and a half west of Seville,--an hour and a quarter too much, making an error of eighteen degrees. This mistake was quite as likely owing to the rudeness of his method as to the pardonable errors of the lunar tables of Regiomontanus (Venice, 1492), then in use. These tables followed methods which had more or less controlled calculations from the time of Hipparchus.
The error of Columbus is not surprising. Even a century later, when Robert Hues published his treatise on the Molineaux globe (1592), the difficulties were in large part uncontrollable. "The most certain of all for this purpose," says this mathematician, "is confessed by all writers to be by eclipses of the moon. But now these eclipses happen but seldom, but are more seldom seen, yet most seldom and in very few places observed by the skillful artists in this science. So that there are but few longitudes of places designed out by this means. But this is an uncertain and ticklish way, and subject to many difficulties. Others have gone other ways to work, as, namely, by observing the space of the equinoctial hours betwixt the meridians of two places, which they conceive may be taken by the help of sundials, or clocks, or hourglasses, either with water or sand or the like. But all these conceits, long since devised, having been more strictly and accurately examined, have been disallowed and rejected by all learned men--at least those of riper judgments--as being altogether unable to perform that which is required of them. I shall not stand here to discover the errors and uncertainties of these instruments. Away with all such trifling, cheating rascals!"
[Sidenote: 1494. September 24.]
[Sidenote: Columbus reaches Isabella.]
The weather moderating, Columbus stood out of the channel of Saona on September 24, and meeting the other caravels, which had weathered the storm, he still steered to the east. They reached the farthest end of Española opposite Porto Rico, and ran out to the island of Mona, in the channel between the two larger islands. Shortly after leaving Mona, Columbus, worn with the anxieties of a five months' voyage, in which his nervous excitement and high hopes had sustained him wonderfully, began to feel the reaction. His near approach to Isabella accelerated this recoil, till his whole system suddenly succumbed. He lay in a stupor, knowing little, remembering nothing, his eyes dim and vitality oozing. Under other command, the little fleet sorrowfully, but gladly, entered the harbor of Isabella.
Our most effective source for the history of this striking cruise is the work of Bernaldez, already referred to.
XIV. THE SECOND VOYAGE, CONTINUED
1494-1496.
[Sidenote: 1494. September 29. Columbus in Isabella.]
It was the 29th of September, 1494, when the "Nina," with the senseless Admiral on board, and her frail consorts stood into the harbor of Isabella. Taken ashore, the sick man found no restorative like the presence of his brother Bartholomew, who had reached Isabella during the Admiral's absence.
[Sidenote: Finds Bartholomew Columbus there.]
[Sidenote: Bartholomew's career in England.]
Several years had elapsed since the two congenial brothers had parted. We have seen that this brother had probably been with Bartholomew Diaz when he discovered the African cape. It is supposed, from the inscriptions on it, that the map delivered by Bartholomew to Henry VII. had shown the results of Diaz's discoveries. This chart had been taken to England, when Bartholomew had gone thither, to engage the interest of Henry VII. in Columbus's behalf. There is some obscurity about the movements of Bartholomew at this time, but there is thought by some to be reason to believe that he finally got sufficient encouragement from that Tudor prince to start for Spain with offers for his brother. The Historie tells us that the propositions of Bartholomew were speedily accepted by Henry, and this statement prevails in the earlier English writers, like Hakluyt and Bacon; but Oviedo says the scheme was derided, and Geraldini says it was declined. Bartholomew reached Paris just at the time when word had come there of Columbus's return from his first voyage. His kinship to the Admiral, and his own expositions of the geographical problem then attracting so much attention, drew him within the influence of the French court, and Charles VIII. is said to have furnished him the means--as Bartholomew was then low in purse--to pursue his way to Spain.
[Sidenote: In Spain.]
He was, however, too late to see the Admiral, who had already departed from Cadiz on this second voyage. Finding that it had been arranged for his brother's sons to be pages at Court, he sought them, and in company with them he presented himself before the Spanish monarchs at Valladolid. These sovereigns were about fitting out a supply fleet for Española, and Bartholomew was put in command of an advance section of it. Sailing from Cadiz on April 30, 1494, with three caravels, he reached Isabella on St. John's Day, after the Admiral had left for his western cruise.
[Sidenote: His character.]
[Sidenote: Created Adelantado.]
If it was prudent for Columbus to bring another foreigner to his aid, he found in Bartholomew a fitter and more courageous spirit than Diego possessed. The Admiral was pretty sure now to have an active and fearless deputy, sterner, indeed, in his habitual bearing than Columbus, and with a hardihood both of spirit and body that fitted him for command. These qualities were not suited to pacify the haughty hidalgos, but they were merits which rendered him able to confront the discontent of all settlers, and gave him the temper to stand in no fear of them. He brought to the government of an ill-assorted community a good deal that the Admiral lacked. He was soberer in his imagination; not so prone to let his wishes figure the future; more practiced, if we may believe Las Casas, in the arts of composition, and able to speak and write much more directly and comprehensibly than his brother. He managed men better, and business proceeded more regularly under his control, and he contrived to save what was possible from the wreck of disorder into which his brother's unfitness for command had thrown the colony. This is the man whom Las Casas enables us to understand, through the traits of character which he depicts. Columbus was now to create this brother his representative, in certain ways, with the title of Adelantado.
