II. COLUMBUS AND HIS DISCOVERY…

II. COLUMBUS AND HIS DISCOVERY

1492-1500.

EARLY EXPERIENCES—THE COMPACT—EMBARKATION AT PALOS—THE VOYAGE—DISCOVERY OF LAND—UNFAVORABLE COMPARISON WITH THE PARADISE OF MARCO POLO—CRUISE AMONG THE ISLANDS—ONE NATURE EVERYWHERE—DESERTION OF PINZON—WRECK OF THE SANTA MARÍA—THE FORTRESS OF LA NAVIDAD ERECTED—RETURN TO SPAIN—RIGHTS OF CIVILIZATION—THE PAPAL BULL OF PARTITION—FONSECA APPOINTED SUPERINTENDENT OF THE INDIES—SECOND VOYAGE—NAVIDAD IN RUINS—ISABELA ESTABLISHED—DISCONTENT OF THE COLONISTS—EXPLORATIONS OF THE INTERIOR—COASTING CUBA, AND DISCOVERY OF JAMAICA—FAILURE OF COLUMBUS AS GOVERNOR—INTERCOURSE WITH SPAIN—DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIANS—GOVERNMENT OF THE INDIES—DIEGO AND BARTOLOMÉ COLON—CHARGES AGAINST THE ADMIRAL—COMMISSION OF INQUIRY APPOINTED—SECOND RETURN TO SPAIN—THIRD VOYAGE—TRINIDAD DISCOVERED—SANTO DOMINGO FOUNDED—THE ROLDAN REBELLION—FRANCISCO DE BOBADILLA APPOINTED TO SUPERSEDE COLUMBUS—ARBITRARY AND INIQUITOUS CONDUCT OF BOBADILLA—COLUMBUS SENT IN CHAINS TO SPAIN.

In the developments of progress the agent, however subordinate to the event, cannot fail to command our intelligent curiosity. The fact is less one with us than the factor. The instrument is nearer us in pulsating humanity than the event, which is the result of inexorable causations wholly beyond our knowledge. That America could not have remained much longer hidden from the civilized world does not lessen the vivid interest which attaches to the man Columbus, as he plods along the dusty highway toward Huelva, leading by the hand his boy, and bearing upon his shoulders the more immediate destinies of nations.

Nor are we indifferent to the agencies that evolved the agent. Every signal success springs from a fortuitous conjunction of talent and opportunity; from a coalition of taste or training with the approaching fancy or dominant idea of the times. While assisting his father wool-combing, the youthful Genoese was toughening his sinews and acquiring habits of industry; while studying geometry and Latin at Pavia, while serving as sailor in the Mediterranean, or afterward cruising the high seas, he was knitting more firmly the tissues of his mind, and strengthening his courage for the life-conflict which was to follow. Without such discipline, in vain from the north and south and west might Progress come whispering him secrets; for inspiration without action is but impalpable breath, leaving no impression, and genius unseasoned by application decomposes to corruption all the more rank by reason of its richness.

His marriage with the daughter of Bartolommeo Perestrello, a distinguished navigator under Prince Henry; his map-making as means of support; his residence on the isle of Porto Santo, and his interest while there in maritime discovery; his conversations and correspondence with navigators and cosmographers in various quarters; his zealous study of the writings of Marco Polo, Benjamin of Tudela, and Carpini, and his eager absorption of the fantastic tale of Antonio Leone, of Madeira; his ponderings on ocean mysteries, and his struggles with poverty; his audience of John of Portugal, and the treachery of that monarch in attempting to anticipate his plans by secretly sending out a vessel, and the deserved defeat which followed; his sending his brother Bartolomé with proposals to England; his stealing from Lisbon with his son Diego, lest he should be arrested for debt; his supposed application to Genoa; his interviews with the dukes of Medina Sidonia and Medina Celi, and the letter of the latter to Queen Isabella of Castile; his visit to the court at Córdova, and the dark days attending it; the conference of learned men at Salamanca, and their unfavorable verdict; the weary waitings on the preoccupied sovereigns at Málaga and Seville; the succor given at La Rábida, and the worthy prior's intercession with the queen; the humble dignity of the mariner at Granada amidst scenes of oriental splendor and general rejoicings, which only intensified his discontent; the lofty constancy in his demands when once a royal hearing was obtained; the fresh disappointment after such long delay, and the proud bitterness of spirit with which he turned his back on Spain to seek in France a patron for his schemes; the final appeal of Santángel, who afterward assisted in obtaining the money, and the conversion of Isabella, who now offered, if necessary, to pledge her jewels to meet the charges of the voyage; the despatching of a royal courier after the determined fugitive, who returned in joy to receive the tardy aid—these incidents in the career of Columbus are a household story.

And therein, thus far, we see displayed great persistency of purpose by one possessed of a conception so stupendous as to overwhelm well-nigh the strongest; by one not over-careful in money-matters, or morality; proud and sensitive whenever the pet project is touched, but affable enough otherwise, and not above begging upon necessity. It was a long time to wait, eighteen years, when every day was one of alternate hope and despair; and they were not altogether worthless, those noiseless voices from another world, which kept alive in him the inspiration that oft-times now appeared as the broken tracery of a half-remembered dream.

[Sidenote: TERMS OF AGREEMENT.]

An agreement was made by the sovereigns and the mariner, that to Columbus, his heirs and successors forever, should be secured the office of admiral, and the titles of viceroy and governor-general of all the lands and seas he should discover, with power to nominate candidates from whom the sovereigns might choose rulers for the realms discovered; that one tenth of the net returns of gold, pearls, or other commodities brought therefrom should be his; that in disputes arising from the new traffic he, or his lieutenant, should be sole arbitrator within his domain, the high admiral of Castile being judge within his district; and that by contributing one eighth of the cost of any enterprise to the regions found by him he should receive one eighth the profits. To these dignities and prerogatives was added the right of the discoverer, and of his heirs, to prefix to their names the title 'Don,' which should elevate them into respectability beside the grandees of Spain. This agreement was signed by Ferdinand as well as by Isabella, although the crown of Castile alone assumed the risk, and alone was to receive the benefit.

* * * * *

It was not a common spectacle in those days along the southern seaboard of Spain, that of science urging religion into its service. Nevertheless, by royal order, reiterated by Peñalosa in person with pronounced effect, the devil-fearers of Palos were forced to provide ships and seamen for what they regarded as anything but an orthodox adventure. This they did with the greatest reluctance.

Even under pressure of that civil and ecclesiastical system so completely interwoven in Spain that to disobey one was rebellion against both, even in the face of king and priest, these mechanical sea-farers, who halted not before tangible danger in any form, shrank from the awful uncertainty of a plunge into the mysteries of the dim, lowering, unintelligible west. Then came bravely forward the brothers Pinzon, and not only assisted in providing two ships, so that Queen Isabella, after all, might wear her jewels while her deputy was scouring the high seas for new dominions, but furnished Columbus with money to equip another vessel and to pay his eighth of the charge which should secure him one eighth of the profits—a service never sufficiently remembered or rewarded by either Columbus, his masters, or successors.

[Sidenote: FIRST VOYAGE.]

The expedition comprised one hundred and twenty men, in three small vessels, the Santa María, decked, and carrying the flag of the admiral, and the Pinta and Niña, open caravels, commanded by Martin Alonso Pinzon and Vicente Yañez Pinzon respectively. Among others were the inspector-general of the armament, Rodrigo Sanchez; the chief alguacil, Diego de Arana; the royal notary, Rodrigo de Escobar; and four pilots, Francisco Martin Pinzon, Sancho Ruiz, Pedro Alonso Niño, and Bartolomé Roldan. The commander-in-chief with his tall, enduring form bowed by an idea; his long, thin face, with its large, round eyes, high forehead, straight, pointed nose; features, in which tenacity and gloom struggled for the predominance, surrounded by thin locks and gray beard—was scarcely a personage either to inspire confidence or win affection. The squadron sailed from the port of Palos August 3, 1492.

But for the fact that it was the first, the voyage was quite commonplace; the most serious occurrences being the breaking of a rudder, which obliged the expedition to put in at the Canaries for repairs, and the variation of the needle, which caused a little fright among the pilots. The sea was tranquil, toward the last extremely so, and the wind generally favorable; yet no small trepidation attended this gradual loosening of hold upon the substantial world, and the drifting daily farther and farther into the fathomless unknown. Hence it was with the wildest joy that early in the morning of the 12th of October the cry of Land! was heard, and that soon afterward the venturesome navigators felt beneath their feet the indubitable isle to which they gave the name San Salvador, taking possession for Castile.

Now the sovereigns had promised that he who first saw land should be recompensed by a pension of ten thousand maravedís, equivalent to thirty-six dollars. It was at two o'clock in the morning that Rodrigo de Triana, a mariner on board the Pinta, gave the signal, the first that proved true after several had been mistakenly made; whereupon he claimed the reward. But previously, during the night, Columbus had fancied he descried a fitful light that should be on some shore. On the strength of this surmise he secured to himself the insignificant sum, which, to say nothing of its justness, was not a very magnanimous proceeding in so great a discoverer. We are told of Triana, that, burning under a sense of wrong, after returning to Spain, he passed into Africa and turned Mahometan. However this may have been, dawn had shown them the island, which seemed itself but dawn, to be dispelled by the full sun's rays when the night's dream had passed. Over the trackless waste of sea, suspended between earth and sky, the good ships had felt their way, until now, like goddesses, they sat at anchor on the other side of Ocean.

* * * * *

Though this land was unlike the Zipangu of his dreams, Columbus was not disposed to complain; but rather, midst tears and praises, to kiss the earth, be it of whatsoever quality, and smile benignantly upon the naked natives that crept timidly forward, wondering whether the ships were monsters of the deep, or bright beings dropped from heaven.

Of a truth, it was a wonderful place, this India of Marco Polo that the Genoese now sought. Intersected by rivers and canals, spanned by bridges under which the largest ships might sail, were fertile provinces fragrant with fruit and spices. Mangi alone boasted twelve thousand cities with gorgeous palaces, whose pillars and roofs were emblazoned in gold, and so situated as to be compassed within a few days' travel. The cities and fortresses of Cathay were counted by tens of thousands, and their busy population by millions. On every side were gardens and luxurious groves; pleasure-boats and banqueting-barges floated on the lakes, and myriads of white sails swept over the bays. The mountains were veined with silver, the river-beds paved with gold, and pearls were as common as pebbles. Sheep were as large as oxen, and oxen were as large as elephants. Birds of brilliant plumage filled the enchanting air, and strange beasts of beauty and utility roamed the forests. The inhabitants were arrayed in silks and furs, and fed on luscious viands; there were living springs that cured all diseases. The army of the great Khan, the happy ruler of all these glories, was in number as the grains of the sand which the sea surrounds; and as for vessels of war, and horses, and elephants, there were a thousand times ten thousand. What a contrast to such a creation was this low-lying strip of jungle-covered sand, peopled by copper-hued creatures dwelling in huts, and sustaining life by the natural products of the unkempt earth! This, however, was but an outlying island of Cathay; the main-land of Asia could not be far distant; in any event, here was India, and these people were Indians.

[Sidenote: THE TWO INDIAS COMPARED.]

There was little enough, now appearing, in the India thus far found to enrich Spain. In their noses the natives displayed gold, always a royal monopoly when discovered; and they brought cotton for barter, on which the admiral immediately laid the same restriction. Being informed, by signs, that the metal came from the south, after examining the shore thereabout in boats, the Spaniards set sail on the 14th, took possession of Santa María de la Concepcion on the 15th, of Fernandina, now Exuma, the day following, and afterward of Isabela, now Isla Larga, or Long Island; also of a group to which they gave the name Islas de Arena. Soils and other substances, atmospheres and sunshines, were all familiar; plants and animals, though differing in degree and kind, were similar to those they had always been accustomed to see. One creation was everywhere apparent; one nature; one rule. It was wonderful, stupendous! And if these human kind have souls, what a mighty work is here to fit them for eternity!

Crossing the Bahama Bank, they came on the 28th to Cuba, which Columbus called Juana, and which, with its dense uprolling green spangled with parrots, gay woodpeckers, and humming-birds, scarlet flamingoes and glittering insects; its trees of royal palm, cocoanut, cedar, mahogany, and shrubs of spicy fragrance; its unknown fruits and foods; its transparent waters whose finny denizens flashed back the sunlight from their variegated scales, all under the brightest of skies, all breathed upon by softest airs, and lapped in serenest seas, was more like his own Zipangu, if, indeed, it was not Mangi itself.

Coasting eastward, the Pinta sailed away and left the other vessels, and it was with deep chagrin that Columbus saw no attention paid his signals to return. Pinzon had heard of gold-fields in advance of him, and he was going to reap them. The wreck of the Santa María a month afterward, leaving the admiral only the little Niña, made his situation all the more critical, and made him feel more keenly than ever the desertion. Nor was this the first indication of mutiny and disruption among his people during the voyage. If the truth must be told, the character of the man, though inured to the cruel hardihood of the age, seems here to be undergoing change; else it was not originally as either he or his friends have estimated. The new and varied experiences amidst the new and varied phenomena attending the idea and its consummation make it a matter of no wonder that his head began to be a little turned. He had pondered painfully on what Aristotle taught regarding the sphericity of the earth, on what Seneca said about sailing to the Indies westwardly, and on the terrestrial paradise placed by Dante at the antipodes of the holy city; and now he was here among those happy regions of which so long ago philosophers had spoken and poets sung. Under the inspiration of rare intelligence, and by wonderful courage and force of will, this Genoese sailor had brought to his own terms the world's proudest sovereigns. Success, in his mind the most perfect, the most complete, was by this time proved beyond peradventure. At the outset he had suspected himself the special agent of the supernatural; now he was sure of it. It was meet, therefore, that all men should fear and obey him. Impelled to activity, he was impelled, if necessary, to severity. During the passage he had deemed it expedient several times to mislead the sailors, who were consequently backward about reposing in him the respect and confidence due a commander. Suspicious of the Spanish sovereigns from the first, his fears constantly increased as the magnitude of his discovery slowly unfolded before him, that he should eventually be robbed of it. He was jealous lest any of those who had shared with him the perils of the adventure should secure to themselves some part of the honor or profit attending it. He had quarrelled with the Pinzons, who, having staked their money and lives on what was generally regarded a mad risk, thought some consideration from the commander their due. The admiral's temper was tamed somewhat by the very boldness of Pinzon's act; for when the Pinta returned from her cruisings, little was then said about it; but if ever the opportunity should come, her commander must pay dearly for his disobedience.

[Sidenote: SAILING AMONG THE ISLANDS.]

Cuba failed to display any opulent oriental city, but furnished tobacco and maize, gifts from savagism to civilization as comforting, perhaps, as any received in return. The mariners next discovered and coasted Hayti, or Española, thus occupying the greater part of December. On the northern side of the island, out of the wrecked Santa María and her belongings, Columbus built and equipped a fortress, which he called La Navidad; and leaving there thirty-nine men under command of Diego de Arana, with Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escobedo, lieutenants, on the 4th of January, 1493, he embarked for Spain. Those left behind were expected by the ardent-minded admiral, during his absence, to obtain, in trade, a ton of gold, beside discovering mines and spices.

Violent storms attended the homeward voyage; but on the 15th of March the expedition reached Palos in safety, after touching at the Azores and the coast of Portugal. Then followed rejoicings. Over Spain, over Europe, the tidings flew: A New World to the westward! Bells rang and choirs pealed hosannas. A New World for Spain; now were their Catholic Majesties well paid for their losses and trials in connection with Mahometans and Jews!

With six natives, and divers birds and plants and other specimens from the Islands, Columbus set out for Barcelona, then the residence of the Spanish sovereigns. Throughout the journey, the highway and houses were thronged with spectators eager for a glimpse of the strange spectacle. Arrived at court, the great mariner was most graciously received, being permitted even to be seated in the presence of royalty. He told his tale. It is said that all present wept. Columbus was as much excited as any. In a delirium of joy he vowed within seven years to appoint an army of four thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the rescue of Jerusalem, and to pay the cost out of his own pocket; but, unfortunately, he never found himself in funds sufficient to fulfil his pious promise. The original compact between the sovereigns and the discoverer was confirmed, and to the latter was granted a family coat of arms. While Columbus was fêted by the nobles, and all the world resounded with his praises, Martin Alonso Pinzon lay a-dying; the reward for his invaluable services, exceeding a hundred-fold all that Isabella and Ferdinand together had done, being loss of property, loss of health, the insults of the admiral, the scorn of the queen, all now happily crowned by speedy death.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A HAPPY PEOPLE.]

Never had nature made, within historic times, a paradise more perfect than this Cuba and this Hayti that the Genoese had found. Never was a sylvan race more gentle, more hospitable than that which peopled this primeval garden. Naked, because they needed not clothing; dwelling under palm-leaves, such being sufficient protection; their sustenance the spontaneous gifts of the ever generous land and sea; undisturbed by artificial curbings and corrections, and tormented by no ambitions, their life was a summer day, as blissful as mortals can know. It was as Eden; without work they might enjoy all that earth could give. Disease and pain they scarcely knew; only death was terrible. In their social intercourse they were sympathizing, loving, and decorous, practising the sublimest religious precepts without knowing it, and obeying Christ more perfectly than many who profess to serve him. With strangers the men were frank, cordial, honest; the women artless and compliant. Knowing no guile, they suspected none. Possessing all things, they gave freely of that which cost them nothing. Having no laws, they broke none; circumscribed by no conventional moralities, they were not immoral. If charity be the highest virtue, and purity and peace the greatest good, then were these savages far better and happier beings than any civilization could boast. That they possessed any rights, any natural or inherent privileges in regard to their lands or their lives; that these innocent and inoffensive people were not fit subjects for coercion, treachery, robbery, enslavement, and slaughter, was a matter which seems never to have been questioned at that time by either discoverer, adventurer, or ruler. However invalid in any of the Spanish courts might have been the argument of a house-breaker, that in the room he entered he discovered a purse of gold, and took it, Spaniards never thought of applying such logic to themselves in regard to the possessions of the natives in the new lands their Genoese had found.