It was also no small satisfaction to the Admiral, in his present weakness, to learn of the well-being of his children, and of the continued favor with which he was held at Court, little anticipating the resentment of Ferdinand that an office of the rank of Adelantado should be created by any delegated authority.
[Sidenote: Papal Bull of Extension.]
Columbus had pursued his recent explorations in some measure to forestall what he feared the Portuguese might be led to attempt in the same direction, for he had not been unaware of the disturbance in the court at Lisbon which the papal line of demarcation had created. He was glad now to learn from his brother that his own fleet had hardly got to sea from Cadiz, in September, 1493, when the Pope, by another bull on the 26th of that month, had declared that all countries of the eastern Indies which the Spaniards might find, in case they were not already in Christian hands, should be included in the grant made to Spain. This Bull of Extension, as it was called, was a new thorn in the side of Portugal, and time would reveal its effect. Alexander had resisted all importunities to recede from his position, taken in May.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Events in Española during the absence of Columbus.]
Let us look now at what had happened in Española during the absence of Columbus; but in the first place, we must mark out the native division of the island with whose history Columbus's career is so associated. Just back of Isabella, and about the Vega Real, whose bewildering beauties of grove and savanna have excited the admiration of modern visitors, lay the territory tributary to a cacique named Guarionex, which was bounded south by the Cibao gold mountains. South of these interior ridges and extending to the southern shore of the island lay the region (Maguana) of the most warlike of all the native princes, Caonabo, whose wife, Anacaona, was a sister of Behechio, who governed Xaragua, as the larger part of the southern coast, westward of Caonabo's domain, including the long southwestern peninsula, was called. The northeastern part of the island (Marien) was subject to Guacanagari, the cacique neighboring to La Navidad. The eastern end (Higuay) of the island was under the domination of a chief named Cotabanana.
It will be remembered that before starting for Cuba the Admiral had equipped an expedition, which, when it arrived at St. Thomas, was to be consigned to the charge of Pedro Margarite. This officer had instructions to explore the mountains of Cibao, and map out its resources. He was not to harass the natives by impositions, but he was to make them fear his power. It was also his business to avoid reducing the colony's supplies by making the natives support this exploring force. If he could not get this support by fair means, he was to use foul means. Such instructions were hazardous enough; but Margarite was not the man to soften their application. He had even failed to grasp the spirit of the instructions which had been given by Columbus to ensnare Caonabo, which were "as thoroughly base and treacherous as could well be imagined," says Helps, and the reader can see them in Navarrete.
This commander had spent his time mainly among the luxurious scenes of the Vega Real, despoiling its tribes of their provisions, and squandering the energies of his men in sensual diversions. The natives, who ought to have been his helpers, became irritated at his extortions and indignant at the invasion of their household happiness. The condition in the tribes which this riotous conduct had induced looked so threatening that Diego Columbus, as president of the council, wrote to Margarite in remonstrance, and reminded him of the Admiral's instructions to explore the mountains.
[Sidenote: Factions.]
The haughty Spaniard, taking umbrage at what he deemed an interference with his independent command, readily lent himself to the faction inimical to Columbus. With his aid and with that of Father Boyle, a brother Catalonian, who had proved false to his office as a member of the ruling council and even finally disregardful of the royal wishes that he should remain in the colony, an uneasy party was soon banded together in Isabella. The modern French canonizers, in order to reconcile the choice by the Pope of this recusant priest, claim that his Holiness, or the king for him, confounded a Benedictine and Franciscan priest of the same name, and that the Benedictine was an unlucky changeling--perhaps even purposely--for the true monk of the Franciscans.
In the face of Diego, this cabal found little difficulty in planning to leave the island for Spain in the ships which had come with Bartholomew Columbus. Diego had no power to meet with compulsion the defiance of these mutineers, and was subjected to the sore mortification of seeing the rebels sail out of the harbor for Spain. There was left to Diego, however, some satisfaction in feeling that such dangerous ringleaders were gone; but it was not unaccompanied with anxiety to know what effect their representations would have at Court. A like anxiety now became poignant in the Admiral's mind, on his return.
The stories which Diego and Bartholomew were compelled to tell Columbus of the sequel of this violent abandonment of the colony were sad ones. The license which Pedro Margarite had permitted became more extended, when the little armed force of the colony found itself without military restraint. It soon disbanded in large part, and lawless squads of soldiers were scattered throughout the country, wherever passion or avarice could find anything to prey upon. The long-suffering Indians soon reached the limits of endurance. A few acts of vengeance encouraged them to commit others, and everywhere small parties of the Spaniards were cut off as they wandered about for food and lustful conquests. The inhabitants of villages turned upon such stragglers as abused their hospitalities. Houses where they sheltered themselves were fired. Detached posts were besieged.
[Sidenote: Caonabo and Fort St. Thomas.]