What Spain required now was a title such as the neighboring nations of Europe should recognize as valid. So far as the doctrine was concerned, of appropriating to themselves the possessions of others, they were all equally sound in it. Europe with her steel and saltpetre and magnetic needle was stronger than naked barbarians, whose possessions were thereupon seized as fast as found. The right to such robbery has been held sacred since the earliest records of the human race; and it was by this time legalized by the civilized nations. Savagism had no rights which civilization was bound to respect. The world belonged not to Christian or Mahometan, but to whatever idea, principle, or power could take it. In none of their pretended principles, in none of their codes of honor or ethics, was there any other ultimate appeal than brute force; their deity they made to fit the occasion, whatever that might be. This they did not know, however. They thought themselves patterns of justice and fair morality; and all that troubled them was in what attitude they would stand toward each other with regard to their several discoveries and conquests. But while such was the recognized condition of affairs at the beginning of the sixteenth century among the reckless adventurers of Spain, such were not the teachings of the Church, nor the views of the intelligent and right thinking men of the time. True, the army of fortune-seekers who first rushed to the new world in search of gold came for lust and plunder, but with them, and inspired with very different motives, came the missionaries of the cross, pointing the savages to civilization and a purer religion than their own. But civilization and religion, it must be confessed, had little to recommend them in the examples of unprincipled men who were ever present to give the lie to the teachings of the priests.

[Sidenote: THE WORLD PARTITIONED BY THE POPE.]

Thus it was that the Spanish sovereigns, being Christian, applied for a confirmation of title to Alexander VI., then sovereign pontiff of Christendom, at the same time insinuating, in a somewhat worldly fashion, that learned men regarded the rights of their Catholic Majesties secure enough even without such confirmation. No valid objections before the holy tribunal could be raised against Christian princes powerful enough to sustain their pretensions to ownership while propagating the true faith in heathen lands; but Pope Eugene IV. and his successors had already granted Portugal all lands discovered by Portuguese from Cape Bojador to the Indies. In order, therefore, to avoid conflict, the bull issued the 2d of May, 1493, ceding Spain the same rights respecting discoveries already granted Portugal, was on the day following defined to this effect:—An imaginary line of demarcation should be drawn from pole to pole, one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands; all lands discovered east of that line should be Portugal's, while west of that line all should belong to Spain. Thus by a very mortal breath and the flourish of a pen, the unknown world, with all its multitudes of interests and inhabitants, was divided between these two sovereignties, occupying the peninsula of south-western Europe; though in their wisdom they forgot that if the world was round, Portugal in going east and Spain in going west must somewhere meet, and might yet quarrel on the other side. Subsequently, that is to say on the 7th of June, 1494, by treaty between Spain and Portugal the papal line of partition was removed, making it three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, Portugal having complained of want of sea-room for southern enterprise. This removal ultimately gave the Portuguese Brazil. And ecclesiastics claim that care was ever exercised by the Spanish crown to comply with the obligations thus laid upon it by this holy sanction.

Appointed to take charge of the affairs of the New World was Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, arch-deacon of Seville, and afterward patriarch of the Indies. Although high in ecclesiastical preferment, he was a bustling man of business, and ably filled the office during a period of some thirty years. Of unflinching devotion to his sovereign, sedate, stern in the accomplishment of his duty, and obliged as he was, in the interests of the crown, to exercise occasional restraint on the rashness or presumption of the conquerors, he incurred their enmity and was reviled by their biographers. That he was retained so long in office by such able monarchs as Ferdinand and Charles goes far to prove invalid the charges of misrule and villainy so liberally made against him. Associated with Fonseca was Francisco Pinelo, as treasurer, and Juan de Soria as contador, or auditor. Their chief office was at Seville, with a custom-house at Cádiz belonging to the same department. This was the germ of the famous Casa de Contratacion de las Indias, or India House of Trade, so long dominant in the government of the New World.

[Sidenote: THE SECOND VOYAGE.]

Thus all went swimmingly. Columbus found no difficulty in fitting out a fleet for a second venture, a royal order being issued that all captains, with their ships and crews, in all the Andalusian ports, should hold themselves in readiness for that purpose. Seventeen vessels sailed from Cádiz the 25th of September, 1493, having on board twelve hundred persons,—miners, mechanics, agriculturists, and gentlemen,—with horses, cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, and fowls; the seeds of vegetables, of orchard fruits, of oranges, lemons, and grain for planting; together with provisions, medicines, implements, goods for trade, arms, ammunition, and all the requirements for founding a colony. Among the passengers were Diego Colon, the admiral's brother, Bernal Diaz de Pisa, contador, Fermin Cedo, assayer, and Alonso de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa, subsequently famous in New World discoveries; also twelve priests, chief among whom was Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine monk, sent by the pope as his apostolic vicar, with all the ornaments and vestments for full service, which always had a wonderful effect upon the natives. The work of conversion had already been begun by baptizing in solemn state the six savages brought over by Columbus, Ferdinand and Isabella with Prince Juan standing sponsors. The 3d of November the expedition reached Dominica, so named from the day of arrival, Sunday. Next was discovered an island to which Columbus gave the name of his ship, Marigalante; then Guadalupe, where were tamed geese, and pine-apples, also human bones, significant of the presence of the horror-breeding Caribs, or cannibals. Thus cruising among these Caribbee Islands, and naming them one after another, Columbus continued his way and finally came to Navidad, only to find the fortress in ruins, its former occupants having fallen victims to their own follies.

Choosing a site a little to the east of Navidad, still on the north side of Hayti, the Spaniards landed their effects, and laid out a city, which they called Isabela, surrounding it with ramparts. As soon as the vessels could be laden with gold, they were to be sent back to Spain; but the death of the Spaniards left at Navidad had somewhat marred original plans.

While Columbus lay ill, directing affairs as best he might, early in January, 1494, two parties under Ojeda and Gorvalan reconnoitred the island, each in a different direction, and returning, reported gold. As it was inconvenient to their anchorage, and as many of the colonists were prostrate with disease, it was deemed best to let the ships go back empty rather than detain them longer; hence, on the 2d of February, twelve of the largest craft put to sea under command of Antonio de Torres, having on board further specimens of the people and products of the country. By this departure was sent a request for immediate supplies.

Murmurs now arose against Columbus, the sick and disappointed ones complaining most loudly that he had deceived them, had lured them thither with false hopes to die. And they begged Diaz de Pisa, already at the head of a faction, and Cedo, who said there was not gold in those isles in paying quantities, to seize the remaining ships and sail with them for Spain. But the admiral hearing of it, arrested Diaz, and held him in irons on board one of the vessels to await trial in Spain.

Recovered from illness, Columbus left his brother Diego in command at Isabela, and set out, at the head of four hundred men, for the golden mountains of Cibao, in the interior of the island, intending there to build a fortress, and to work the mines on an extensive scale. Arrived at a favorable locality, where gold seemed plentiful in the brooks, the Spaniards threw up a strong wooden fort, which they called Santo Tomás, a piece of pleasantry aimed at the doubting assayer, Cedo. Leaving in command Pedro Margarite, Columbus returned to Isabela. Afterward a smaller post was built, called Magdalena, and the command was given to Luis de Arriaga.

The natives could not welcome so large an invasion, which they now clearly saw would bring upon them serious results. Thereupon they withdrew from the vicinity of Santo Tomás, refusing all intercourse with its inmates; and as a Spanish hidalgo could by no means work, even at gold-gathering, success in that direction was not marked. Provisions and medicine then began to fail, and fresh discontent arose, even Father Buil arraying himself in opposition to the admiral.

As much to keep his people occupied as through any expectation of profit, Columbus sent another expedition into the interior of Hayti, and himself crossed to the south side of Cuba in three caravels, intending thence to reach Cathay. Soon he discovered to the southward a lofty isle, which he called at first Santa Gloria, then Santiago, but which finally retained its native name, Jamaica, that is to say, Island of Springs. After reaching nearly the western end of Cuba, thinking it still the continent of Asia, and that possibly he might by that way reach Spain, in which event he could then see what was beyond, he coasted the south sides of Jamaica and Hayti, and returned to Isabela, where he arrived insensible from excitement and fatigue. When he awoke to bodily suffering, which for a time had been drowned in delirious energy, there, to his great joy, he found his brother Bartolomé, who had come from Spain with three well-laden ships to his assistance.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: COLONIZATION A FAILURE.]

Great events generally choose great men for their accomplishment, though not unfrequently we see no small dust raised by an insignificant agent. As a mariner and discoverer, Columbus had no superior; as colonist and governor, he had by this time proved himself a failure. There are some things great men cannot do as well as their inferiors. It was one thing to rule at sea, and quite another to rule on shore. In bringing to his India these unruly Spaniards, he had sown for himself the whirlwind. Had he been more judicious in the selection of his followers, his later days would have been more successful as well as more peaceful. Discovery was his infatuation; he was never for a moment unattended by a consuming curiosity to find a western way to civilized India. Had he been possessed of sound practical judgment in the matter, of the same knowledge of himself and of political affairs that he had of navigation, he would have seen that he could not, at the same time, gratify his passion for discovery and successfully govern colonies. In his fatal desire to assume rulership, and upon the ill-understood reports of simple savages, with no knowledge of the resources or capabilities of the country, without definite purpose or mature plans, he had brought upon himself an avalanche of woes. Beside his incapacity for such a task, his position was rendered all the more trying by the fact that he was a foreigner, whose arbitrary acts galled his impatient subordinates, and finally wrought them to the pitch of open rebellion. The Spaniards were quick enough to perceive that this Genoese sailor was in no wise fitted to lay the foundation of a prosperous Spanish colony; and when during his absence he left in command his brother, to whom attached no prestige of high achievement to make up for his misfortune in not being born in Spain, complications grew daily worse. Even the ecclesiastics were against the admiral; for with a foresight born of a deep study of human nature they saw that between the fires of the real and the unreal this man was becoming mad. They saw the religious hypochondria, which had already inflamed his intellect, now aggravated by the anxieties incident to the government of a turbulent element under circumstances unprecedented, undermining his health, and bringing rapidly upon him those mental and physical distempers which rendered the remainder of his life prolonged misery. Thus we may plainly see how Columbus brought upon himself the series of calamities which are commonly found charged to unscrupulous sovereigns and villainous rivals.

And thickly enough misfortunes were laid upon him on his return to Isabela. Margarite, who had been ordered to explore the island, leaving Ojeda in command at Santo Tomás, had abandoned himself to licentious idleness, followed by outrages upon the natives, which notwithstanding their pacific disposition had driven them to retaliation.

[Sidenote: TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES.]

And here was the beginning of these four centuries of such rank injustice, such horrible atrocities inflicted by the hand of the stronger upon the weaker, of the civilized upon the savage, that should make a man blush to own kinship to a race so defiled before its maker in whose image it was created.

It is the self-same story, old and new, from Española to Darien and Mexico, from Brazil to Labrador, and from Patagonia to Alaska, by sailor and cavalier, Spaniard and Englishman, by gold-hunter and fur-hunter—the unenlightened red man welcoming with wonder his destroyer, upon whom he is soon forced to turn to save himself, his wife, his children, but only at last to fall by the merciless arm of development beneath the pitiable destiny of man primeval.

Throwing off all pretence of allegiance to Columbus, when satiated with his excesses, Margarite, with a mutinous crew at his heels and accompanied by Father Buil, had taken such ships as best suited them and had departed for Spain. Two caciques, or native chieftains, Guatiguana, and Caonabo the Carib, with their followers had arisen in arms, had killed some of the Spaniards, had besieged Magdalena and Santo Tomás, and had even cast an ominous eye on Isabela. Such were the chief occurrences at the settlement during the absence of the admiral.

First of all, Columbus made his brother Bartolomé adelantado, that is to say, leader of an enterprise, or governor of a frontier province. Then he sent relief to the fortress of Magdalena, and established another military post near where was subsequently Santiago, which he called Concepcion. Later the chain was continued by building other posts; one near the Rio Yaquí, called Santa Catalina, and one on the river Yaquí, called Esperanza. Meanwhile Ojeda offered to take the redoubtable Carib, Caonabo, by stratagem; which was accomplished, while he was surrounded by a multitude of warriors, by first winning the admiration and confidence of the cacique, and then on the plea of personal ornamentation and display obtaining his consent to wear some beautiful bright manacles, and sit bound behind Ojeda on his steed; in which plight he was safely brought by the dashing cavalier at the head of his horsemen into Isabela.

About this time Antonio de Torres arrived with four ships from Spain, and was sent back with the gold which had been collected, and five hundred Indians to be sold as slaves. By this departure went Diego Colon to refute the charges of incompetency and maladministration now being preferred against his brother at court.

Though suffering from a fresh attack of fever, on the 27th of March, 1495, accompanied by the adelantado and all his available forces, Columbus set out from Isabela to subjugate the caciques of the island, who had combined to extirpate the Spaniards. Charging the naked red men amidst the noise of drum, trumpet, and halloo, with horse and bloodhound, lance, sabre, and firelock, a peace was soon conquered. Multitudes of the inhabitants were butchered, and upon the rest was imposed such cruel tribute that they gradually sank beneath the servitude. But when the white men thus had the domain to themselves, they did not know what to do with it. It was not for them to till the soil, or labor in the mines; hence famine threatened, and they were finally reduced to the last extremity.

There is little wonder, under the circumstances, that orders were issued in Spain to depose Columbus, first by the appointment of a commission of inquiry, and finally by removal.

[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT OF THE INDIES.]

Thus far the government of the Indies, as the New World began to be called, had been administered solely by the admiral, according to agreement, with Fonseca as superintendent in Spain. None but they were permitted to freight or despatch any vessel to the New World. Columbus was authorized to appoint two subordinate officers subject to royal sanction; and yet the sovereigns took offense when he named Bartolomé adelantado, which office was not that of lieutenant-governor, as many writers aver, but nearer that of territorial governor, with political as well as military powers, usually appointed by and subject only to the king. Assuming a certain degree of state, the admiral appeared at Isabela richly dressed, with ten escuderos de á pié, or squires of foot, and twenty familiares, composing his civil and military family. He had been directed before leaving Spain to appoint in each of the several settlements or colonies which should be planted an alcalde, or justice, exercising the combined duties of mayor and judge, with jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases, appeal being to the admiral; also an alguacil mayor, or high sheriff; and, if necessary, an ayuntamiento, or town council. All edicts, orders, and commissions must be issued in the name of the sovereigns, countersigned by the notary, with the royal seal affixed. The admiral had been further directed to build a warehouse where the royal stores should be kept, and all traffic should be subject to his direction. When he sailed upon his Cuban expedition he left for the direction of the colony a junta, of which his brother Diego was president, and Alonso Sanchez Carvajal, Juan de Luxan, Pedro Fernandez Coronel, and Father Buil, councillors.

Diego Colon was a well-meaning man, gentle and discreet, approaching in visage and dress nearer the priest than the cavalier; he was neither shrewd nor energetic. Bartolomé was quite the opposite, and in many respects was the ablest of the brothers. Powerful in mind and body, authoritative and determinate in demeanor, generous in disposition, fearless in spirit, a thorough seaman, a man of no narrow worldly experience, fairly educated, and talented with the pen, he was neither the amiable, inefficient Diego, nor the dreamy, enthusiastic admiral.

Quick to notice in their deputy any indication of misrule, or undue assumption of authority, their Majesties did not fail to lend an attentive ear to the charges preferred against him. Yet the record does not show from first to last that either Isabella or Ferdinand ever really desired or intended to do Columbus injustice or injury. When Torres returned from Spain, after the first accusation had been made, the sovereigns, besides a letter expressing the warmest confidence in the discoverer, and high consideration for the affairs of the colony, sent a special real provision ordering all to obey the admiral as themselves, under penalty of ten thousand maravedís for every offence. When further accusations came, instead of divesting him of his authority, they sent as commissioner of inquiry Juan Aguado, a warm friend of the admiral. Often they checked Fonseca's too harsh measures with regard to Columbus and his brothers, and interposed their royal protection from such officers as acted too severely under the exasperating folly of the admiral. To satisfy the discoverer would have been impossible for any patron, so wild were his desires, so chimerical his plans, so injudicious his acts.

* * * * *

Aguado arrived at Isabela in October. He brought four caravels laden with supplies, and Diego Colon, passenger. Soon it was noised abroad that the conduct of the admiral was to be questioned, whereat both white men and red rejoiced. Aguado could but see the pitiable state of things upon the island, idleness, poverty, excesses, and disobedience among the colonists, folly and mismanagement among the rulers, and seeing, could but report accordingly; for which, and for no other reasons that I am able to discover, the biographers of Columbus heap upon the commissioner opprobrious epithets.

When Aguado returned to Spain, Columbus accompanied him to make such excuses before the sovereigns as best he might. They embarked from Isabela March 10, 1496, leaving the adelantado in command, and carrying with them two hundred and twenty-five disaffected colonists, and a number of Indian captives, among whom was the proud and once powerful chieftain, Caonabo, so treacherously taken by Ojeda. Contrary winds and starvation attended them, Caonabo dying during the voyage. Arrived at Cádiz in June, the admiral found Pedro Alonso Niño about to sail with three caravels for Hayti. Niño carried out more priests, and brought back more slaves.

Columbus appeared in Spain in a Franciscan garb and with dejected demeanor. To all the world, except to himself, it was by this time evident that his gorgeous India was a myth, and settlement on the supposition of its existence a mistake. He seemed now dazed by reverses, as formerly he had been dazed by successes. Nevertheless, he continued to make as much as possible of his discoveries, parading a brother of Caonabo in a broad gold collar with a massive gold chain attached.