While this condition prevailed, Caonabo planned to surprise Fort St. Thomas. Ojeda, here in control with fifty men, commanded about the only remnant of the Spanish forces which acknowledged the discipline of a competent leader. The vigilant Ojeda did not fail to get intelligence of Caonabo's intentions. He made new vows to the Virgin, before an old Flemish picture of Our Lady which hung in his chamber in the fort, and which never failed to encourage him, wherever he tarried or wherever he strayed. Every man was under arms, and every eye was alert, when their commander, as great in spirit as he was diminutive in stature, marshaled his fifty men along his ramparts, as Caonabo with his horde of naked warriors advanced to surprise him. The outraged cacique was too late. No unclothed natives dared to come within range of the Spanish crossbows and arquebuses. Ojeda met every artful and stealthy approach by a sally that dropped the bravest of Caonabo's warriors.
The cacique next tried to starve the Spaniards out. His parties infested every path, and if a foraging force came out, or one of succor endeavored to get in, multitudes of the natives foiled the endeavor. Famine was impending in the fort. The procrastinations of the arts of beleaguering always help the white man behind his ramparts, when the savage is his enemy. The native force dwindled under the delays, and Caonabo at last abandoned the siege.
[Sidenote: Caonabo's league.]
The native leader now gave himself to a larger enterprise. His spies told him of the weakened condition of Isabella, and he resolved to form a league of the principal caciques of the island to attack that settlement. Wherever the Spaniards had penetrated, they had turned the friendliest feelings into hatred, and in remote parts of the island the reports of the Spanish ravages served, almost as much as the experience of them, to embitter the savage. It was no small success for Caonabo to make the other caciques believe that the supernatural character of the Spaniards would not protect them if a combined attack should be arranged. He persuaded all of them but Guacanagari, for that earliest friend of Columbus remained firm in his devotion to the Spaniards. The Admiral's confidence in him had not been misplaced. He was subjected to attacks by the other chieftains, but his constancy survived them all. In these incursions of his neighbors, his wives were killed and captured, and among them the dauntless Catalina, as is affirmed; but his zeal for his white neighbors did not abate.
[Sidenote: Columbus and Guacanagari.]
When Guacanagari heard that Columbus had returned, he repaired to Isabella, and from this faithful ally the Admiral learned of the plans which were only waiting further developments for precipitate action.
[Sidenote: Fort Conception.]
Columbus, thus forewarned, was eager to break any confederacy of the Indians before it could gather strength. He had hardly a leader disengaged whom he could send on the warpath. It was scarcely politic to place Bartholomew in any such command over the few remaining Spanish cavaliers whose spirit was so necessary to any military adventure. He sent a party, however, to relieve a small garrison near the villages of Guatiguana, a tributary chief to the great cacique Guarionex; but the party resorted to the old excesses, and came near defeating the purposes of Columbus. Guatiguana was prevailed upon, however, to come to the Spanish settlement, and Columbus, to seal his agreement of amity with him, persuaded him to let the Lucayan interpreter marry his daughter. To this diplomatic arrangement the Admiral added the more powerful argument of a fort, called La Concepcion, which he later built where it could command the Vega Real.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Torres's ships arrive.]
It was not long before four ships, with Antonio Torres in command, arrived from Spain, bringing a new store of provisions, another physician, and more medicines, and, what was much needed, artificers and numerous gardeners. There was some hope now that the soil could be made to do its part in the support of the colony.
[Sidenote: 1494. June 7. Treaty of Tordesillas.]
To the Admiral came a letter, dated August 16, from Ferdinand and Isabella, giving him notice that all the difficulties with Portugal had been amicably adjusted. The court of Lisbon, finding that Pope Alexander was not inclined to recede from his position, and Spain not courting any difference that would lead to hostilities, both countries had easily been brought to an agreement, which was made at Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, to move the line of demarcation so much farther as to fall 370 leagues west of the Cape de Verde Islands. Each country then bound itself to respect its granted rights under the bull thus modified. The historical study of this diplomatic controversy over the papal division of the world is much embarrassed by the lack of documentary records of the correspondence carried on by Spain, Portugal, and the Pope.
[Sidenote: The sovereign's letter to Columbus,]
This letter of August 16 must have been very gratifying to Columbus. Their Majesties told him that one of the principal reasons of their rejoicing in his discoveries was that they felt it all due to his genius and perseverance, and that the events had justified his foreknowledge and their expectations. So now, in their desire to define the new line of demarcation, and in the hope that it might be found to run through some ocean island, where a monument could be erected, they turned to him for assistance, and they expected that if he could not return to assist in these final negotiations, he would dispatch to them some one who was competent to deal with the geographical problem.
[Sidenote: and to the colonists.]
Torres had also brought a general letter of counsel to the colonists, commanding them to obey all the wishes and to bow to the authority of the Admiral. Whatever his lack of responsibility, in some measure at least, for the undoubted commercial failure of the colony, its want of a product in any degree commensurate both with expectation and outlay could not fail, as he well understood, to have a strong effect both on the spirit of the people and on the constancy of his royal patrons, who might, under the urging of Margarite and his abettors, have already swerved from his support.
[Sidenote: 1495. February 24. The fleet returns to Spain.]
[Sidenote: Carrying slaves.]
[Sidenote: Columbus and slavery.]
Reasons of this kind made it imperative that the newly arrived ships should be returned without delay, and with such reassuring messages and returns as could be furnished. The fleet departed on February 24, 1495. Himself still prostrate, and needing his brother Bartholomew to act during this season of his incapacity, there was no one he could spare so well to meet the wishes of the sovereigns as his other brother. So armed with maps and instructions, and with the further mission of protecting the Admiral's interest at Court, Diego embarked in one of the caravels. All the gold which had been collected was consigned to Diego's care, but it was only a sorry show, after all. There had been a variety of new fruits and spices, and samples of baser metals gathered, and these helped to complete the lading. There was one resource left. He had intimated his readiness to avail himself of it in the communication of his views to the sovereigns, which Torres had already conveyed to them. He now gave the plan the full force of an experiment, and packed into the little caravels full five hundred of the unhappy natives, to be sold as slaves. "The very ship," says Helps, "which brought that admirable reply from Ferdinand and Isabella to Columbus, begging him to seek some other way to Christianity than through slavery, even for wild man-devouring Caribs, should go back full of slaves taken from among the mild islanders of Hispaniola." The act was a long step in the miserable degradation which Columbus put upon those poor creatures whose existence he had made known to the world. Almost in the same breath, as in his letter to Santangel, he had suggested the future of a slave traffic out of that very existence. It is an obvious plea in his defense that the example of the church and of kings had made such heartless conduct a common resort to meet the financial burdens of conquest. The Portuguese had done it in Africa; the Spaniards had done it in Spain. The contemporary history of that age may be said to ring with the wails and moans of such negro and Moorish victims. A Holy Religion had unblushingly been made the sponsor for such a crime. Theologians had proved that the Word of God could ordain misery in this world, if only the recompense came--or be supposed to come--in a passport to the Christian's heaven.
The merit which Columbus arrogated to himself was that he was superior to the cosmographical knowledge of his time. It was the merit of Las Casas that he threw upon the reeking passions of the enslaver the light of a religion that was above sophistry and purer than cupidity. The existence of Las Casas is the arraignment of Columbus.
It may be indeed asking too much of weak humanity to be good in all things, and therein rests the pitiful plea for Columbus, the originator of American slavery.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Attacked by bloodhounds.]
Events soon became ominous. A savage host began to gather in the Vega Real, and all that Columbus, now recovering his strength, could marshal in his defense was about two hundred foot and twenty horse, but they were cased in steel, and the natives were naked. In this respect, the fight was unequal, and the more so that the Spaniards were now able to take into the field a pack of twenty implacable bloodhounds. The bare bodies of the Indians had no protection against their insatiate thirst.
[Sidenote: 1495. March 27. Columbus marches,]
[Sidenote: and fights in the Vega Real.]
It was the 27th of March, 1495, when Columbus, at the head of this little army, marched forth from Isabella, to confront a force of the natives, which, if we choose to believe the figures that are given by Las Casas, amounted to 100,000 men, massed under the command of Manicaotex. The whites climbed the Pass of the Hidalgos, where Columbus had opened the way the year before, and descended into that lovely valley, no longer a hospitable paradise. As they approached the hostile horde, details were sent to make the attacks various and simultaneous. The Indians were surprised at the flashes of the arquebuses from every quarter of the woody covert, and the clang of their enemies' drums and the bray of their trumpets drowned the savage yells. The native army had already begun to stagger in their wonder and perplexity, when Ojeda, seizing the opportune moment, dashed with his mounted lancemen right into the centre of the dusky mass. The bloodhounds rushed to their sanguinary work on his flanks. The task was soon done. The woods were filled with flying and shrieking savages. The league of the caciques was broken, and it was only left for the conquerors to gather up their prisoners. Guacanagari, who had followed the white army with a train of his subjects, looked on with the same wonder which struck the Indians who were beaten.
[Sidenote: 1495. April 25.]
There was no opportunity for him to fight at all. The rout had been complete. This notable conflict taking place on April 25, 1495, is a central point in a somewhat bewildering tangle of events, as our authorities relate them, so that it is not easy in all cases to establish their sequence.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Caonabo captured by Ojeda.]
The question of dealing with Caonabo was still the most important of all. It was solved by the cunning and dash of Ojeda. Presenting his plan to the Admiral, he was commanded to carry it out. Taking ten men whom he could trust, Ojeda boldly sought the village where Caonabo was quartered, and with as much intrepidity as cunning put himself in the power of that cacique. The chieftain was not without chivalry, and the confidence and audacity of Ojeda won him. Hospitality was extended, and the confidences of a mutual respect soon ensued. Ojeda proposed that Caonabo should accompany him to Isabella, to make a compact of friendship with the Viceroy. All then would be peaceful. Caonabo, who had often wondered at the talking of the great bell in the chapel at Isabella, as he had heard it when skulking about the settlement, eagerly sprang to the lure, when Ojeda promised that he should have the bell. Ojeda, congratulating himself on the success of his bait, was disconcerted when he found that the cacique intended that a large force of armed followers should make the visit with him. To prevent this, Ojeda resorted to a stratagem, which is related by Las Casas, who says it was often spoken of when that priest first came to the island, six years later. Muñoz was not brought to believe the tale; but Helps sees no obstacle to giving it credence.