Still the sovereigns were gracious. They scarcely alluded to the complaints and ever-increasing charges against the admiral, but confirmed anew his dignities, enlarged his perquisites, and showed him every kindness. The title of adelantado was formally vested by them in Bartolomé. When asked for more ships and money, they readily granted both; moreover, they offered the admiral a tract of land in Hayti, twenty-five by fifty leagues, which, however, he declined; they offered him sixty sailors, a hundred and forty soldiers, one hundred miners, mechanics, and farmers, and thirty women, the services of all to be paid by the crown. But because there was some delay, occasioned by the operations in Italy and the armada for Flanders, the biographers of the admiral again break out in abuse of the sovereigns and their servants. The truth is, Ferdinand and Isabella stood by the Genoese much longer than did their subjects. For example, when certain millions of maravedís, equivalent to over a hundred thousand dollars to-day, had been appropriated, and eight vessels equipped, so unpopular had the admiral and his enterprises become, that it was found necessary to press sailors into the service, and empty the prisons for colonists. And it was only when their admiral, viceroy, and governor of the Indies so far forgot himself, when on the point of sailing, as publicly, and with his own hand and foot, to strike down and kick Jimeno de Berviesca, an official under Fonseca, that the sovereigns began to realize the unfitness of Columbus for the management of colonies. It was a serious offense to attack a public servant; and when this was done under the very eyes of royalty, and by the man they had so delighted to honor, the truth came home to them, and they never afterward regarded the Genoese with the same degree of favor. Yet for his great merits, his genius, enthusiasm, and perseverance, and for the glory unparalleled conferred by him on Spain, they would ever be to him just and generous. He could never become again the pauper pilot, as he had been called at Granada while begging help for his first voyage.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THIRD VOYAGE.]

Two vessels were despatched to the colony under Pedro Fernandez Coronel early in 1498. On the 30th of May Columbus embarked from San Lúcar with six vessels, arrived at the northern seaboard of South America, and discovered there the isle of Trinidad the 31st of July, sailed through the gulf of Paria, where gold and pearls were seen in profusion, discovered the Margarita Islands, and came to Hayti, arriving off the river Ozema, on the southern side of the island, the 30th of August.

Prior to the last departure of the admiral for Spain, gold had been discovered in this vicinity, and during his absence a military post, called San Cristóbal, had been planted there, and at the adjacent harbor a fort built, which was named Santo Domingo, and which was from this time the capital of the Indies. At intervals during the past two years, the adelantado at the head of his marauders had scoured the island, collecting the quarterly tribute, and making observation on such measures as he thought might increase the same. Insurrections had been occasionally organized by the caciques, but were usually stifled by the prompt and politic action of the adelantado. Many of the colonists had gradually relaxed in their loyalty to Columbus, until finally, at the instigation of Francisco Roldan, they declared their independence of the adelantado, though still acknowledging fealty to Spain. After creating no small disturbance about Concepcion and Isabela, Roldan had retired with his band to the province of Jaraguá.

[Sidenote: AFFAIRS AT SANTO DOMINGO.]

On landing at Santo Domingo, the admiral first proclaimed his approval of the adelantado's measures, and then set about to pacify the colonists. With the common people, many officers of trust had joined the revolt of Roldan. Columbus offered amnesty to all, which was at first refused, and letters from both sides were sent to Spain. But at length there was reconciliation; Roldan became a partisan of Columbus, and assisted in subduing other hostile factions, which resulted in flinging Adrian de Moxica off the battlements of Fort Concepcion.

The distracted state of the colony, the continued charges against Columbus, and the inadequate returns from large outlays, impelled the sovereigns to send out another commission with power to punish offenders, civil and criminal, and, if necessary, to supersede the admiral in the government. The commissioner chosen for this purpose was Francisco de Bobadilla, an arrogant, shallow-minded man, who delighted rather in degrading merit than in exercising justice. He was authorized by letters patent to acquaint himself concerning the truth of the rebellion against the admiral; what robberies, cruelties, or other overt acts had been committed; he was directed to seize the person and sequestrate the property of any offender, or punish in any way he might deem best. A provisional letter was addressed by the sovereigns to the admiral of the ocean sea, ordering him to surrender to the commissioner all forts, arms, ships, houses, cattle, or other public property, which letter was to be used only if necessary. Bobadilla, accompanied by a body-guard of twenty-five men, sailed with two caravels in July, 1500, and arrived at Santo Domingo on the 23d of August. By this opportunity some of the Indians sent over by Columbus as slaves were returned in charge of six friars. It is doubtful whether the enslavement of the red man could ever have been made profitable, but whether it could or not, the Catholic Church is entitled to much credit for thus promptly setting its foot upon the diabolical traffic which had already received the approval of some of the first jurists of the day. Indeed the doctrine that the Indians were not endowed with souls was rapidly spreading, and had found many believers, and had not the pope fortunately at this juncture decided against the proposition, the subject of Indian slavery would not have been so easily or so quickly settled.

[Sidenote: UNWARRANTED CONDUCT OF BOBADILLA.]

Among the first objects to meet the eye of Bobadilla, on landing, were the bodies of two Spaniards swinging from gibbets, which argued not very favorably for the quietude of the island. Columbus was absent at Fort Concepcion; the adelantado and Roldan were pursuing rebels in Jaraguá; Diego Colon, who was in charge at Santo Domingo, was peremptorily commanded to surrender certain prisoners, which he refused to do until the admiral, whose commission was higher than that of Bobadilla, and under whom he served, should order it.

Thereupon Bobadilla broke open the jail, and the prisoners were finally set at liberty. He not only assumed the custody of the crown property, but he entered the house of Columbus, took possession of his effects, and made his residence there. He sided with the late insurgents, giving ear only to them. Next he ordered to appear before him the admiral, who came with all quietness, and was immediately ironed and cast into prison. The brothers of Columbus met the same fate. It was a most villainous proceeding on the part of Bobadilla, wholly unauthorized, wholly unnecessary. Columbus was condemned before he was tried. While in the act of coming forward of his own accord, not with hostile front, but unattended, he was seized, manacled, and incarcerated. It was not until afterward that he was charged with inflicting on the colonists, even on hidalgos, oppressive labor, abuse, and cruel punishments; with failing to provide them sufficient food; with opposing royal authority; with secreting gold and pearls; and with unjust treatment of the natives, making unnecessary war upon them, levying iniquitous tribute, preventing their conversion, and sending them as slaves to Spain. Some went so far as to hint at an intended transfer of allegiance to some other power. But were all the calumnies true, twice told, which vile, revengeful men had heaped upon him, he would not have merited the treatment that he now received at the hand of their Majesties' agent. Ever loyal, high-minded, and sincere, ever performing his duties to the best of his ability, the worst that can be truthfully said of him is that he was unfitted by temperament and training, unfitted by his genius, by those very qualities which made him so superior to other men in other directions, for organizing in a tropical wilderness that social thrift upon which might be built a staid community out of the ignorant, presumptuous, and desperate element fresh from conflicts with Jews and Moors.

After having been subjected to much insult and indignity, the three brothers were placed on shipboard and sent to Spain. Andrés Martin, master of the caravel, offered to remove the manacles, but the admiral said no. It was by the king's agent the irons were put on; it must be by the king's order if ever they are taken off. "And I will always keep these chains," he added with proud bitterness, "as memorials of reward for faithful services."

Both Ferdinand and Isabella and all the people were shocked to see the illustrious discoverer in such a plight. Immediately the sovereigns heard of it the chains were stricken off, and the prisoners released. From the odious abasement into which he had been unjustly thrust by an infamous agent, Columbus was once more lifted high into favor by the sovereigns, whose moist eyes testified their hearts' sincerity.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. DISCOVERY OF DARIEN

RODRIGO DE BASTIDAS—EXTENSION OF NEW WORLD PRIVILEGES—THE ROYAL SHARE—JUAN DE LA COSA—SHIPS OF THE EARLY DISCOVERERS—COASTING DARIEN—THE TERRIBLE TEREDO—WRECKED ON ESPAÑOLA—SPANISH MONEY—TREATMENT OF BASTIDAS BY OVANDO—ACCUSED, AND SENT TO SPAIN FOR TRIAL—HE IS IMMEDIATELY ACQUITTED—FUTURE CAREER AND CHARACTER OF BASTIDAS—THE ARCHIVES OF THE INDIES—THE SEVERAL COLLECTIONS OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS IN SPAIN—THE LABORS OF MUÑOZ AND NAVARRETE—BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THE PRINTED COLLECTIONS OF NAVARRETE, TERNAUX-COMPANS, SALVÁ AND BARANDA, AND PACHECO AND CÁRDENAS.

The first Spaniard to touch the territory which for the purposes of my work I have taken the liberty to denominate the Pacific States of North America was Rodrigo de Bastidas, a notary of Triana, the gypsy suburb of Seville.

[Sidenote: THE NEW WORLD OPENED TO SETTLEMENT.]

Although the discoveries of Columbus had been made for Castile, and Castilians regarded their rights to the new lands superior to those of any others, even other inhabitants of Spain; and although at first none might visit the New World save those authorized by Columbus or Fonseca; yet, owing to inadequate returns from heavy expenditures, and the inability of the admiral properly to control colonization in the several parts of the ever-widening area, at the solicitation of several persons desirous of entering the new field of commerce and adventure at their own charge, on the 10th of April, 1495, the sovereigns issued a proclamation granting native-born subjects of Spain permission to settle in Hayti, or Española,[III-1] as I shall continue to call the island, and to make to other parts private voyages of discovery and trade, under royal license. The regulations were that the vessels so sailing should be equipped under royal inspection, that they should depart only from the port of Cádiz, and that they should carry one or two crown officers. The sovereigns retained, without payment, one tenth of the tonnage, and were to receive one tenth of the gross returns. Settlers on Española were to receive grants of land, and one year's provision; of the gold they gathered they were to pay two thirds to the crown; on all other products one tenth. Although this step was taken without consulting Columbus, it was the aim of the sovereigns fully to respect his rights in the matter; therefore, and in lieu of his property in one eighth of all the tonnage, for every seven vessels thus privately adventured he was privileged to despatch one on his own account. The admiral still complaining, such parts of the proclamation as in any wise interfered with his rights were revoked, and his former privileges confirmed, the 2d of June, 1497.[III-2]

Among those to take advantage of this permission, beside Bastidas, was Alonso de Ojeda, who embarked with four vessels from Spain in May, 1499, in company with Juan de la Cosa and Amerigo Vespucci, sailed along the seaboard of South America from Paria and the Pearl Coast, discovered by Columbus, to the gulf of Venezuela, so called because like Venice the native villages were built over the water. At Cape de la Vela, Ojeda left the coast and crossed to Española, whence he was driven off by Roldan at the command of Columbus. He reached Spain in June, 1500; and though his ships were crowded with slaves, after paying expenses there were left but five hundred ducats to divide among fifty-five persons. Sailing in a caravel of only fifty tons, a few days later than Ojeda, were Pedro Alonso Niño and Cristóbal Guerra, who, following the track of Columbus and Ojeda to the Pearl Coast, thence crossed to Margarita, returned to the main-land and coasted Cumaná, and finally returned to Spain, arriving about two months before Ojeda, well laden with gold and pearls. This was the first really profitable voyage, pecuniarily, to the New World. Then there was Vicente Yañez Pinzon, who sailed in four caravels in December, 1499, and shortly after Diego de Lepe, in two vessels, both going to Brazil.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: VOYAGE OF BASTIDAS.]

Quite exceptional to the ordinary adventurer was Bastidas. He was a man of standing in the community, possessed of some means himself and having wealthy friends; he was intelligent and influential, and withal humane, even Las Casas admitting that no one ever accused him of illtreating the Indians.

The friends of the honest notary, among them Juan de Ledesma, were ready enough to join him, pecuniarily, in a venture to the famous Pearl Coast, as the South American shore of the admiral's third voyage was now called. Obtaining from Fonseca's office a royal license,[III-3] and enlisting the coöperation of Juan de la Cosa, already veteran in western pilotage, Bastidas equipped two caravels,[III-4] embarked at Cádiz in October, 1500, took on board wood, water, meat, and cheese at Gomera, and steering a little north of the admiral's last track, came to a green isle, which he called Isla Verde, and reached the mainland near Venezuela. Coasting westward, he passed Santa Marta, and arrived at the Magdalena River in March, 1501, so naming it on arrival from the day, which was that of the woman's conversion. There he narrowly escaped shipwreck. Continuing, and trading on the way, he found the ports of Zamba and Coronados—the latter so called because the natives wore large crowns—the islands of San Bernardo, Barú, and the Arenas, off Cartagena Bay. Next he saw Fuerte and tenantless Tortuga, touched at the port of Cenú, passed Point Caribana, entered the gulf of Urabá, and saw the farallones, or craggy islet peaks, rising abruptly from the water near the Darien shore. Thus far from Cape de la Vela he had discovered one hundred and fifty leagues[III-5] of new seaboard. And because when the tide was low the water was fresh, he called the place Golfo Dulce. Thus came the Spaniards upon the isthmus that unites the two Americas; and along it they sailed to Point Manzanilla, in which vicinity were El Retrete and Nombre de Dios.[III-6]

[Sidenote: GLORIES OF THE ISTHMUS.]

It is a balmy beginning, this of these men from Spain, of that intercontinental commerce which is shortly to bring destruction on one side and retrogression on the other; a commerce which shall end only with the next general cataclysm. Threading their way among islands smothered in foliage, which seemed upon the glossy water-surface as floating fragments of the thickly matted verdure of the mainland, listening to notes unfamiliar to their ears, and seeing these strange men and women so like and yet so unlike Spaniards, they find themselves wondering whether they are in the world or out of it. We who so well know our little planet and its ways can scarcely imagine what it was in the darkness to be taken up at Seville, and put down amidst the magic play of light and shade at Darien. Probably now the world was round; yet still it might be fungiform, or crescent-shaped, or amorphous, having a smooth or ragged edge, from which a fearful slipping-off might any moment ensue. All they can know is what they see, and that they cannot half know, for they can scarcely more than half see or feel or smell. Some part of the perpendicular rays of the incandescent sun falling on their toughened skins they can feel; some part of the water that from the surcharged reservoirs of low-lying clouds so frequently and freely pours upon the spot whence it is pumped by this same vertical sun. They can turn their bewildered eyes toward the south and see beyond its clean white border the mainland stretching off in billows of burnished green to the far-away hazy horizon, where like a voluptuous beauty it imprints a kiss upon the blushing sky; they may lie in the gray mist of evening and dream, and dream, their minds—how many removes from the intelligence of the impatient sea and the self-tuned life upon the shore? Or they may drift about in the amber light of a soft vaporous morning without much dreaming; one thing at least to them is real, and that is gold. Without the aid of divine revelation they fathom the difference between the precious solid substance and hollow brass. So do the savages, thinking the latter much the prettier; and thus both sides, each believing the others fools and well cheated, are happy in their traffic. The Spaniards are enchanted less by the lovely garb in which nature everywhere greets them than by the ease with which the golden harvest is gathered. Thus all betokens the most flattering success when a luckless event casts a shadow over their bright fortunes.

The two ships were found to be leaking badly. An examination was made, when the bottoms were found pierced by teredos;[III-7] and thus before they knew it their vessels were unfit for service. Hoping still to reach Cádiz, Bastidas immediately set sail, touched at Jamaica for wood and water, and continued his voyage as far as Contramaestre, an islet one league distant from Española, where he was obliged to anchor and repair his ships. Again embarking for Spain, he was met by a gale which threw him back upon the island. Buffeted in a second attempt, he ran the ships for safety into the little port of Jaraguá, where they filled and sank, the loss in vessels, slaves, Brazil-wood, cloth, and gold, being not less than five millions of maravedís.[III-8] For notwithstanding the estimable reputation for piety, justice, and humanity which he has always borne, the good Bastidas did not scruple gently to entrap on board his ships, along the shore of Darien, several scores of unsuspecting natives, to be sold as slaves; nor, having thus exercised his virtues in the klopemania of the day, did he scruple to abandon with his sinking ships the greater portion of these innocent wretches in order to save the more of his gold, which was deemed of greater proximate and certain value than the bodies or even the souls of the heathen.

Thus observing everywhere, as perforce we must as we proceed, the magnanimity and high morality with which our so prized and petted civilization greeted weak, defenseless, and inoffensive savagism, we are prepared when shipwrecked mariners are thrown upon a distant isle inhabited by their own countrymen, subjects of the same sovereigns—we are prepared by their reception, which we shall presently see, to exclaim with uplifted hands, Behold, how these brethren love one another!

After burning superfluous ammunition, the Spaniards gathered up their valuables, and placing them on the backs of such captives as for that purpose they had kindly permitted to live, set out in three divisions over separate routes, so as to secure a more liberal supply of provisions on the way, for Santo Domingo, distant seventy leagues. In his license, as we have seen, Bastidas was authorized to trade only in lands discovered by himself. But on the way his followers with their trinkets had purchased food from the natives; for which offence, on his arrival at Santo Domingo, Bastidas was seized by Bobadilla and cast into prison. In vain did all the shipwrecked company protest that they had bought only such articles as were necessary for their nourishment during the march. To their affirmations the governor turned a deaf ear; and as Bobadilla was about to depart for Spain, the notary was ordered thither for trial, sailing in July, 1502.

Before the sovereigns Bastidas found no difficulty in justifying his conduct; and so rich were the returns from his traffic with the natives of Darien, that notwithstanding the unfortunate termination of the adventure he was enabled to pay a large sum into the royal treasury. For their important successes, to Rodrigo de Bastidas was awarded an annual pension of fifty thousand maravedís, and to Juan de la Cosa a similar sum with the title of alguacil mayor of Urabá, all to be paid them out of returns from the new lands which they had found. "Such," remarks Irving, "was the economical generosity of King Ferdinand, who rewarded the past toils of his adventurous discoverers out of the expected produce of their future labors."[III-9]

[Sidenote: ARCHIVES OF THE INDIES.]

The most fertile source of information relative to the early affairs of America is the Archives of the Indies, a general term comprising various collections in various places. From this source many writers have drawn, and are still drawing; many documents have been printed, and many yet remain to be printed. Altogether the collections are very numerous, as the government required full records, and in some cases copies, to be kept of official documents concerning discovery, conquest, and settlement. The several council-chambers and public offices where the business was transacted were the first depositories of these papers, the chief places then being Seville, Cádiz, and Madrid. In 1566 Philip II. ordered all collections, ecclesiastic and secular, to be united, and deposited in the fortress of Simancas. Again in 1717, when all the councils were consolidated in one, Felipe V., who founded the Academia de la Historia, among other things for the gathering and preserving of materials for history, directed all papers to be conveyed annually to the Archivo de Simancas. These provisions could not have been fully carried out, or else a very extensive system of copying must have been practised; for later, when the Archives were thrown open to the search of historians, the accumulation at Simancas, though large, did not appear to be much greater than at some other places. Further than this, there were family archives in the houses of those who had played prominent parts in public affairs, and ecclesiastical relaciones in the convents of the several orders, of little less importance than public records. And while the government insisted on the making of complete records, and observed great care in preventing their contents from being known, especially to foreigners, little pains was taken to preserve them from damage or destruction, or to arrange them for convenient reference. Therefore when they came to light it was in the form of bulky masses of unassorted, worm-eaten, and partially illegible papers. Many documents, mentioned by contemporary writers, are known to have been lost, and their contents blotted from existence. Fernando VI., 1746-1759, commissioned Burriel and Santiago Palomares to examine the archives of the kingdom and to copy and form into a collection such of the manuscripts as they should deem best. This collection was placed in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid. Other collections were made during the two following reigns by Abella, Traggia, Velazquez, Muñoz, Navarrete, Sans, Vargas Ponce, and Villanueva, which found lodgment in various localities.

The early chroniclers of the Indies picked up their knowledge as best they might, by observation, by conversation, and by the examination of written evidence. Las Casas and Oviedo spent much time in the New World; Peter Martyr had access to whatever existed, beside talking with everybody who had been to America; Gomara copied much from Oviedo. Everything was at the disposal of Herrera as crown historiographer, as a matter of course, though he did not always make the best use of his opportunities. Gashard affirms that both Cabrera and Herrera were ignorant of the existence of many of the most valuable documents of their day. Ramusio, Hakluyt, Purchas, and others, succeeded in getting now and then an original paper on the Indies to print in their several collections. Among the first English historians who attempted for purposes of history to utilize the Archives of the Indies was William Robertson, who published the History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles, London, 1769; and in 1777, his History of America, 2 vols. 4to, several editions appearing subsequently also in 8vo. Robertson was a Scotch clergyman of great learning and ability. His style was elegant and vigorous, and he was by far the most philosophic writer on America up to his time. Although his statements are full of errors, intensified by dogmatism, but for which he cannot always be blamed, all who have come after him have profited by his writings; and some of these, indeed, have reaped richer rewards than he to whom they owed their success, and with far less labor.

[Sidenote: ROBERTSON AND MUÑOZ.]

Early in his work Mr Robertson applied to the proper authorities at Madrid, Vienna, and St Petersburg for access to material. Germany and Russia responded in a spirit of liberality, but Spain would none of it. In 1775 Robertson ascertained that the largest room occupied by the Archivos de Simancas was filled with American papers, in 873 bundles; that they were concealed from strangers with solicitous care, Spanish subjects even being denied access without an order from the crown; and that no copies could be obtained except upon the payment of exorbitant fees. However, through the assistance of Lord Grantham, English ambassador at Madrid, and by preparing a set of questions to be submitted to persons who had lived in America, much new and important information was elicited, and copies of certain manuscripts were obtained. The letters of Cortés, and the writings of Motolinia, Mendieta, and others, which Robertson used in manuscript, have since been printed.

It is greatly to be regretted that the learned Juan Bautista Muñoz did not live to complete his Historia del Nuevo Mundo, only the first volume of which appeared. This was published in Madrid, in 1793, bringing his work down to 1500. Muñoz was born near Valencia in 1745, graduated at the University, and in 1779 was commissioned by the king to write a history of America, all public and private material being placed at his disposal by royal order. Many papers were wanting in the archives of the department of the Indies in Madrid; whereupon he went to Simancas, Seville, Cádiz, and other towns, armed with a royal cédula, which opened to him family and monastic accumulations as well as all public depositories. So great was the confusion in which he found the royal archives, that it seemed to him as if they had been disarranged purposely to hide what they contained. Even in the indices of the Archivo Secreto del Consejo de Indias there was scarcely any indication of papers belonging to the earlier American periods. Nevertheless, by persistent search, mass after mass of rich material was unearthed in the secret archives as well as in the Real Casa Audiencia de la Contratacion, the archives at Simancas, the royal libraries of Madrid and the Escorial, the Contaduría Principal of the Audiencia de Indias in Cádiz, the Archivo General de Portugal, the monastery of Monserrate, the colleges of San Bartolomé and Cuenca at Salamanca, and San Gregorio at Valladolid, the cathedral of Palencia, the Sacromonte of Granada, and in the convents of San Francisco of Tolosa in Guipúzcoa, Santo Domingo of Málaga, and San Acacio, San José, and San Isidro del Campo of Seville, until it may be said of him that his efforts were buried beneath the magnitude of their invocation. Then it was that he found he had undertaken greater things than he could accomplish. Even with the aid of government he could not master the confused masses; for money and men unlimited cannot accomplish everything without time. The indefatigable Muñoz worked faithfully; the king complained of the meagre results; the author died doing his best, and his work to this day remains undone. During his labors he made an extensive collection of papers, memorials, and other manuscripts relating to America, known as the Coleccion de Muñoz, which he once intended to publish, but this with a portion of his history was left in manuscript. Irving states that the papers of Muñoz were left with Señor Uguina, and Ternaux-Compans claims to have obtained all of Uguina's manuscripts; but Prescott asserts that the collection of Muñoz was deposited in the archives of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, and was there augmented by the manuscripts of Vargas Ponce, obtained chiefly from the archives of the Indies at Seville. Prior to 1793 the Archivo General de Indias was established at Seville, and a large quantity of old papers conveyed thither from Madrid and Simancas. About 1810 the archives at Simancas were sacked by Napoleon; in 1814 the remnant was re-arranged and classified.

Before the death of Muñoz, Navarrete was commissioned by the king to search the archives for documents relating to the doings of the Spanish navy. By him personally, or under his direction when occupied in other duties, the search was continued from 1789 to 1825. The results of these labors were as follows: before 1793, twenty-four folio volumes of copies from the Royal Library at Madrid, the collections of the marquises of Santa Cruz and of Villafranca, of the dukes de Medina Sidonia and del Infantado, and from the Biblioteca de los estudios reales de San Isidro, and the Biblioteca alta del Escorial; after 1793, seventeen volumes of copies from the Archivo General de Indias, including the papers in the Casa de Contratacion in Seville, the Colegio de San Telmo, the Biblioteca de San Acacio, and from the collection of the Conde del Aguila. With this material, increased by subsequent researches in the libraries of the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, and other public institutions, and in many private collections, particularly that of the Duke of Veraguas, and with access to the Muñoz collection, Navarrete began in 1825 the publication of his Coleccion de los Viages y Descubrimientos, que hicieron por mar los Españoles desde fines del Siglo XV., in 5 vols., Madrid, 1825-37, in which he printed over 500 documents, many of them of the highest importance. As this collection constitutes one of the chief authorities upon the early affairs of Darien, a brief notice of the author may not be out of place.

[Sidenote: MARTIN FERNANDEZ DE NAVARRETE.]

Martin Fernandez de Navarrete was born in 1765 in Ábalos in old Castile. He entered the seminary of Vergara in 1777, where he studied Latin and mathematics and displayed some literary taste. In 1780 he joined the navy, was stationed first as a midshipman at Ferrol, joined Córdoba's squadron in 1781, and cruised in the summer of that year on the English coast. He did good service before Gibraltar in September, 1782, and in the battle off Cape Espartel the 20th of October following. In 1783, having been promoted to a naval ensigncy, he was appointed to the Cartagena department, and cruised in consequence against the Moors during the years 1784-5. On the close of the Algerine wars he studied the higher mathematics, navigation, and manœuvring with Gabriel de Císcar, distinguishing himself in these branches. In 1789, his health forcing him to quit active service, he was commissioned by Carlos IV. to examine the archives of the kingdom and collect manuscripts relating to marine history; a work for which his zeal and knowledge particularly fitted him. This was the beginning of his famous Collection of Voyages, although its first volumes did not appear till thirty-six years after. When the war broke out between France and Spain in 1793, he joined the squadron commanded by Juan de Lángara, who appointed him his chief aid, primer ayudante, and secretary. He was still at sea, in 1796, when war was declared against England; but in 1797, Lángara being named minister of marine, and unwilling to lose his young secretary, he brought him to Madrid, giving him a place in the department. Here, in 1802, Navarrete published, as a preface to the Relacion del Viage hecho por las goletas Sutil y Mexicana, a résumé of Spanish discoveries on the Californian and Northwest coasts, that has been much cited in the English-American disputes about the Oregon boundary. Meanwhile his merits were recognized in Madrid. In 1807 he was named ministro fiscal of the supreme council of the admiralty court, he holding already the rank of captain. But in this year came the French invasion, overturning all things. Madrid fell in 1808. In 1812 Navarrete was found in Cádiz; in 1814 in Murcia. Fernando regained his throne, however, May 14, 1814; four months after which event Navarrete returned to Madrid. In 1815 he proposed from his place in the Spanish Academy that new system of orthography which has been adopted for its dictionary. He interested himself also in the fine arts, and as secretary of the Academy of San Fernando contributed many valuable papers to its Transactions. Soon after his return to Madrid, being little pleased with the stormy and veering statesmanship of the day, he retired as much as possible from politics, and began to collect materials for his life of Cervantes—an excellent and very complete work published by the academy, with its edition of Don Quijote, in 1820. Honors continued to cluster around the historian. Toward the close of 1823 he was appointed director of the hydrographic department, and he became for many years in fact, if not in name, the great and chief naval authority of Spain; and this without prejudice to his literary activity. In 1825 appeared the first two volumes of his Collection of Voyages; the third appeared in 1829; the fourth and fifth in 1837; while the sixth and seventh were still unfinished at the author's death. On the publication of the Estatuto Real, in 1834, he received a place in the new peerage, and sat afterward as senator for his own province, in almost every legislature. But his studious life and pacific character were hardly destined to shine in a political career, nor was it for the interest of science that they should. In the winter of 1844, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, Navarrete died. The Academy issued a posthumous work of his in 1846, a dissertation on the history of the nautical and mathematical sciences in Spain. A collection of his smaller works, Coleccion de Opúsculos, was begun in 1848 by his son. The two volumes which have already appeared consist mainly of short biographies of Spanish navigators and literary men, previously scattered in periodicals and in the transactions of the various academies and societies. Navarrete was a man of learning and research, as clearly appears; inclined somewhat to verbosity; tiresome to most readers, though pronounced elegante y castizo by his contemporaries. Of the historical value of his works, however, there is but one opinion. Humboldt speaks of his Collection of Voyages as 'one of the most important monuments of modern times,' and calls him 'the most accurate historian of the geographical discoveries on the New Continent.' The Baron de Zach, M. de Berthelot, Prescott, Helps, Irving, and Stirling, have all given him much consideration. Indeed, the friends of Navarrete cannot complain that he has not been honored. Decorated with grand orders, member in high place of many academies and societies, his lot was more fortunate than is usual among literary men. The parts of Navarrete's collection which bear most directly upon this history are: Relacion de Diego de Porras, i. 282-96; Carta que escribió D. Cristóbal Colon, i. 296-313; Relacion hecha por Diego Mendez, i. 314-29; Cartas de Colon, i. 330-52; Viages Menores, iii. 1-74; Real cédula por la cual, con referencia á lo capitulado con Diego de Nicuesa y Alonso de Hojeda, iii. 116-17; Noticias biográficas del capitan Alonso Hojeda, iii. 163-76; and the Establecimientos ó Primeras Poblaciones de los Españoles en el Darien, including instructions to Pedrarias, letters of Vasco Nuñez, memorial of Rodrigo de Colmenares, and the relation of Pascual de Andagoya, iii. 337-459.

Scarcely was Navarrete's Coleccion de Viages put to press, when Washington Irving heard of it, and went to Madrid with the intention of translating it into English. But he soon saw that with less labor he could accomplish a work which would yield him greater returns. Navarrete, who had already collected the material and prepared the way, was still disposed to lend the genial American every assistance; it was necessary for him to make few original investigations; so that under the circumstances the Life of Columbus was by no means a difficult task for so ready a writer. Humboldt visited Madrid before coming to America, but seems to have consulted no important historical documents not in the possession of others. Prescott obtained from the collections of Muñoz and Navarrete 8000 foolscap pages of copies, most of which having any importance have since been printed by Icazbalceta, Alaman, and others.

Between the years 1837 and 1841 Henri Ternaux-Compans published at Paris twenty volumes of Voyages, relations, et mémoires originaux pour servir à l'histoire de la découverte de l'Amérique, containing, beside translations of several rare and then unobtainable works, some seventy-five original documents, several of them from the Muñoz collection, and others obtained from the Spanish archives in some unexplained way, possibly not wholly disconnected with the French campaign on the Peninsula. Among his translations are documents relating to the conquest and settlement of Central America and Mexico, the relations of Cabeza de Vaca and Ixtlilxochitl, Oviedo's History of Nicaragua, Zurita's Report on New Spain, and Ixtlilxochitl's History of the Chichimecs. Ternaux-Compans also published Recueil de documents et mémoires originaux sur l'histoire des possessions espagnoles dans l'Amérique, Paris, 1840; and Bibliothèque américaine, a catalogue of books on America appearing prior to 1700.

The project of printing original papers selected from national and family archives was agitated in Spain by Campomanes, Jovellanos, Villamil, and others, who collected and wrote much upon the subject. The scheme was delayed by the political disruptions incident to the early part of the century, by which the archives became badly scattered. In 1842, under the auspices of the Academia de la Historia, was begun the publication, at Madrid, of a Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España, with the names of Martin Fernandez Navarrete, Miguel Salvá, and Pedro Sainz de Baranda on the title-page. Navarrete lived to see only the fifth volume; Salvá and Baranda continued the publication to vol. xxiii., after which, Salvá edited alone to vol. xxxii., when he was joined by the marquises of Pidal and of Miraflores. After vol. xlvii., Pidal's name was dropped, and with vol. lvii. Salvá and the Marqués de Fuente del Valle appeared as editors. In connection with documents relating to the general history of Spain is here printed a vast amount of matter about America, and the doings of Spaniards in that quarter.

[Sidenote: TERNAUX-COMPANS, ALAMAN, AND OTHERS.]

During the next score of years floods of light are let in upon the dark recesses of hidden treasures, the spirit of unearthing which extends to Mexico. I may mention incidentally Ramirez, who, in his Proceso de Residencia contra Alvarado and Nuño de Guzman, gives some original Mexican documents not elsewhere published. Alaman, at the close of his Disertaciones, prints about forty original documents on the time of the Conquest, some of them from the collection of Navarrete, and others from original sources, such as the Hospital de Jesus in Mexico. The Documentos para la Historia de México, Mexico, 1853-7, in 21 volumes, was made chiefly from Mexican sources, and is specially valuable for north-west Mexico. Icazbalceta's collection includes fifty-three documents, with few exceptions inéditos, the existence of several of which, such as a letter of Cortés, and the relation of Tapia on the Conquest, was then unknown. Most of them were obtained through Gonzalez de Vera, of Madrid; only two or three were found in Mexico. Thus far Icazbalceta's collection refers exclusively to the sixteenth century. Brasseur de Bourbourg, for his Histoire des Nations Civilisées du Mexique, Paris, 1857-9, one volume of which is devoted to a history of the Conquest from an Indian stand-point, seems to have relied on his Nahua manuscripts, the standard histories, and a few Spanish manuscripts. Although much thus far had been done, it seemed little to the savans of Spain in comparison with what yet might be accomplished. And it was with this feeling that the government authorized the printing of any documents in the Real Archivo de Indias affecting the history of America down to the end of the seventeenth century. The publication of this new series of papers was begun at Madrid in 1864 under title of Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y Colonizacion de las posesiones Españolas en América y Oceanía, sacados, en su mayor parte, del Real Archivo de Indias. Joaquin F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza were editors at the first. After vol. iii. the first two names were dropped, and after vol. xii. the third, the work being thenceforth continued, competentemente autorizada. By this publication alone were placed within easy reach of all the world hundreds of the richest treasures of the Archives of the Indies, twenty for every one that the writer of thirty years ago could reach.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter IV

COLUMBUS ON THE COASTS OF HONDURAS, NICARAGUA, AND COSTA RICA.

1502-1506.

THE SOVEREIGNS DECLINE EITHER TO RESTORE TO THE ADMIRAL HIS GOVERNMENT, OR TO CAPTURE FOR HIM THE HOLY SEPULCHRE—SO HE SAILS ON A FOURTH VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY—FERNANDO COLON AND HIS HISTORY—OVANDO DENIES THE EXPEDITION ENTRANCE TO SANTO DOMINGO HARBOR—COLUMBUS SAILS WESTWARD—STRIKES THE SHORE OF HONDURAS NEAR GUANAJA ISLAND—EARLY AMERICAN CARTOGRAPHY—COLUMBUS COASTS SOUTHWARD TO THE DARIEN ISTHMUS—THEN RETURNS AND ATTEMPTS SETTLEMENT AT VERAGUA—DRIVEN THENCE, HIS VESSELS ARE WRECKED AT JAMAICA—THERE MIDST STARVATION AND MUTINY HE REMAINS A YEAR—THEN HE REACHES ESPAÑOLA AND FINALLY SPAIN, WHERE HE SHORTLY AFTERWARD DIES—CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS—HIS BIOGRAPHERS.

[Sidenote: FOURTH VOYAGE OF THE ADMIRAL.]