The Spaniards and the Indians were all on the march together, and had encamped by a river. Ojeda produced a set of burnished steel manacles, and told the cacique that they were ornaments such as the King of Spain wore on solemn occasions, and that he had been commanded to give them to the most distinguished native prince. He first proposed a bath in the river. The swim over, Caonabo was prevailed upon to be put behind Ojeda astride the same horse. Then the shining baubles were adjusted, apparently without exciting suspicion, amid the elation of the savage at his high seat upon the wondrous beast. A few sweeping gallops of the horse, guided by Ojeda, and followed by the other mounted spearmen, scattered the amazed crowd of the cacique's attendants. Then at a convenient gap in the circle Ojeda spurred his steed, and the whole mounted party dashed into the forest and away. The party drew up only when they had got beyond pursuit, in order to bind the cacique faster in his seat. So in due time, this little cavalcade galloped into Isabella with its manacled prisoner.
[Sidenote: Meets Columbus.]
The meeting of Columbus and his captive was one of very different emotions in the two,--the Admiral rejoicing that his most active foe was in his power, and the cacique abating nothing of the defiance which belonged to his freedom. Las Casas tells us that, as Caonabo lay in his shackles in an outer apartment of the Admiral's house, the people came and looked at him. He also relates that the bold Ojeda was the only one toward whom the prisoner manifested any respect, acknowledging in this way his admiration for his audacity. He would maintain only an indifferent haughtiness toward the Admiral, who had not, as he said, the courage to do himself what he left to the bravery of his lieutenant.
[Sidenote: Ojeda attacks the Indians.]
Ojeda presently returned to his command at St. Thomas, only to find that a brother of Caonabo had gathered the Indians for an assault. Dauntless audacity again saved him. He had brought with him some new men, and so, leaving a garrison in the fort, he sallied forth with his horsemen and with as many foot as he could muster and attacked the approaching host. A charge of the glittering horse, with the flashing of sabres, broke the dusky line. The savages fled, leaving their commander a prisoner in Ojeda's hands.
Columbus followed up these triumphs by a march through the country. Every opposition needed scarce more than a dash of Ojeda's cavalry to break it. The Vega was once more quiet with a sullen submission. The confederated caciques all sued for peace, except Behechio, who ruled the southwestern corner of the island. The whites had not yet invaded his territory, and he retired morosely, taking with him his sister, Anacaona, the wife of the imprisoned Caonabo.
[Sidenote: Repartimientos and encomiendas.]
The battle and the succeeding collapse had settled the fate of the poor natives. The policy of subjecting men by violence to pay the tribute of their lives and property to Spanish cupidity was begun in earnest, and it was shortly after made to include the labor on the Spanish farms, which, under the names of repartimientos and encomiendas, demoralized the lives of master and slave. When prisoners were gathered in such numbers that to guard them was a burden, there could be but little delay in forcing the issue of the slave trade upon the Crown as a part of an established policy. To the mind of Columbus, there was now some chance of repelling the accusations of Margarite and Father Boyle by palpable returns of olive flesh and shining metal. A scheme of enforced contribution of gold was accordingly planned. Each native above the age of fourteen was required to pay every three months, into the Spanish coffers, his share of gold, measured by the capacity of a hawk's bell for the common person, and by that of a calabash for the cacique. In the regions distant from the gold deposits, cotton was accepted as a substitute, twenty-five pounds for each person. A copper medal was put on the neck of every Indian for each payment, and new exactions were levied upon those who failed to show the medals. The amount of this tribute was more than the poor natives could find, and Guarionex tried to have it commuted for grain; but the golden greed of Columbus was inexorable. He preferred to reduce the requirements rather than vary the kind. A half of a hawk's bell of gold was better than stores of grain. "It is a curious circumstance," says Irving, "that the miseries of the poor natives should thus be measured out, as it were, by the very baubles which first fascinated them."
[Sidenote: Forts built.]
To make this payment sure, it was necessary to establish other armed posts through the country; and there were speedily built that of Magdalena in the Vega, one called Esperanza in Cibao, another named Catalina, beside La Concepcion, which has already been mentioned.
[Sidenote: The natives debased.]
The change which ensued in the lives of the natives was pitiable. The labor of sifting the sands of the streams for gold, which they had heretofore made a mere pastime to secure bits to pound into ornaments, became a depressing task. To work fields under a tropical sun, where they had basked for sportive rest, converted their native joyousness into despair. They sang their grief in melancholy songs, as Peter Martyr tells us. Gradually they withdrew from their old haunts, and by hiding in the mountains, they sought to avoid the exactions, and to force the Spaniards, thus no longer supplied by native labor with food, to abandon their posts and retire to Isabella, if not to leave the island.