Since his last return to Spain, Columbus had rested at Granada under the smiles of the sovereigns, who readily promised him all that he might wish, while resolved to grant nothing which could interfere with their absolute domination of the new lands that he had found for them. When tired of begging the restoration of his rights he urged their Majesties' assistance in seizing the holy sepulchre, that his vow might be fulfilled, and his mind at rest. After profound study and elaborate preparation he presented the case to them in a manuscript volume of prophecies and portents intermingled with poetry. Failing in winning them to this scheme, he promised, if ships were provided him, to undertake new discoveries. Partly because they would know more of their New World possessions, and partly to rid themselves of uncomfortable importunities, the sovereigns assented to this proposal, meanwhile intimating that after two years had been allowed in which to quiet Española, the admiral should have his own again, but as clearly indicating to others that he should not.

Four vessels, ranging in burden from fifty to seventy tons, were then made ready, the Capitana, the Santiago de Polos, the Gallego, and the Vizcaino, commanded respectively by Diego Tristan, Francisco de Porras, Pedro de Terreros, and Bartolomé de Fresco, and embarked at Cádiz the 9th of May, 1502. With the expedition sailed Diego de Porras as chief clerk and notary, and Juan Sanchez as chief pilot; one hundred and forty men and boys constituted the company. The admiral was accompanied by his brother Bartolomé, the adelantado,[IV-1] and by his son Fernando,[IV-2] then thirteen years of age. The sail across the ocean was prosperous, with favorable winds and nothing to augur the approaching misfortunes until the ships arrived off Santo Domingo on the 29th of June.

[Sidenote: FATE OF BOBADILLA.]

During the past two years matters had not improved at Española. It seems that others could govern badly as well as the admiral. Indeed, the kings of Spain, most of them meaning well by their New World subjects, were too often unfortunate in their choice of agents. Until recently Bobadilla had held sway, the sovereigns being apparently in no haste to displace him; from which course it was evident either that they had not been properly informed of his conduct, or they approved of it. Perhaps it was true that a knave was better for the place than an honest man. A successor, however, had at length arrived in the person of Nicolás de Ovando, and the superb fleet which had brought him, and was to carry back the displaced governor to Spain, now rode at anchor in the harbor.

In following that contriving policy which others beside princes sometimes regard as necessary when straightforwardness were better, it had been deemed expedient that Columbus should not on this expedition touch at Española, lest his presence engender fresh broils on the island. And the admiral appeared to entertain no intention of breaking the royal commands, until he found, on reaching the Indies, that one of his vessels was unfit for service; or else he pretended that it was so in order to look in on his late government. But whether in actual or feigned distress, when the admiral sent the 29th of June to ask of Ovando permission to exchange a leaky caravel, or at least to shelter the vessels from an impending storm, his messenger Terreros returned with a refusal.

It was certainly an anomalous position in which the great discoverer found himself, vainly knocking at the door of a possession which he had so lately given to Spain, and he not convicted, nay, scarcely accused of any crime. Columbus sent again and warned the governor of approaching bad weather. Ovando would not heed him. The gubernatorial fleet sailed; but only to face a hurricane which soon strewed the shores of Española with its fragments. Current biographies here read like a moral story. On the wrecked vessels were Bobadilla, Roldan, and other inveterate enemies of the admiral, who with a huge mass of ill-gotten treasure were buried beneath the waves. On a little caravel which survived the tempest was the good Bastidas with his property; and on another, which likewise reached Spain in safety, were four thousand pesos de oro belonging to Columbus. Furthermore the admiral sheltered his vessels, and so received no injury from the storm. From all which, grave deductions were severally made—by Columbus, that the Almighty had preserved him; by his enemies, that he had employed witchcraft to save himself and property; by others, of a luckless order which providence refuses to recognize, that the admiral and adelantado were good seamen. After certain ship repairs, made without difficulty in a little port near Santo Domingo, on the 14th of July Columbus sailed westward on his explorations.

[Sidenote: EARLY CARTOGRAPHY.]

It must be remembered that at this time, and for several years afterward, the Spaniards did not know where they were. They supposed the earth smaller than it is, and that they were on the barbarous outposts of India,[IV-3] whose interior was civilized and wealthy; and it was the present object of the admiral to find some strait or passage between this border-land and the detached southern regions about Paria, on which he might sail to these rich inner realms, still coasting Asia south-westward.

[Sidenote: GUANAJA ISLAND.]

A storm greeted him, followed by a calm, during which he was carried first southward by Jamaica, then northward past the western end of Cuba; after which, the wind freshening, he continued his course, and on the 30th of July came to a small elevated island, called by the natives Guanaja[IV-4], to which, from the trees that covered it, he gave the name Isla de Pinos. On going ashore, the adelantado found the island inhabited by people like those of Española and Cuba, except that they seemed more intelligent and knew more of the useful arts. Presently a large canoe appeared coming from the direction of Yucatan. It measured eight feet in its greatest width, and was rowed by twenty-five men. In the middle, under a palm-leaf awning, sat a cacique,[IV-5] or chief, who manifested neither surprise nor fear on being brought into the presence of the admiral. He signified to the Spaniards as best he was able the extent and power of Mexico, and displayed utensils of copper, stone, and wood, earthen-ware, and cotton cloth brought thence. Gold was plentiful there, he also said; but the imagination of the admiral had mapped his strait somewhere southward; so Mexico was kept for Cortés.

There was on the island an ancient aboriginal of scientific attainments sufficient to enable him to draw for the Spaniards a chart of the mainland coast, and tell them much of the country. Him they took on board, and after dismissing the cacique with presents, crossed to the continent, and anchored near a point which Columbus called Punta de Caxinas,[IV-6] from the native name of a certain fruit abounding thereabout. Here the Spaniards landed on the 14th of August, and celebrated mass; then proceeding eastward some fifteen leagues to the mouth of a river,[IV-7] they again landed on the 17th, and took formal possession for Spain. About a hundred painted savages displayed themselves, finer specimens than any on the islands, some naked, and others partially covered with white or colored cotton. They were friendly, and presented fruit and vegetables, fish, fowl, and maize. So conspicuously distended were the ears of the natives at one place that the name Costa de la Oreja was given to that vicinity.[IV-8]

[Sidenote: DISCOVERY OF HONDURAS.]

Proceeding, the discoverers encountered a succession of gales which continued more than forty days, and having weathered them safely they were so delighted that in sailing round the point of their deliverance they thanked God, and called it Cape Gracias á Dios.[IV-9] All this time Columbus suffered severely. Indeed, he was now but little better than a wreck in body and mind. On the after part of the deck his bed was placed, and there he lay overwhelmed with pain and melancholy, lost in endless mazes of speculation. Now and then he would rouse himself to translate his visions, or to direct the management of the ship, for though half his senses should leave him, he was still a sailor from instinct; but had it not been for the faithful energy of the adelantado, the voyage might as well never have been undertaken.

The mariners had now entered a smooth sea; with a favorable wind they passed rapidly down the Mosquito Coast, giving the name Limonares to a cluster of islands on which grew something like lemons or limes, and on the 16th of September anchored at the mouth of a large river. Boats were sent ashore for water, and in returning one was upset and the whole crew were drowned; from which melancholy occurrence the stream was named Rio del Desastre.[IV-10] Continuing, the 25th found the Spaniards off the Rio San Juan de Nicaragua, where, to escape a storm, they ran in behind an island, the native name of which was Quiriviri,[IV-11] but which from its verdant beauty Columbus called La Huerta, The Garden. There they rested several days, and found sweet speculation, easily inducing the savages to tell them such things as they should most delight to hear. Indeed, all along the coast had vague information been given, by signs ill interpreted, of a remarkable country called Ciguare, nine days' journey westward beyond the mountains. The people there were like the Spaniards, clothed, and armed with steel weapons, with horses and great ships. The women wore bands of coral and strings of pearls, and the commonest utensils were of gold. Ten days' journey from Ciguare must lie the river Ganges; and best of all, there was a passage thither by sea; all the Spaniards had to do was to keep right on; they could not miss the way. The Europeans gave full credit to these assertions. Thus from the beginning mankind have been directed, and oftentimes to the grandest discoveries, by mingled accident and ignorance, and wise men like Columbus have believed these supremely silly stories because it pleased them to do so. These savages may have had rumors of Mexico or Peru on which to build their brilliant fictions; their statements were fictions none the less.

[Sidenote: SORCERIES, SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED.]

And indeed as they came together there for the first time, the white men and the red, it is often difficult to tell on which side was the greater simplicity and credulity. The folly of the Spaniard was moulded into firmer consistence, was less inept and vapory than the folly of the Americans, and that was about all. For instance, at the village of Cariay,[IV-12] just opposite on the main-land, Columbus thought to raise the Spaniards in the estimation of the savages by declining to take the guanin, an inferior kind of gold which they presented; whereupon for the same reason, and in retaliation, the natives refused European trinkets. When the adelantado, seated on a knoll with the notary by his side, sought to transfix some of the wild knowledge of those parts, the natives fled terrorstruck, supposing some magic spell was being cast upon them by the pens, ink, and paper so solemnly drawn forth by the scribe. Presently with great caution they returned, and with exorcising gesticulations burned and scattered in the air an odorous powder. On the other hand, with equally enlightened common sense, the Christians, unable to fathom the incantations of savagism, fancied these heathen sorcerers bringing from the shades of their wilderness wrathful demons to hurl upon their adversaries; and ever after on the voyage all the ills that befell the Spaniards were attributed to the enchantments of the people of Cariay.[IV-13] At another port called Huiva, Columbus found the huts of the natives built in trees, which he attributed to fear of griffins. After a short excursion into the interior the adelantado returned to the ships. Near Cape Gracias á Dios the old man of Guanaja had been liberated with presents, as no longer of use; now, seven natives were seized and made to divulge what they knew of the country, two of them being retained as guides.

Sailing from Cariay the 5th of October, the second day they came to the Laguna de Chiriquí, the country thereabout being called by the natives Cerebaro.[IV-14] If some distance back Columbus had found The Garden, here was a pluralized paradise. The wonder was how nature contrived such glories. Round the entrance clustered islands whose outspread foliage brushed the venturesome sails that threaded the deep narrow channels. Celestial beauty irradiated the land, and a celestial brightness overspread the sea. But a small additional rent was necessary in the ragged imagination of the admiral to fancy himself already translated. The part of the laguna explored by this expedition was the north-western, known to-day as the Bahía del Almirante; the southern part was called by the natives Aburema.

[Sidenote: GATHERING GOLD.]

Hanging from the necks of the natives was pure gold in plates, now first found since touching these shores, but the owners were content to keep it. Further on, anywhere but here, they said, was plenty of gold, notably at a place called Veragua, twenty-five leagues distant, where these much-admired plates of gold were fabricated. Hastening forward, the Spaniards arrived, on the 18th, at a river twelve leagues to the eastward of Cerebaro, called by Fernando Colon, Guaiga, and by Porras, Guyga, where the savages attempted at first to drive them away by splashing water, brandishing wooden swords, beating drums, and sounding conchs; which demonstration being over they quietly traded sixteen of their gold-plates, valued at one hundred and fifty ducats, for three hawk-bells. The following day the Spaniards were met in like manner by other savages whom a shot sent scampering; after which they returned and traded dutifully.

After this the discoverers touched at the provinces of Catibá and Cobrabá, where they saw the ruins of a wall built of stone and lime, which excited in them anticipations of a near approach to civilization; but as they neared the rich river the wind freshened and carried them past, without however preventing a glimpse of five towns, one of which the guides assured them was Veragua.[IV-15] In the next province, Cubigá, terminated the gold region, so they were told. Some were eager to go back to Veragua and gather gold, but anxious to find his strait Columbus put them off, saying he would return anon.

Fancy the old admiral groping in the darkness, the world, the universe clear enough to him as mapped in his own mind, but unhappily not fitting the substantial facts. Instinctively he seems to hover about this the narrowest part of the continent, his ship's prow now pointed directly toward Spain, with India so far away, and the vast water intervening, and the small but mighty strip of land that makes his mental map of no avail. Thus since the world began millions have mapped eternity, and still do map it, the heavenly powers meanwhile laughing at the miserable work men make of it.

Thus vainly searching, on the 2d of November Columbus finds his ships at anchor in a beautiful and commodious harbor entered between two islands. On every side are fields of maize, and orchards of fruit, and groves of palm; for the people dwell in houses and cultivate the ground. There he remains seven days, waiting the cessation of a storm; and he calls the place Puerto Bello, also written Portobello, which name it has ever since retained. Venturing forth on the 9th, he makes eastward eight leagues, but is driven back, and takes refuge behind some islands in a small harbor, which he calls Puerto de Bastimentos,[IV-16] from the abundance of provisions brought them there. After repairing the ships, now badly worm-eaten, he again on the 23d attempts an advance eastward, but is speedily driven into a cove, which he names El Retrete, some calling it Puerto de Escribanos, and which is so small as barely to admit the ships, and so deep that bottom cannot be touched.[IV-17]

[Sidenote: END OF THE ADMIRAL'S DISCOVERIES.]

And now the mariners show signs of discontent; with gold so near they are not Spaniards else. And the great discoverer, the admiral of the ocean sea, must he bury in this little crevice of a barbarous shore his mighty hopes? Bastidas was here,[IV-18] although it is not certain how well informed the admiral is of the fact, whether he had notice from Bastidas at Santo Domingo as to the termination of his voyage, or whether the natives here had told him; in any event, there cannot be now in the admiral's mind much doubt that the coast is practically discovered from Trinidad to Guanaja, and that between these two islands is a shore-line of continent unbroken by any strait. Yes, as well unbrace here as elsewhere; and gold-hunting is not a bad occupation for an old man after his life's work is done.

Turning then toward Veragua for solace, the Spaniards sailed from El Retrete the 5th of December. But with this change the fickle wind had likewise changed its course; wherever they went were storms and buffetings, until Columbus pronounced upon that shore the name La Costa de los Contrastes. Where now was the balmy breath of perfumed isles, the sparkling sun dancing beneath the wanton waters? Demonized. Gale followed gale in quick succession; winds contending, veering; now the mariners were hurried on toward their destination, only to be driven back to their starting-point. The stubborn waves struck the crazy barks with such menacing force as to send the terror-stricken sailors to their knees in confession, and prayer for deliverance. For nine days the sea was white with angry foam; the sky blazed with electric fires; the men fell sick; provisions spoiled. Long, lank, muscular sharks, weatherwise monsters, followed the ships expectantly, until the hunger-smitten crews eyed them ominously in return, until these creatures that had come to eat were caught and eaten by these other creatures. All this time down poured the rain in torrents and nearly submerged the ships. In the midst of these cataclysmal horrors a water-spout was seen approaching, "which," Fernando Colon is sure, "if they had not dissolved by reciting the gospel of St John, would certainly have sunk whatever it had fallen upon." Twenty-nine days were occupied in making as many leagues to the westward. Once the ships parted company for three days; twice they ran into Portobello, and twice they took refuge at other places on the coast.

At length, with thanksgiving, January 6, 1503, they came to anchor at the mouth of a river, the native name of which was Yebra; but Columbus, in honor of the day, Epiphany, called it Santa María de Belen.[IV-19] One league to the westward was the river Veragua. The admiral ordered both streams to be sounded. The Veragua was found too shallow for the ships. At the mouth of the Belen was a bar, which however could be crossed at high water; above the bar the depth was four fathoms. On the bank of the Belen stood a village, whose inhabitants at first opposed the landing of the Spaniards; but being persuaded by the interpreter, they at length yielded. They were a well-developed, muscular people, rather above medium stature, intelligent, and exceptionally shrewd; in fact, in point of native ability they were in no wise inferior to the Spaniards. When questioned concerning their country, they answered guardedly; when asked about their gold mines, they replied evasively. First, it was from some far-off mysterious mountain the metal came; then the river Veragua was made to yield it all; there was none at all about Belen, nor within their territory, in fact. Finally they took a few trinkets, and gave the intruders twenty plates of gold, thinking to be rid of them. Within a day or two the vessels were taken over the bar, and on the 9th two of them ascended the river a short distance. The natives made the best of it, and brought fish and gold.

[Sidenote: THE QUIBIAN.]

With an armed force the adelantado sets out in boats to explore the Veragua. He has not proceeded far when he is met by a fleet of canoes, in one of which sits the quibian,[IV-20] the king of all that country, having under him many subordinate chiefs. He is tall, well-modelled, and compactly built, with restless, searching eyes, but otherwise expressionless features, taciturn and dignified, and, for a savage, of exceptionally bland demeanor. We shall find him as politic as he is powerful; and as for his wealth, unfortunately for him, his domain includes the richest gold mines of that rich coast. On the whole, the quibian is as fine a specimen of his race as the adelantado is of his. And thus they are fairly met, the men of Europe and the men of North America; and as in the gladiatorial combat, which opens with a smiling salutation, this four-century life-struggle begins with friendly greetings. Pity it is, they are outwardly not more evenly matched; pity it is that the European with his superior civilization, his saltpetre, and blood-hounds, his steel weapons, and strange diseases, should be allowed to do his robbery so easily! But ravenous beasts and bloody bipeds are so made that they do not hesitate to take advantage of the helpless; it is only civilized man, however, that calls his butcherings by pleasant names, such as progress, piety, and makes his religion and his law conform to his heart's unjust desires.

As the champions approach each other, we see about them both an air of determination and command; and while extremely cordial, we see on either side that courtesy common to those who fear while they suspect. With princely grace the red man takes from his naked body some massive golden ornaments and presents them to the white man; the adelantado, not to be outdone in generosity by a savage, with equal dignity and solemnity presents the red man a handful of valueless baubles. The ceremony over, with mutual assurances of friendship the chieftains retire. Next day the quibian visits the admiral in his ship. Neither has much to say; presents are exchanged, and the savage returns to his people.

While the ships of the Spaniards lay by the bank in fancied security, on the 24th of January the storm-demon, as if enraged at the escape of its victims from the fury of the sea, rushed to the mountains, and opening the windows of heaven, let down a deluge on the land. The rushing torrents swept everything before them. The vessels were torn from their moorings and carried down the river, only to be met at the mouth by the incoming breakers from the sea. And thus to their imminent peril they were tossed for several days by the contending waters.

[Sidenote: BARTOLOMÉ PENETRATES THE INTERIOR.]

The storm abating, and the ships made secure, the adelantado again started in search of the gold-fields. With sixty-eight men he ascended the Veragua to the village of the quibian, whose house was situated on a hill round which were scattered the dwellings of his people. The chieftain with a large retinue, unarmed in token of peace, welcomed the visitors at the landing. Guides were readily furnished at the adelantado's request; so leaving part of his company to guard the boats, with the remainder he set out on foot for the base of the mountain, distant six leagues, which he reached the following day. For many miles he found the soil richly impregnated with gold, and returned elated, as visions of populous cities and unbounded wealth floated through his brain. Which seeing, the quibian grimly smiled that they should deem their work already done, himself subdued, the land their own; and he smiled to think how he had sent them round and away from his own rich mines to the poorer and more distant fields of Urirá, his ancient enemy. Then the adelantado explored westward, and came to the town and river[IV-21] of this Urirá, and to the towns of Dururi, Cobrabá, and Catibá, where he obtained gold and provisions.

* * * * *

There were here fifty leagues of coast, from Cerebaro to Veragua, called by the Spaniards the tierra de rescate, or land of trade, meaning trade in gold, that being the only thing worth trading for in an expedition of this kind. This seaboard was heavily wooded, and uninhabited except along the rivers, for three leagues inland. And all things seeming so favorable, Columbus thought he would plant a colony here, leave eighty men and one of the vessels in charge of the adelantado, and with the remainder return to Spain, report the results of his discovery, and obtain reinforcements. In a word, if not restrained by some Ferdinand, or Fonseca, or other hateful friend, he would repeat with fresh enthusiasm his former errors which had so nearly wrought his ruin. But his usual ill-luck came to the rescue. The quibian did not view with favor the preparations which he saw the Spaniards making for a permanent residence on his lands, and he determined it should not be. But how could he prevent it? For he was well aware of the advantages these strangers possessed in open warfare. Yet there were several ways open to him; if he did not wish to attack them with an overwhelming force he could devastate the country around, withdraw his people, and leave the Spaniards to die, meanwhile cutting off such stragglers and foraging parties as he could easily handle. And this he did, beginning operations by summoning the neighboring tribes, ostensibly for the purpose of organizing an expedition against Urirá, and Cobrabá.

The suspicions of the Spaniards were aroused. Diego Mendez, escudero, esquire, or shield-bearer of the ship Santiago,[IV-22] a sharp, bold, and somewhat boastful man, but courageous beyond the comprehension of fear, asked and obtained permission to investigate the matter. Entering the Veragua in an armed boat he found encamped below the quibian's village about a thousand painted warriors. Assuming an air of unconcern Mendez landed and strolled leisurely among the savages. Remarking on their proposed expedition he offered to join them; but his services were rejected, and his presence was manifestly distasteful to them. He returned and reported that the savages were preparing to attack the Spaniards. Yet to satisfy some who doubted, Mendez went again, this time taking with him one companion, Rodrigo de Escobar, intending plainly to demand of the quibian his purpose. A host of frowning savages greeted the visitors, who asked to see the quibian. They were informed that he was lying ill from the effects of a wound received in battle. "For that very purpose," replied the ready Mendez, "I a surgeon am come to heal him." But the Spaniards could not gain audience of the chief, and they returned more than ever convinced of his bloody intention toward them.

[Sidenote: CAPTURE OF THE QUIBIAN.]

What was to be done? The admiral could not depart while hostilities were pending, nor could the Spaniards delay their operations until it should please the savages to attack them. The adelantado determined to force an issue. With seventy-five men, on the morning of the 30th of March, he ascended the Veragua, and landed unobserved near the quibian's village. Hiding his men, he advanced, first with four attendants, then alone, until after some difficulty he gained admission to the quibian's presence. What Bartolomé was now attempting was the regular game, afterward played for higher stakes, but now being pretty generally practised in the New World; namely, to capture the chief and hold him hostage for the good behavior of his people. It was at the door in front of the quibian's dwelling that this interview took place. The savage suspected nothing. The very boldness of the scheme, so foreign to aboriginal warfare, tended to allay apprehension. Within were fifty of his household, and at easy call five hundred warriors; what had the quibian to fear? The two chiefs sat and talked, first on general subjects; then the adelantado enquired concernedly about his host's illness, examined the wound tenderly, passed his hands over the disabled limb while proposing remedies. Suddenly the savage felt the grasp of the Spaniard tighten upon him, and before his suspicions were fairly aroused his arms were pinioned behind him. Mendez, who had been watching, fired his arquebuse, and the concealed Spaniards rushed forward and surrounded the house. The quibian struggled, but weakened by sickness he was easily held in the iron grasp of the adelantado, until by the aid of the other Spaniards he was made powerless. So adroitly was the feat performed, that before the presence of the Spaniards was generally known among the natives, their chief and all his family were captive, and on the way to the boats. The savages lifted up the usual lamentations, and offered enormous ransom; but it had been determined beforehand that the chief personages of the nation should be sent to Spain; for in such procedure, the admiral thought, lay the greater security of his plans.

At this juncture in the narrative historians, even modern writers of fair intelligence, gravely discuss the probabilities of guilt in the quibian's supposed treachery, some holding with Diego de Porras that the natives did not meditate attack; as if they had not the right to defend their country, their wives and little ones, from the ravages of the invader by any means within their power.

Passing conventional twaddle—for if the quibian was not guilty he ought in honor to have been—it is very certain that this action on the part of the Spaniards was the cause of many woes, and of their final overthrow in these parts.[IV-23] In any event it was now of the highest importance to secure the quibian. The whole adventure on this coast depended upon it; therefore the adelantado hastened to send his captives on board the ships. Desirous of instituting other proceedings for the pacification of that section before returning, the adelantado looked about him for a reliable person to whom he might entrust his weighty charge. Present was Juan Sanchez, chief pilot, an honest sailor, not wholly indifferent to military honors, who earnestly offered service and was accepted. The quibian, tied hand and foot, was firmly bound to his seat in the boat; and superfluous as might appear any admonition, the adelantado charged Juan Sanchez to look well to his prisoner. "Pluck out my beard hair by hair if he escape me," was the vaunting reply of the pilot as he shoved his boat from the bank and started down the river.

[Sidenote: JUAN SANCHEZ OUTWITTED.]

But alas for the overweening confidence of a Peter or a Juan Sanchez! Fighting the elements at sea is a different thing from fighting Indians on land. Quite a different order of tactics is required; and the sailor's life is not the school in which to study the wiles of Indian strategy. In the one place the sailor is not more superior than is the savage in the other. The quibian, outwardly calm, inwardly is fiercely excited; and like the wild beast when hotly pursued, his instincts quicken with the occasion. He and his loved ones are prisoners, treacherously entrapped by a strange species of the human kind in return for fair words and generous hospitality. Their probable fate possesses all the horrors of uncertainty. Swiftly with the swift boat runs the time away; something must be done or all is lost. Narrowly, but cautiously, the chief surveys his keeper. It is pleasant to look upon the homely face of honest Juan Sanchez; not a lineament there but shines with God's best message to man, and in language which even dumb intelligence may read. Stern duty is largely diluted with humanity, integrity with charming simplicity; from which the wily quibian takes his cue, and thenceforth is master of the situation. With quiet dignity and cheerful resignation he sits among his people, hushing their lamentations and chiding their complaints. By words and little acts of consideration he lightens the labors of the boatmen, and studies for himself and people to give no unnecessary trouble. These conciliatory measures are not lost on the warm-hearted sailor, whose regard for his royal captive rises every moment. He is pronounced by all a well-mannered savage, a most courteous savage. And now the quibian modestly complains of the cords so tightly drawn by the too zealous Mendez. They do indeed cut into the flesh, and constrain him to a most uncomfortable position. And he such a gentleman-savage! Juan Sanchez is not the man to sit there and see a fellow-creature unnecessarily suffer; he cannot do it. The thongs which lacerate the prisoner's wrists are loosened, the cord which binds him to the seat is untied; but for security—for above all this great chief must be kept secure—one end of it the ever-watchful pilot twists round his hand. Night comes on. It is very dark, but the captives are quiet, and the boat glides noiselessly down the stream. Suddenly the light craft sways; a plunge is heard; the pilot feels his hand violently wrenched; he must loosen his hold or be drawn into the water. It is all as the flash of a pistol in point of time; the quibian's seat is empty; and honest Juan Sanchez is obliged to present his hanging front before his comrades, a Spaniard outwitted by a savage!

* * * * *

After scouring the country in several directions, the adelantado returned to the ships, bringing gold-plates, wristlets, and anklets to the value of three hundred ducats, which were divided, after deducting the king's fifth. Among the spoils taken from the quibian were two golden coronets, one of which was presented to Bartolomé by the admiral. Notwithstanding the escape of the chief, who, after all, was probably drowned, Columbus proceeded to execute his plans. There were the king's household and his chief men safely on board, and these should be sufficient to guarantee the tranquillity of the nations. So the arrangements for the comfort and security of the colony during the contemplated absence of the admiral were hastened to completion. The three vessels, after discharging part of their cargoes, were carried by the newly swollen stream over the bar, and reloaded. There they lay at anchor waiting a favorable wind.

[Sidenote: THE COUNTRY ROUSED.]

All this time, however, the Spaniards were reckoning without their host. The quibian was not dead. In spite of his bonds, he had made good his escape. After his bold plunge, finding himself free from the boat, he had extricated his wrists from the loosened cords, swam beneath the water to the bank, and had set out for his village, resolving vengeance. And now, hastily arming a thousand warriors, he attacked the Spaniards under cover of the dense vegetation, killing one and wounding eight, but was soon repulsed with heavy loss. Shortly afterward Diego Tristan, coming ashore from one of the vessels with eleven men, recklessly ascended the river a league for wood and water. All but one were killed.[IV-24]

* * * * *

The aspect of affairs was serious. It was now evident that no fear of what might befall his imprisoned household would deter the quibian from his bloody purpose. Alive or dead might be his brothers, wives, and children, he would rid his country of these perfidious strangers. To this end he secured the coöperation of the neighboring chieftains, and filled the forest with his warriors. Stealthily they lurked in the vicinity of the settlement, and watched every pathway, ready to cut off any who should venture abroad. Nowhere on the Islands had the Spaniards met such stubborn opposition, and serious misgivings filled their minds. Their own probable doom they saw foreshadowed in the mutilated bodies of Tristan and his men, which came floating past them down the stream, attended by ravenous fishes; and the requiems sung by quarrelling vultures over the remains when afterward they were thrown back by the waves upon the beach, tended in no wise to lessen their dismal forebodings. To heighten their misfortunes, a furious storm arose, which cut off all communication between the settlement and the ships. The adelantado endeavored in vain to quiet the fears of his people, who emboldened by despair would have seized the remaining caravel and put to sea had the weather permitted. Yet closer pressed upon them the enraged quibian, until dislodged they retreated to the river bank, before their caravel, and threw up earthworks, which they capped with the ship's boat, and behind which they planted their guns, and so kept the savages at bay.

On shipboard matters were no better. The continued absence of Tristan and his crew caused the admiral great anxiety. In such a heavy sea it was unsafe to remain near the shore; the parting of a cable would doom the clumsy craft to swift destruction. And as if this were not enough, the spirit of the quibian broke out among his encaged family. Preferring death to captivity they plotted escape. During the night the prisoners were confined in the forecastle, and on the covering slept a guard of soldiers. Collecting one night such articles as were within reach, stones used as ballast, boxes, and provision casks, they piled them up under the hatchway cover. Toward morning, when the guards were sleeping soundly, as many of the captives as were able mounted the heap, and placing their shoulders to the covering, by quick concerted action burst it open, throwing the sleeping sentinels in every direction, and springing out leaped into the sea. Those whose escape was prevented were found next morning dead, some hanging to the roof and sides of their prison, some strangled by means of strings round the neck drawn tight with the foot.

[Sidenote: THE SETTLEMENT ABANDONED.]

It was now of the utmost importance to communicate with the shore, as the admiral was convinced that the situation of the colonists was becoming perilous in the extreme. At least, all hope of settlement in that quarter must for the present be abandoned. The fate of the captives, when once it was known, would move the very rocks to revenge. But no boat could live in the surf intervening. Then stepped forward Pedro Ledesma, a Sevillian pilot, and offered if rowed to the breakers to attempt to gain the shore by swimming. The thing was done. Scarcely had Ledesma picked himself up from the spot where the waves threw him when he was surrounded by his forlorn countrymen, who informed him of the fate of Tristan, and of their determination to quit that accursed coast at any hazard. Ledesma returned and told the admiral, upon whose mind thereupon gloom settled in yet denser shades. Unrighteously deprived of his command at Santo Domingo, he had nourished the hope that this last and most important of his discoveries might prove the base of better fortune than was possible on the Spanish Isle. For had it not been revealed to him that this Veragua was the source whence Solomon drew the gold to build the temple? These lamentations continued during the remainder of the storm, which lasted nine days longer; after which preparations were made for the embarkation of the colonists, the admiral consoling himself with the promise of return under more favorable auspices.

Finally the caravel stationed in the river was dismantled, and out of the spars and some Indian canoes was made a raft, by means of which the colonists and their effects were in two days taken on board. The admiral then bore away eastward for Española. And it may have been the lingering hope of blind infatuation—so his followers thought it—that made him cling to the shore until the Darien country was passed, before striking out across the Caribbean Sea; others say it was to avoid contrary winds, while he affirms it was to deceive his pilots that they might not be able to find Veragua again without his charts. One worm-eaten caravel he was obliged to drop at Portobello. The other two held together until they reached Jamaica, where they were beached.

A new series of misfortunes here awaited the Great Unlucky One. From June 1503 to June 1504 he was doomed to remain on his wrecks, which now lay side by side, partially filled with water. Food became scarce, and the foraging expeditions met with constantly increasing difficulties in seeking the necessary supply. By desperate efforts Diego Mendez succeeded in reaching Española in a canoe; but when he had notified Ovando of the perilous situation of Columbus, the governor was in no haste to relieve his rival. Sickness next followed, and then mutiny. Francisco de Porras with forty-eight men threw off allegiance to the admiral, and taking ten canoes set out for Española. Twice thrown back upon Jamaica by adverse winds they abandoned the attempt, and gave themselves up to licentious roving about the island. A second mutiny was near its culmination when a small vessel appeared in the distance. Presently Diego de Escobar approached in a boat, and without leaving it, thrust in upon the admiral a letter, a side of bacon, and a barrel of wine, all from Ovando; then he disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. Following an attempted reconciliation with Porras was a fight between his gang and the Spaniards under Bartolomé, in which six were killed, among them our honest friend Juan Sanchez, who had cast his lot with Porras. The doughty Ledesma, also a rebel, though badly wounded, lived to be assassinated in Spain. Porras and several others were taken prisoners and confined on board the wreck. The remainder of the deserters then returned, penitent. Finally the admiral's agent at Santo Domingo, Diego de Salcedo, came to his relief with two ships.

[Sidenote: DEATH OF THE ADMIRAL.]

It was infamous in Ovando to leave Columbus so long in such a strait. The excuses he pleaded were absence at Jaraguá, and lack of suitable ships; but had he been in earnest to deliver the admiral, means could have been found before the lapse of a year. Although on arriving at Santo Domingo Columbus received lodgings in Ovando's house, and the governor was outwardly exceedingly attentive to his guest, in reality there was little in common between the two men but jealousy and distrust. Porras was allowed to roam at large, though finally sent to Spain for trial. Columbus sailed for Spain September 12, 1504. For a time he kept his bed at Seville, writing heart-rending letters to the sovereigns, who paid little attention to them. By the help of the adelantado, ever his most faithful friend and brother, Columbus managed the following year to creep up to court and beg redress from the king, for the queen was now dead. But Ferdinand was deeply disgusted; not so much however as to prevent his granting the illustrious discoverer a magnificent burial shortly after. It was the 20th of May, 1506, that Columbus died at Valladolid, at the age of about seventy years.[IV-25]

* * * * *

Thus terminated the first attempt of Spaniards to plant a colony on the main-land of North America. Columbus himself, the leader, advanced with proffers of friendship in one hand and a sword in the other, retaliated upon a fancied savage treachery by a still more insidious treachery, and was driven from the country by a brave ruler, whose deeds deserve to be enrolled beside those of patriots everywhere. One kind act of a tender-hearted Spanish sailor—would I had more of them to record in this history—brings the direst misfortune on his countrymen, delays for a dozen years the occupation of Veragua, and turns the tide of conquest in other directions.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS.]

Most remarkable in the character of Columbus was the combination of the theoretical and the practical; and most remarkable in his theories was the anomaly that though nearly all of them were false, they led to as grand results as if they had been true. The aperture through which failure creeps into carefully laid schemes is usually some glaring defect of character; and such defect often appears where little suspected, in natures warped by genius, or where one quality is unduly developed at the expense of another quality. We often see men of rare ability wrecked by what would be regarded an act of folly unaccountable in the stupidest person; but we do not often see success resulting from these same defects. The greatest defect in the faculties of Columbus, extravagance of belief, was the primary cause of his success. Simple to us as is the reality of the earth's rotundity, and of the practicability of a western route to Asia, no one could then have entertained those doctrines without extraordinary credulity; even though Pythagoras and others had so long ago expressed such ideas, no one could then have acted on them short of infatuation bordering on insanity. To say the world is round was not enough; Thales of Miletus proved it not a plane two thousand years before. If it were round, the water would run off; if it were flat, why then one safely might sail on it; if it be flat, and the water runs not off, then at the other end there must be land that keeps the water on, and one might sail over the flat sea to that land—all such logic was less puerile than the feelings by which the Genoese ordinarily reached conclusions. His efforts were the embodiment of the ideas of many thoughtful men, timorous persons, perhaps, or merely meditative and passive, but in none of whom united his ability, courage, and enthusiasm; above all, none so scientific were at the same time so determined. Often the knowledge of a prophecy is the cause of its fulfilment. Some say Alonso Sanchez told him of Española, and he himself affirms that once he visited Iceland. It may have been that on this voyage he learned from the Norsemen of their Vinland and Helluland. What then? Were this true, such stories would have had with him scarcely greater weight than the sayings of the ancients, or than current interpretations of holy writ.