[Sidenote: Guacanagari disappears.]
Scant fare for themselves and the misery of dank lurking-places were preferable to the heavy burdens of the taskmasters. They died in their retreats rather than return to their miserable labors. Even the long-tried friend of the Spaniards, Guacanagari, was made no exception. He and his people suffered every exaction with the rest of their countrymen. The cacique himself is said eventually to have buried himself in despair in the mountain fastnesses, and so passed from the sight of men.
The Spaniards were not so easily to be thwarted. They hunted the poor creatures like game, and, under the goading of lashes, such as survived were in time returned to their slavery. So thoroughly was every instinct of vengeance rooted out of the naturally timid nature of the Indians that a Spaniard might, as Las Casas tells us, march solemnly like an army through the most solitary parts of the island and receive tribute at every demand.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Columbus's interests in Spain.]
It is time to watch the effect of the representations of Margarite and Father Boyle at the Spanish Court. Columbus had been doubtless impelled, in these schemes of cruel exaction, by the fear of their influence, and with the hope of meeting their sneers at his ill success with substantial tribute to the Crown. The charges against Columbus and his policy and against his misrepresentation had all the immediate effect of accusations which are supported by one-sided witnesses. Every sentiment of jealousy and pride was played upon, and every circumstance of palliation and modification was ignored. The suspicious reservation which had more or less characterized the bearing of Ferdinand towards the transactions of the hero could become a background to the newer emotions. Fonseca and the comptroller Juan de Soria are charged with an easy acceptance of every insinuation against the Viceroy. The canonizers cannot execrate Fonseca enough. They make him alternately the creature and beguiler of the King. His subserviency, his trading in bishoprics, and his alleged hatred of Columbus are features of all their portraits of him.
[Sidenote: Aguado sent to Española.]
The case against the Admiral was thus successfully argued. Testimony like that of the receiver of the Crown taxes in rebuttal of charges seemed to weigh little. Movements having been instituted at once (April 7, 1495) to succor the colony by the immediate dispatch of supplies, it was two days later agreed with Beradi--the same with whom Vespucius had been associated, as we have seen--to furnish twelve ships for Española. The resolution was then taken to send an agent to investigate the affairs of the colony. If he should find the Admiral still absent,--for the length of his cruise to Cuba had already, at that time, begun to excite apprehension of his safety,--this same agent was to superintend the distribution of the supplies which he was to take. At this juncture, in April, 1495, Torres, arriving with his fleet, reported the Admiral's safe return, and submitted the notarial document, in which Columbus had made it clear to his own satisfaction that the Golden Chersonesus was in sight. Whether that freak of geographical prescience threw about his expedition a temporary splendor, and again wakened the gratitude of the sovereigns, as Irving says it did, may be left to the imagination; but the fact remains that the sovereigns did not swerve from their purpose to send an inquisitor to the colony, and the same Juan Aguado who had come back with credentials from the Admiral himself was selected for the mission.
[Sidenote: 1495. April 10. All Spaniards allowed to explore.]
[Sidenote: Nameless voyagers.]
There were some recent orders of the Crown which Aguado was to break to the Admiral, from which Columbus could not fail to discover that the exclusiveness of his powers was seriously impaired. On the 10th of April, 1495, it had been ordered that any native-born Spaniard could invade the seas which had been sacredly apportioned to Columbus, that such navigator might discover what he could, and even settle, if he liked, in Española. This order was a ground of serious complaint by Columbus at a later day, for the reason that this license was availed of by unworthy interlopers. He declares that after the way had been shown even the very tailors turned explorers. It seems tolerably certain that this irresponsible voyaging, which continued till Columbus induced the monarchs to rescind the order in June, 1497, worked developments in the current cartography of the new regions which it is difficult to trace to their distinct sources. Gomara intimates that during this period there were nameless voyagers, of whose exploits we have no record by which to identify them, and Navarrete and Humboldt find evidences of explorations which cannot otherwise be accounted for.
[Sidenote: Enemies of Columbus.]
How far this condition of affairs was brought about by the importunities of the enemies of Columbus is not clear. The surviving Pinzons are said to have been in part those who influenced the monarchs, but doubtless a share of profits, which the Crown required from all such private speculation, was quite as strong an incentive as any importunities of eager mariners. The burdens of the official expeditions were onerous for an exhausted treasury, and any resource to replenish its coffers was not very narrowly scrutinized in the light of the pledges which Columbus had exacted from a Crown that was beginning to understand the impolicy of such concessions.
[Sidenote: Fonseca and Diego Colon.]
There was also at this time a passage of words between Fonseca and Diego Colon that was not without irritating elements. The Admiral's brother had brought some gold with him, which he claimed as his own. Fonseca withheld it, but in the end obeyed the sovereign's order and released it. It was no time to add to the complications of the Crown's relations with the distant Viceroy.
[Sidenote: Royal letter to Columbus.]
Aguado bore a royal letter, which commanded Columbus to reduce the dependents of the colony to five hundred, as a necessary retrenchment. There had previously been a thousand. Directions were also given to control the apportionment of rations. A new metallurgist and master-miner, Pablo Belvis, was sent out, and extraordinary privileges in the working of the mines were given to him. Muñoz says that he introduced there the quicksilver process of separating the gold from the sand. A number of new priests were collected to take the place of those who had returned, or who desired to come back.
[Sidenote: Columbus and slavery.]
Such were the companions and instructions that Aguado was commissioned to bear to Columbus. There was still another movement in the policy of the Crown that offered the Viceroy little ground for reassurance. The prisoners which he had sent by the ships raised a serious question. It was determined that any transaction looking to the making slaves of them had not been authorized; but the desire of Columbus so to treat them had at first been met by a royal order directing their sale in the marts of Andalusia. A few days later, under the influence of Isabella, this order had been suspended, till an inquiry could be made into the cause of the capture of the Indians, and until the theologians could decide upon the justifiableness of such a sale. If we may believe Bernaldez, who pictures their misery, they were subsequently sold in Seville. Muñoz, however, says that he could not find that the trouble which harassed the theologians was ever decided. Such hesitancy was calculated to present a cruel dilemma to the Viceroy, since the only way in which the clamor of the Court for gold could be promptly appeased came near being prohibited by what Columbus must have called the misapplied mercy of the Queen. He failed to see, as Muñoz suggests, why vassals of the Crown, entering upon acts of resistance, should not be subjected to every sort of cruelty. Humboldt wonders at any hesitancy when the grand inquisitor, Torquemada, was burning heretics so fiercely at this time that such expiations of the poor Moors and Jews numbered 8,800 between 1481 and 1498!
[Sidenote: 1495. October. Aguado at Isabella.]
Aguado, with four caravels, and Diego Columbus accompanying him, having sailed from Cadiz late in August, 1495, reached the harbor of Isabella some time in October. The new commissioner found the Admiral absent, occupied with affairs in other parts of the island. Aguado soon made known his authority. It was embraced in a brief missive, dated April 9, 1495, and as Irving translates it, it read: "Cavaliers, esquires, and other persons, who by our orders are in the Indies, we send to you Juan Aguado, our groom of the chambers, who will speak to you on our part. We command you to give him faith and credit." The efficacy of such an order depended on the royal purpose that was behind it, and on the will of the commissioner, which might or might not conform to that purpose. It has been a plea of Irving and others that Aguado, elated by a transient authority, transcended the intentions of the monarchs. It is not easy to find a definite determination of such a question. It appears that when the instrument was proclaimed by trumpet, the general opinion did not interpret the order as a suspension of the Viceroy's powers. The Adelantado, who was governing in Columbus's absence, saw the new commissioner order arrests, countermand directions, and in various ways assume the functions of a governor. Bartholomew was in no condition to do more than mildly remonstrate. It was clearly not safe for him to provoke the great body of the discontented colonists, who professed now to find a champion sent to them by royal order.
[Sidenote: Meets Columbus.]
Columbus heard of Aguado's arrival, and at once returned to Isabella. Aguado, who had started to find him with an escort of horse, missed him on the road, and this delayed their meeting a little. When the conference came, Columbus, with a dignified and courteous air, bowed to a superior authority. It has passed into history that Aguado was disappointed at this quiet submission, and had hoped for an altercation, which might warrant some peremptory force. It is also said that later he endeavored to make it appear how Columbus had not been so complacent as was becoming.
It was soon apparent that this displacement of the Admiral was restoring even the natives to hope, and their caciques were not slow in presenting complaints, not certainly without reason, to the ascendant power, and against the merciless extortions of the Admiral.
[Sidenote: Accuses Columbus.]
The budget of accusations which Aguado had accumulated was now full enough, and he ordered the vessels to make ready to carry him back to Spain. The situation for Columbus was a serious one. He had in all this trial experienced the results of the intrigues of Margarite and Father Boyle. He knew of the damaging persuasiveness of the Pinzons. He had not much to expect from the advocacy of Diego. There was nothing for him to do but to face in person the charges as reënforced by Aguado. He resolved to return in the ships. "It is not one of the least singular traits in his history," says Irving, "that after having been so many years in persuading mankind that there was a new world to be discovered, he had almost an equal trouble in proving to them the advantage of the discovery." He himself never did prove it.
[Sidenote: Ships wrecked in the harbor.]
The ships were ready. They lay at anchor in the roadstead. A cloud of vapor and dust was seen in the east. It was borne headlong before a hurricane such as the Spaniards had never seen, and the natives could not remember its equal. It cut a track through the forests. It lashed the sea until its expanse seethed and writhed and sent its harried waters tossing in a seeming fright. The uplifted surges broke the natural barriers and started inland. The ships shuddered at their anchorage; cables snapped; three caravels sunk, and the rest were dashed on the beach. The tumult lasted for three hours, and then the sun shone upon the havoc.
There was but one vessel left in the harbor, and she was shattered. It was the "Nina," which had borne Columbus in his western cruise. As soon as the little colony recovered its senses, men were set to work repairing the solitary caravel, and constructing another out of the remnants of the wrecks.