Nothing more plainly proves the power that sent him forth than the fact that in scarcely one of his original conceptions was he correct. He thought to reach Asia over an unobstructed ocean sea by sailing west; he did not. To the day of his death he thought America was Asia, and that Cuba was mainland; that the earth was much smaller than it is, and that six sevenths of it was land. He dwelt much on a society of Amazons who never had existence, and at every step among the Islands he ingenuously allowed his inflamed imagination to deceive him. He claimed to have been divinely appointed for this mission; he affirmed his voyage a miracle, and himself inspired with the conception of it by the most holy Trinity; he vowed to rescue the holy sepulchre, which he never did; he proclaimed visions which he never saw, such as St Elmo at the top-mast with seven lighted tapers, and told of voices which he never heard; he pictured himself a missionary to benighted heathen, when in truth he was scattering among them legions of fiery devils. But what he knew and did, assuredly, was enough, opening the ocean to highways, and finding new continents; enough to fully entitle him to all the glory man can give to man; and as for his errors of judgment, had he been able to map America as accurately as can we to-day, had he been divine instead of, as he claimed, only divinely appointed, with myriads of attendant ministers, his achievement would have been none the greater. From the infirmities of his nature sprang the nobility of Brutus; from the weaknesses of Columbus was compounded his strength.

Assuredly it was no part of the experience and ingenuity which springs from life-long application that made Columbus so essentially a visionary; nor was it his scientific attainments, nor the splendid successes which despite the so frequent frowns of fortune we must accredit him. In his avocation of mariner he was a plain, thoughtful man of sound judgment and wise discretion; but fired by enthusiasm he became more than an ordinary navigator; he became more as he fancied himself, superhuman, the very arm of omnipotence. Once born in him the infatuation that he was the divinely appointed instrument for the accomplishment of this work, and frowning monarchs or perilous seas were as straws in his way. We see clearly enough what moved him, these four hundred years after the event, though he who was moved in reality knew little about it. By the pressure of rapidly accumulating ideas we see brought to the front in discovery Christopher Columbus, just as in the reformation of the church Martin Luther is crowded to the front. The German monk was not the Reformation; like the Genoese sailor, he was but an instrument in the hands of a power palpable to all, but called by different persons different names.

While yet mingling in the excitements of progressive manhood, he became lost in a maze of mysticism, and to the end of his life he never recovered possession of himself. Not that self-mastery, the first necessity of correct conduct, was wholly gone; there was method in his madness; and he could deny the demons within him, but it was only to leave open the door and give himself up to yet other demons.

In the centuries of battle now lately renewed between science and religion, Columbus fought on both sides. Never was a man more filled at once with the material and the spiritual, with the emotional and the intellectual. Mingling with beatified spirits in the garden of his moral paradise were naked wild men equally as glorious in their immoralities. His creed, which was his very life, was not in his eyes a bundle of supernatural abstractions, but concrete reality as much as were any of his temporal affairs. Himself an honest devotee of science, and believing science the offspring of religion, science and himself must therefore finally be forever laid upon the same altar. He had no thought of work apart from religion, or of religion apart from work. He had ready a doctrine for every heavenly display, a theory for every earthly phenomenon. When pictures of other lands rose in his imagination, he knew them to be real, just as Juan Diego of Mexico knew to be real the apparition of our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyacac. By the gnawing hunger of temporal and spiritual ambition he was enabled to see the new lands suggested by science, just as the imprisoned monk, starved and scourged into the beholdings of insanity, sees angels of every incarnation.

While thus obliged to view all his achievements through the atmosphere of creative mysticism, in weighing his manifold qualities, it is well always to remember that there were achievements, and those of the very highest order. His mysticism was the mysticism of practical life rather than of inactive ideality. His faith was of value to him in giving definiteness to energy otherwise vague and fitful. His all-potential enthusiasm subordinated to one idea every erratic and incoherent aspiration. It gave his life a fixedness of purpose which lust, avarice, and every appetite combined could not have given without it; so that while he brooded with misanthropic wistfulness he did not shirk any fancied duty, even when attended by pain and misfortune. His was not a cloistered inspiration, but an overwhelmingly active enthusiasm. There was in him no longing after a perfect life; in his own eyes his life was perfect. No restless questionings over the unknowable; there was no unknowable. His oblique imagination encompassed all worlds and penetrated all space. His positivism bound the metaphysical no less firmly than the material. Abstract conceptions were more tangible than concrete facts. Realities were but accidents; ideas were the only true realities. The highway of the heavens which to profoundest investigation is dusty with the débris of an evolving universe, to this self-sufficient sailor was as plain as the king's road from Seville to Cádiz.

[Sidenote: ANOMALIES AND ABERRATIONS.]

And as genius grows with experience, so grew his determination with the errors he so frequently fell into. He was not a happy man, nor was he always a pleasant companion. In his delusions he was self-satisfied; in the loss of himself self-possessed. He endeavored to be prudent and thought himself worldly wise; but, like many self-flatterers wrapped in their own fancies he was easily imposed upon, even by the sovereigns, with whom he aimed to be exceedingly shrewd. His contact with man did not deepen his humanity, but seemed rather to harden his heart, and drive his affections all the more from earth to heaven. His mind was of that gloomy cast which made even his successes sorrowful. We have seen among his practical virtues integrity of a high conventional order, single-mindedness, courage, and indomitable perseverance; and in other characteristics which were not so pleasing—pride displaying itself, as it often does, in religious humility; a melancholy temper; a selfish ambition, which with one grasp would secure to himself and his family the uttermost that man and God could give; with all his devout piety and heavenly zeal a painful and often ludicrous tenacity in clutching at high-sounding titles and hollow honors—there were even in the most unlovable parts of him something to respect, and in his selfishness a self-sacrificing nobleness, a lofty abandonment of self to the idea, which we can but admire. It was not for himself, although it was always most zealously and jealously for himself; the ships, the new lands, the new peoples, his fortunes and his life, all were consecrate; should the adventure prove successful, the gain would be heaven's; if a failure, the loss would fall on him. Surely the Almighty must smile on terms so favorable to himself. And that he did not finally make good his promises with regard to rescuing the holy sepulchre, and building temples, and converting nations, was for the same reason that he did not finally satisfy his worldly pretensions, and secure himself in his rulership. He had not the time. In all his worldly and heavenly ambitions, the glory of God and the glory of himself were blended with the happy consummation of his grand idea. And never did morbid broodings over the unsubstantial and shadowless produce grander results than these incubations of alternate exaltation and despondency that hatched a continent. And in all that was then transpiring, there are few intelligent readers of history who cannot see an overshadowing, all-controlling destiny shaping events throughout the world, so that this then unknown continent should be prepared to fill the grand purpose which even then appeared to be marked out for it.

While, therefore, in the study of this remarkable character, whose description is but a succession of paradoxes, we see everywhere falsehood leading up to truth and truth to falsehood; while we see spring out of the ideal the real, results the most substantial and success the most signal come from conceptions the most fantastical, we can but observe, not only that penetrative vision which in the mind of genius sees through the symbol the divine significance, but that they have not been always or altogether fruitless of good, those spectral fancies which riot in absurdities, building celestial cities, and peopling pandemoniums, even in the absence of genius, symbol, or significance.[IV-26]

[Sidenote: BIBLIOGRAPHY.]

Probably not one of the many accounts of Columbus which have been published is presented with such fulness of detail, commanding vivid interest from first to last, as that of Mr Washington Irving, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus; to which are added those of His Companions, 3 vols., New York, 1869. The first editions, one in London, in 4 vols., and one in New York, appeared in 1828; since which time there have been many issues, in English and other languages. The author was born in New York, in 1783, and died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, on the Hudson River, in 1859. A strong literary taste was early displayed, specially manifested in 1802 in a series of articles contributed to the Morning Chronicle. In 1804 he visited Europe for his health, returning in 1807. Then appeared the serial Salmagundi, and in 1809 A History of New York. Again in 1815 he went to Europe, and after engaging for a time in mercantile pursuits, abandoned them and gave himself up to letters. The publication of the Sketch Book was begun in numbers in 1818, and was followed by Bracebridge Hall in 1822, and Tales of a Traveller in 1824. Then came Columbus, the material for which he obtained from Navarrete in Spain. See chapter iii. note 9, this volume. After serving as secretary of the American Legation in London from 1829 to 1832, he returned to New York and published The Alhambra; then Crayon Miscellany in 1835; Astoria in 1836; Captain Bonneville in 1837; and Wolfert's Roost in 1855. From 1842 to 1846 he was American Minister to Spain. His later works were Goldsmith, 1849; Mahomet, 1850; and Washington, 1855-9. Mr Irving has been most praised for his genial manner, his gentleness of thought, and his charming style, which carries the reader almost unconsciously along over details in other hands dry and profitless. Among these is found his highest merit; and yet one would sometimes wish the author not quite so meritorious. Elegance and grace eternal tire by their very faultlessness. In handling the rough realities of life one relishes now and then a rough thought roughly expressed. Neither is Irving remarkable for historical accuracy, or exact thinking. An early criticism on Columbus complains of that without which the works of Irving never would have attained great popularity. He was pronounced too wordy, his details too long drawn. If this was the case fifty years ago, it is much more so now. And yet how fascinating is every page! And who but Irving could make thrilling such trivial events? Permit him the use of words, and howsoever isolated the ideas, or commonplace the events, the result was brilliant; but force him within narrow compass, not only would the charm be lost, but the work would be almost worthless.

The highest delight of a healthy mind, of a mind not diseased either by education or affection, is in receiving the truth. The greatest charm in expression, to a writer who may properly be placed in the category of healthful, is in telling the truth. It is only when truth is dearer to us than tradition, or pride of opinion, that we are ready to learn; it is only when truth is dearer to us than praise or profit that we are fit to teach. If the mind be intelligent as well as healthy, it knows itself to be composed of truth and prejudice, the latter engendered of ignorance and environment, holding it in iron fetters, and with which it knows it must forever struggle in vain wholly to be free. Thus keenly alive as well to the difficulties as to the importance of right thinking and exact forms of expression, it nevertheless has its keenest pleasure in striving toward concrete truth. It is truthfulness to nature in all her beauties and deformities, rather than the construction of some more beautiful than natural ideal, that alone satisfies art, whether in the domain of painting, oratory, or literature. We of to-day, while holding in high esteem works of the imagination, are becoming somewhat captious in regard to our facts. The age is essentially informal and real; even our ideal literature must be rigidly true to nature, while whatever pretends to be real must be presented in all simplicity, without circumlocution or disguisement.

Half a century ago it was deemed necessary, particularly by writers of selected epochs of history, in order to clothe their narrative with dramatic effect equal to fiction, to intensify characters and events. The good qualities of good men were made to stand out in bold relief, not against their own bad qualities, but against the bad qualities of bad men, whose wickedness was portrayed in such black colors as to overshadow whatever of good they might possess. Thus historical episodes were endowed, so far as possible without too great discoloration of truth, like a theatrical performance, each with a perfected hero and a finished villain. Of this class of writers were Macaulay and Motley, Froude, Freeman, Prescott, and Irving, whose works are wonderful in their way, not only as art-creations, but as the truest as well as most vivid pictures of their several periods yet presented, and which for generations will be read with that deep and wholesome interest with which they deserve to be regarded. For, although their facts are sometimes highly varnished, their most brilliant creations are always built upon a substantial skeleton of truth. I say that these, the foremost writers of their day, are none of them free from the habit of exaggeration, deception. Indeed, with a wasteful extravagance in the use of superlatives it is almost impossible to draw character strongly without in some parts of it exaggerating. But in these days of rational reflection wherein romance and reality are fairly separated, celestial fiction and mundane fact being made to pass under the same experimentum crucis; mind becoming so mechanical that it introverts and analyzes not only its own mechanism but the mechanism of its maker; iconoclasm becoming spiritualized, and the doctrine revived of the old Adamic serpent, that the knowledge of good and evil is not death but life and immortality, this knowledge being king of kings, vying with nature's forces and oftentimes defying them—I say, in days like these mature manhood becomes impatient of the Santa Claus, or other fictitious imagery, from which the infant mind derives much comfort, and prefers, if necessary, the torments of truth to the elysium of fable. It is no longer valid logic that if the hero stoops to trickery, his biographer should stoop to trickery to cover it. For once undertake to shape the stiff clay of material facts into the artistic forms of fiction, and the result is neither history nor romance.

[Sidenote: WASHINGTON IRVING.]

Proud as I am of the names of Prescott and Irving, at whose shrines none worship with profounder admiration than myself; thankless as may be the task of criticising their classic pages, whose very defects shine with a steadier lustre than I dare hope for my brightest consummations; still, forced by my subject, in some instances, into fields partially traversed by them, I can neither pass them by nor wholly praise them. In justice to my theme, in justice to myself, in justice to the age in which I live, I must speak, and that according to the light and the perceptions given me.

Mr Irving's estimate of the value of honesty and integrity in a historian may be gathered from his own pages. "There is a certain meddlesome spirit," he writes, "which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious erudition. It defeats one of the most salutary purposes of history, that of furnishing examples of what human genius and laudable enterprise may accomplish." Now, if conscientious inquiry into facts signifies a meddlesome spirit; if the plain presentment of facts may rightly be called pernicious erudition; if the overthrow of fascinating falsehood is mutilating the trophies of history; if fashioning golden calves for the worship of the simple be the most salutary purpose of history; then I, for one, prefer the meddlesome spirit and the pernicious erudition which mutilates such monuments to the fairest trophies of historical deception. Again—"Herrera has been accused also of flattering his nation; exalting the deeds of his countrymen, and softening and concealing their excesses. There is nothing very serious in this accusation. To illustrate the glory of his nation is one of the noblest offices of the historian; and it is difficult to speak too highly of the extraordinary enterprises and splendid actions of the Spaniards in those days. In softening their excesses he fell into an amiable and pardonable error, if it were indeed an error for a Spanish writer to endeavor to sink them in oblivion." When a writer openly avows his allegiance to falsehood, to amiable falsehood, to falsehood perpetrated to deceive in regard to one's own country, about which one professes to know more than a stranger, nothing remains to be said. Nothing remains to be said as to the veracity of that author, but much remains to be said concerning the erroneous impressions left by him of the persons and events coming in the way of this work.

With what exquisite grace, with what tender solicitude and motherly blindness to faults Mr Irving defends the reputation of Columbus! Is the Genoese a pirate, then is piracy "almost legalized;" is he a slave-maker, "the customs of the times" are pleaded; without censure he lives at Córdova in open adultery with Beatriz Enriquez, and there becomes the father of the illegitimate Fernando; a bungling attempt is made to excuse the hero for depriving the poor sailor of the prize offered him who should first see land; Oviedo is charged with falsehood because he sometimes decides against the discoverer in issues of policy and character; Father Buil was "as turbulent as he was crafty" because he disagreed with the admiral in some of his measures; the most extravagant vituperation is hurled at Aguado because he is chosen to examine and report on the affairs of the Indies; Fonseca is denounced as inexpressibly vile because he thwarts some of the discoverer's hare-brained projects; and so with regard to those who in any wise opposed him, while all who smiled on him were angels of light. All through his later life when extravagant requests were met by more than the usual liberality of royalty, Irving is petulantly complaining because more is not done for his hero, and because his petulant hero complains. And this puerile pride from which springs such petulance the eloquent biographer coins into the noble ambition of conscious merit. Though according to his own statement the madness of the man increased until toward the latter end he was little better than imbecile, yet we are at the same time gravely assured that "his temper was naturally irritable, but he subdued it by the magnanimity of his spirit." The son Fernando denies that his father once carded wool; Irving does not attempt to excuse this blemish because his readers do not regard work ignoble.

Now it is not the toning-down of defects in a good man's character that I object to so much as the predetermined exaltation of one historical personage at the expense of others utterly debased under like premeditation. Did Mr Irving, and the several scores of biographers preceding and following him, parade the good qualities of Bobadilla, Roldan, and Ovando as heartily as those of their hero, the world would be puzzled what to make of it. We are not accustomed to such statements. Unseasoned biography is tasteless, and we are taught not to expect truth, but a model. We should not know what these writers were trying to do if they catalogued the misdemeanors of Columbus and his brothers with the same embellishments applied to Aguado, Buil, and Fonseca; telling with pathetic exaggeration how the benign admiral of the ocean sea was the first to employ bloodhounds against the naked natives; how he practised varied cruelties in Española beyond expression barbarous; and how he stooped upon occasion not only to vulgar trickery, but to base treachery.

On the other hand, with those who seek notoriety by attempting to degrade the fair fame of noble and successful genius because more credit may have been given by some than is justly due, or by affecting to disbelieve whole narratives and whole histories because portions of them are untrue or too highly colored, I have no sympathy. Books have been written to prove, what no one denies, that centuries before Columbus other Europeans had found this continent, and that thereby the honor of his achievement is lessened—of which sentiment I fail to see the force. So far as the Genoese, his works, and merits are concerned, it makes no whit difference were America twenty times before discovered, as elsewhere in this volume has been fully shown.

[Sidenote: IRVING AND PRESCOTT COMPARED.]