[Sidenote: Miguel Diaz finds gold.]
[Sidenote: Hayna mines.]
[Sidenote: Solomon's Ophir.]
While this was going on, a young Spaniard, Miguel Diaz by name, presented himself in Isabella. He had been in the service of the Adelantado, and was not unrecognized. He was one who had some time before wounded another Spaniard in a duel, and, supposing that the wound was mortal, he had, with a few friends, fled into the woods and wandered away till he came to the banks of the Ozema, a river on the southern coast of the island, at the mouth of which the city of Santo Domingo now stands. Here, as he said, he had attracted the attention of a female cacique, there reigning, and had become her lover. She confided to him the fact that there were rich gold mines in her territory, and to make him more content in her company, she suggested that perhaps the Admiral, if he knew of the mines, would abandon the low site of Isabella, and find a better one on the Ozema. Acting on this suggestion, Diaz, with some guides, returned to the neighborhood of Isabella, and lingered in concealment till he learned that his antagonist had survived his wound. Then, making bold, he entered the town, as we have seen. His story was a welcome one, and the Adelantado was dispatched with a force to verify the adventurer's statement. In due time, the party returned, and reported that at a river named Hayna they had found such stores of gold that Cibao was poor in comparison. The explorers had seen the metal in all the streams; they observed it in the hillsides. They had discovered two deep excavations, which looked as if the mines had been worked at some time by a more enterprising people, since of these great holes the natives could give no account. Once more the Admiral's imagination was fired. He felt sure that he had come upon the Ophir of Solomon. These ancient mines must have yielded the gold which covered the great Temple. Had the Admiral not discovered already the course of the ships which sought it? Did they not come from the Persian gulf, round the Golden Chersonesus, and so easterly, as he himself had in the reverse way tracked the very course? Here was a new splendor for the Court of Spain. If the name of India was redolent of spices, that of Ophir could but be resplendent with gold! That was a message worth taking to Europe.
The two caravels were now ready. The Adelantado was left in command, with Diego to succeed in case of his death. Francisco Roldan was commissioned as chief magistrate, and the Fathers Juan Berzognon and Roman Pane remained behind to pursue missionary labors among the natives. Instructions were left that the valley of the Ozema should be occupied, and a fort built in it. Diaz, with his queenly Catalina, had become important.
[Sidenote: 1496. March 10. Columbus and Aguado sail for Spain, carrying Caonabo.]
There was a motley company of about two hundred and fifty persons, largely discontents and vagabonds, crowded into the two ships. Columbus was in one, and Aguado in the other. So they started on their adventurous and wearying voyage on March 10, 1496. They carried about thirty Indians in confinement, and among them the manacled Caonabo, with some of his relatives. Columbus told Bernaldez that he took the chieftain over to impress him with Spanish power, and that he intended to send him back and release him in the end. His release came otherwise. There is some disagreement of testimony on the point, some alleging that he was drowned during the hurricane in the harbor, but the better opinion seems to be that he died on the voyage, of a broken spirit. At any rate, he never reached Spain, and we hear of him only once while on shipboard.
[Sidenote: 1496. April 6.]
We have seen that on his return voyage in 1492 Columbus had pushed north before turning east. It does not appear how much he had learned of the experience of Torres's easterly passages. Perhaps it was only to make a new trial that he now steered directly east. He met the trade winds and the calms of the tropics, and had been almost a month at sea when, on April 6, he found himself still neighboring to the islands of the Caribs. His crew needed rest and provisions, and he bore away to seek them. He anchored for a while at Marigalante, and then passed on to Guadaloupe.
[Sidenote: At Guadaloupe.]
[Sidenote: 1496. June.]
[Sidenote: 1496. June 11. Cadiz.]
He had some difficulty in landing, as a wild, screaming mass of natives was gathered on the beach in a hostile manner. A discharge of the Spanish arquebuses cleared the way, and later a party scouring the woods captured some of the courageous women of the tribe. These were all released, however, except a strong, powerful woman, who, with a daughter, refused to be left, for the reason, as the story goes, that she had conceived a passion for Caonabo. By the 20th, the ships again set sail; but the same easterly trades baffled them, and another month was passed without much progress. By the beginning of June, provisions were so reduced that there were fears of famine, and it began to be considered whether the voyagers might not emulate the Caribs and eat the Indians. Columbus interfered, on the plea that the poor creatures were Christian enough to be protected from such a fate; but as it turned out, they were not Christian enough to be saved from the slave-block in Andalusia. The alert senses of Columbus had convinced him that land could not be far distant, and he was confirmed in this by his reckoning. These opinions of Columbus were questioned, however, and it was not at all clear in the minds of some, even of the experienced pilots who were on board, that they were so near the latitude of Cape St. Vincent as the Admiral affirmed. Some of these navigators put the ships as far north as the Bay of Biscay, others even as far as the English Channel. Columbus one night ordered sail to be taken in. They were too near the land to proceed. In the morning, they saw land in the neighborhood of Cape St. Vincent. On June 11, they entered the harbor of Cadiz.