Prescott was a more exact writer than Irving, though Prescott was not wholly above the amiable weakness of his time. In the main he stated the truth, and stated it fairly, though he did not always tell the whole truth. The faults of his heroes he would speak, though never so softly; he seldom attempted entirely to conceal them. He might exaggerate, but he neither habitually practised nor openly defended mendacity. Prescott would fain please the Catholics, if it did not cost too much. Irving would please everybody, particularly Americans; but most of all he would make a pleasing tale; if truthful, well; if not, it must on no account run counter to popular prejudice. The inimitable charm about them both amply atones in the minds of many for any imperfections. Since their day much new light has been thrown upon the subjects treated by them, but not enough seriously to impair the value of their works. In their estimates of the characters of Ferdinand and Isabella, relatively and respectively, these brilliant writers are not alone. They copied those who wrote before them; and those who came after copied them. It has been the fashion these many years, both by native and foreign historians, to curse Ferdinand and to bless Isabella, to heap all the odium of the nation and the times upon the man and exalt the woman among the stars. This, surely, is the more pleasant and chivalrous method of disposing of the matter; but in that case I must confess myself at a loss what to do with the facts.

[Sidenote: FERDINAND AND ISABELLA.]

None but the simple are deceived by the gentle Irving when he insinuates "she is even somewhat bigoted;" by which expression he would have us understand that the fascinating queen of Castile was but little of a bigot. Again: "Ferdinand was a religious bigot; and the devotion of Isabella went as near to bigotry as her liberal mind and magnanimous spirit would permit"—that is to say, as the plan of Mr Irving's story would permit. Quite as well as any of us Irving knew that Isabella was one of the most bigoted women of her bigoted age, far more bigoted than Ferdinand, who dared even dispute the pope when his Holiness interfered too far in attempting to thwart his ambitious plans. She was, indeed, so deeply dyed a bigot as to allow her ghostly confessor to overawe her finest womanly instincts, her commonly strict sense of honor, justice, and humanity, and cause her to permit in Spain the horrible Inquisition, the most monstrous mechanism of torture ever invented in aid of the most monstrous crime ever perpetrated by man upon his fellows, the coercion and suppression of opinion. Fair as she was in all her ways, and charming—fair of heart and mind and complexion, with regular features, light chestnut hair, mild blue eyes, a modest and gracious demeanor—she did not scruple, for the extermination of heresy, to apply to such of her loving subjects as dared think for themselves the thumb-screw, the ring-bolt and pulley, the rack, the rolling-bench, the punch, the skewer, the pincers, the knotted whip, the sharp-toothed iron collar, chains, balls, and manacles, confiscation of property and burning at the stake; and all under false accusations and distorted evidence. She did not hesitate to seize and put to death hundreds of wealthy men like Pecho, and appropriate to her own use their money, though her exquisite womanly sensibilities might sometimes prompt her to fling to the widows and children whom she had turned beggars into the street a few crumbs of their former riches. This mother, who nursed children of her own and who should not have been wholly ignorant of a mother's love, turned a deaf ear to the cries of Moorish mothers as they and their children were torn asunder and sold at the slave mart in Seville. Thousands of innocent men, women, and children she cruelly imprisoned, thousands she cast into the fiery furnace, tens of thousands she robbed and then drove into exile; but it was chastely done, and by a most sweet and beautiful lady. We can hardly believe it true, we do not like to believe it true, that when old Rabbi Abarbanel pleaded before the king for his people, "I will pay for their ransom six hundred thousand crowns of gold," Isabella's soft, musical voice was heard to say, "Do not take it," her confessor meanwhile exclaiming "What! Judas-like, sell Jesus!" Besides, thrice six hundred thousand crowns might be secured by not accepting the ransom. And yet this was the bright being, and such her acts by Prescott's own statements, cover them as he will never so artfully, whose practical wisdom, he assures us, was "founded on the purest and most exalted principle," and whose "honest soul abhorred anything like artifice." Isabella was unquestionably a woman of good intentions; but with such substance the soul-burner's pit is paved.

Prescott throws all the odium of the Inquisition on Torquemada, and I concur. The monk's mind was the ashy, unmelting mould in which the woman's more plastic affections were cast. But then he should be accredited with some portion of the virtues that adorned the character of Isabella, for he was the author of many of them. To be just, if Isabella is accredited with her virtues, she must be charged with her crimes. And if the queen may throw from her shoulders upon those of her advisers the responsibility of iniquity permitted under her rule, why not King Ferdinand, who likewise had men about him urging him to this policy and to that? True, we excuse much in woman as the weaker, and very justly so, which we condemn in the man of powerful cunning. But Isabella was not exactly clay in the hands of those about her; or if so, then praise her for her imbecility, and not for any virtue. But she could muster will and spirit enough of her own upon occasion—witness her threat to kill Pedro Giron with her own hand rather than marry him, and the policy which speaks plainly her sagacity and state-craft in the selection of Ferdinand, and in the strict terms of her marriage contract which excluded her husband from any sovereign rights in Castile or Leon. Most inconsistently, indeed, in reviewing the administration of Isabella, at the end of three volumes of unadulterated adulation Prescott gives his heroine firmness enough in all her ways; independence of thought and action sufficient to circumscribe the pretensions of her nobles; and she "was equally vigilant in resisting ecclesiastical encroachment;" "she enforced the execution of her own plans, oftentimes even at great personal hazard, with a resolution surpassing that of her husband." When, however, she signed the edict for the expulsion of the Jews, the excuse was that "she had been early schooled to distrust her own reason." But why multiply quotations? The Ferdinand and Isabella of Prescott is full of these flat contradictions.

We all know that when carried away by feeling women are more cruel than men; so Isabella under the frenzy of her fanaticism was, if possible, more cruel than Ferdinand, whose passions were ballasted by his ambitions. Her feelings were with her faith; and her faith was with such foul iniquity, such inhuman wrong as should cause her euphemistic apologists to blush for resorting to the same species of subterfuge that makes heroes of Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin. Again, murder and robbery for Christ's sake suits the devil quite as well as when done for one's own sake. And here on earth, to plead in a court of justice good intentions in mitigation of evil acts nothing extenuates in the eyes of any righteous judge. Therefore there is little to choose between those of whom it may be said—Here is a man who perfidiously robs, tortures, and murders his fellow-beings by the hundred thousand in order to glorify himself, and extend and establish his dominions; and, Here is a woman who perfidiously robs, tortures, and murders her fellow-beings by the hundred thousand in order to glorify herself, her priest, her religion, and extend and establish the dominions of her deity. At the farthest, and in the minds of the eloquent biographers themselves, the relative refinement and nobility of the two characters must turn wholly upon one's conception of the relative refinement and nobility of earthly selfishness and heavenly selfishness.

What can we say then, if we make any pretensions to fairness in portraying historical personages, in excuse for Isabella that cannot as rightfully be said in excuse for Ferdinand? For even he, whom sensational biographers array in such sooty blackness in order that the satin robes of Isabella may shine with whiter lustre, has been called in Spain the wise and prudent, and in Italy the pious. Of course there were differences in their dispositions and their ambitions, but not such wide ones as we have been told. He was a man, with a man's nature, cold, coarse, stern, and artful; she a woman, with a woman's nature, warm, refined, gentle, and artful. He was foxlike, she feline. Opposing craft with craft, she jealously guarded what she deemed the interests of her subjects, and earnestly sought by encouraging literature and art, and reforming the laws, to refine and elevate her realm. He did precisely the same. In all the iniquities of his lovely consort Ferdinand lent a helping hand; man could do nothing worse; and all the world agree that Ferdinand was bad. And yet, in what was he worse than she? Both were tools of the times, incisive and remorseless. To the ecclesiastical tyranny of which they were victims they added civil tyranny which they imposed upon their subjects. Ferdinand was the greatest of Spain's sovereigns, far greater than Charles, whose fortune it was to reap where his grandfather had planted. It was Ferdinand who consolidated all the several sovereignties of the Peninsula, save Portugal, into one political body, weighty in the affairs of Europe. He was ambitious; and to accomplish his ends scrupled at nothing. There was no sin he dared not commit, no wrong he dared not inflict, provided the proximate result should accord with his desires. He was less bound by superstition than the average of the age; he was thoughtful, powerful, princely. Both were personages magnificent, glorious, who achieved much good and much evil, the evil being as fully chargeable to the times, which placed princes above promises and religion, above integrity and humanity, as to any special depravity innate in either of them. And what was the immediate result of it; and what the more distant conclusion; and how much after all were Spaniards indebted to these rulers? First Spain enwrapped in surpassing glories! Spain the mistress of the world, on whose dominions the sun refuses to go down. Fortunate Ferdinand! Thrice amiable and virtuous Isabella! And next? Do we not see that these brilliant successes, these gratified covetings are themselves the seeds of Spain's abasement? Infinitely better off were Spain to-day, I will not say had she not driven out her Moors and Jews, but had she never known the New World. How much soever of honor Isabella may have brought upon herself by her speculations in partnership with the Genoese, for the self-same reason, resulting in the great blight of gold and general effeminacy that followed, Spain's posterity might reasonably anathematize her memory could they derive any comfort therefrom.

In regard to that much-lauded act of Isabella's in lending her assistance to Columbus when Ferdinand would not, there is this to be said. First, no special praise is due her for assisting the Genoese; and secondly, she never assisted him in the manner or to the extent represented. Santángel and the Pinzons were the real supporters of that first voyage. Isabella did not pawn her jewels; she did not sell her wardrobe, or empty her purse. But if she had, for what would it have been? It makes a pleasing story for children to call her patronage by pretty names, to say that it was out of pity for the poor sailor, that it was an act of personal sacrifice for the public good, that it was for charity's sake, or from benevolence, for the extension of knowledge or the vindication of some great principle—only it is a very stupid child that does not know better. Clearly enough the object was great returns from a small expenditure; great returns in gold, lands, honors, and proselytings—a species of commercial and political gambling more in accordance with the character as commonly sketched of the "cold and crafty Ferdinand," whose measureless avarice and insatiable greed not less than his subtle state-craft and kingly cunning would have prompted him to secure so great a prize at so small a cost, than with the character of an unselfish, heavenly-minded woman. And were it not for the danger of being regarded by the tender-minded as ungallant, I might allude to the haggling which attended the bargain, and tell how the queen at first refused to pay the sailor his price, and let him go, then called him back and gave him what he first had asked, more like a Jew than like even the grasping Ferdinand.

In conclusion, I feel it almost unnecessary to say that Columbus, Isabella, and all those bright examples of history whose conduct and influence in the main were on the side of humanity, justice, the useful, and the good, have my most profound admiration, my most intelligent respect. All their faults I freely forgive, and praise them for what they were, as among the noblest, the best, the most beneficial to their race—though not always so, nor always intending it—of any who have come and gone before us. And I can hate Bobadilla, Roldan, and others of their sort, all historical embodiments of injustice, egotism, treachery, and beastly cruelty, with a godly hatred; but I hope never to be so blinded by the brightness of my subject as to be unable to see the truth, and seeing it, fairly to report it.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

V. ADMINISTRATION OF THE INDIES

1492-1526.

COLUMBUS THE RIGHTFUL RULER—JUAN AGUADO—FRANCISCO DE BOBADILLA—NICOLÁS DE OVANDO—SANTO DOMINGO THE CAPITAL OF THE INDIES—EXTENSION OF ORGANIZED GOVERNMENT TO ADJACENT ISLANDS AND MAIN-LAND—RESIDENCIAS—GOLD MINING AT ESPAÑOLA—RACE AND CASTE IN GOVERNMENT—INDIAN AND NEGRO SLAVERY—CRUELTY TO THE NATIVES—SPANISH SENTIMENTALISM—PACIFICATION, NOT CONQUEST—THE SPANISH MONARCHS ALWAYS THE INDIAN'S FRIENDS—BAD TREATMENT DUE TO DISTANCE AND EVIL-MINDED AGENTS—INFAMOUS DOINGS OF OVANDO—REPARTIMIENTOS AND ENCOMIENDAS—THE SOVEREIGNS INTEND THEM AS PROTECTION TO THE NATIVES—SETTLERS MAKE THEM THE MEANS OF INDIAN ENSLAVEMENT—LAS CASAS APPEARS AND PROTESTS AGAINST INHUMANITIES—THE DEFAULTING TREASURES—DIEGO COLON SUPERSEDES OVANDO AS GOVERNOR—AND MAKES MATTERS WORSE—THE JERONIMITE FATHERS SENT OUT—AUDIENCIAS—A SOVEREIGN TRIBUNAL IS ESTABLISHED AT SANTO DOMINGO WHICH GRADUALLY ASSUMES ALL THE FUNCTIONS OF AN AUDIENCIA, AND AS SUCH FINALLY GOVERNS THE INDIES—LAS CASAS IN SPAIN—THE CONSEJO DE INDIAS, AND CASA DE CONTRATACION—LEGISLATION FOR THE INDIES.

We have seen how it had been first of all agreed that Columbus should be sole ruler, under the crown, of such lands and seas as he might discover for Spain. We have seen how, under that rule, disruption and rebellion followed at the heels of mismanagement, until the restless colonists made Española an angustiarum insula to the worthy admiral, and until their majesties thought they saw in it decent excuse for taking the reins from the Genoese, and supplanting him by agents of their own choosing. The first of these agents was Juan Aguado, who was merely a commissioner of inquiry. With him, it will be remembered, Columbus returned to Spain after his second voyage, leaving his brother Bartolomé in command. The admiral was permitted to try again; but on reaching the seat of his government he was unable to quiet the disturbances which had increased during his absence. Rebellion had almost reached the dignity of revolution, and stronger than the government were factions whose leaders openly defied the governor-general, viceroy, and admiral of the ocean sea. That their Majesties were greatly grieved at this, I do not say; or that they were displeased that the rebels, or revolutionists, of Española should refer their troubles to them. But this is certain, that after another fair trial Columbus was obliged to give it up, and to see himself displaced by a person far worse than himself. Perhaps it is true that a knave was better for the office than an honest man.

Not that Francisco de Bobadilla may be lawfully accused of dishonesty; the sovereigns seemed competent to take care of themselves where their revenue was concerned. And yet he was certainly influenced in his conduct by no sense of right or of humanity. He was a man of narrow mind, of ignoble instincts and mean prejudices. He was popular for a time with the colonists because he was like them, and because he reduced the royal share of the product of the mines from a third to an eleventh, and permitted the dissolute to idle their time and illtreat the natives; and because he released those whom the admiral had imprisoned, and enabled Columbus to pay his debts—for which last mentioned measure I have no fault to find with him.

It was the 21st of March, 1499, that Bobadilla was authorized to proceed against offenders at Española, but he did not leave Spain until July, 1500, reaching Santo Domingo the 23d of August. The enchaining of the illustrious discoverer by an infamous agent, and for no crime, excited universal disgust throughout Christendom; and yet their Majesties seemed in no haste to depose him; for it was not until the 3d of September, 1501, in answer to the persistent remonstrances of Columbus, that a change was made, and the government given to Nicolas de Ovando, who sailed from Spain the 13th of February following, and arrived at Santo Domingo the 15th of April, 1502; so that Bobadilla was in office on the island over a year and a half, long enough to sow the seeds of much iniquity.

[Sidenote: NICOLAS DE OVANDO.]

Ovando was a knight of the order of Alcántara, of neither massive mind nor commanding mien. But his firm and fluent speech lent strength to his slight figure and fair complexion, and a courteous manner made amends for a vanity which in him assumed the form of deep humility. He was well known to their Majesties, having been one of the companions of Prince Juan, and it was thought would make a model governor. Ample instructions, both written and verbal, were given him before sailing. The natives should be converted, but their bodies should not be enslaved or inhumanly treated. They must pay tribute, and gather gold, but for the latter they should be paid wages. There was to be a complete change of soldiers and officials at Española, that the new government might begin untainted by the late disorders. Neither Jews nor Moors might go to the Indies, but negro slaves, born into the possession of Christians, were to be permitted passage. For any loss resulting from Bobadilla's acts, full restitution must be made the admiral, and henceforth his rights of property must be respected. Columbus might always keep there an agent to collect his dues, and he was to be treated with consideration. The idle and profligate were to be returned to Spain. Except the provinces given to Ojeda and Pinzon, Ovando's jurisdiction was made to extend over all the Indies, that is to say, over all the New World dominions of Spain, islands and firm land, with the capital at Santo Domingo, and subordinate or municipal governments in the more important localities. All mining licenses issued by Bobadilla were to be revoked; of the gold thus far collected one third should be taken for the crown, and of all thereafter gathered one half. Supplementing these instructions with much paternal advice consisting of minor moralities and Machiavelisms, their Majesties bade their viceroy God speed and sent him forth in a truly royal fashion.

There were no less than thirty ships and twenty-five hundred persons comprising the expedition. Of the company were Alonso Maldonado, newly appointed alcalde mayor,[V-1] and twelve Franciscans, with a prelate, Antonio de Espinal. Las Casas was present; and Hernan Cortés would have been there but for an illness which prevented him. There were seventy-three respectable married women, who had come with their husbands and children, and who were to salt society at their several points of distribution. It was evident as the new governor entered his capital, elegantly attired, with a body-guard of sixty-two foot-soldiers and ten horsemen, and a large and brilliant retinue, that the colonization of the New World had now been assumed in earnest by the sovereigns of Spain. Nor was Ovando disposed to be dilatory in his duty. He at once announced the residencia[V-2] of Bobadilla, and put Roldan, ci-devant rebel, and later chief judge, under arrest. He built in Española several towns to which arms and other privileges were given, founded a hospital, removed Santo Domingo to a more healthful site on the other side of the river, and established a colony at Puerto de Plata, on the north side of Española, near Isabela.

Distant eight leagues from Santo Domingo were the mines where the twenty-five hundred thought immediately to enrich themselves. For several days after landing the road was alive with eager gold hunters drawn from all classes of the community; cavalier, hidalgo,[V-3] and laborer, priest and artisan, honest men and villains, whose cupidity had been fired by the display of precious metal lately gathered, and who were now hurrying forward with hard breath and anxious eyes under their bundle of necessities. But there was no happy fortune in store for these new-comers. The story then new has been oft repeated since: expecting to fill their sacks quickly and with ease, and finding that a very little gold was to be obtained only by very great labor, they were soon on their way back to the city, where many of them fell into poverty, half of them dying of fever.

Poor fools! they did not know; their countrymen, those that were left from former attempts, did not tell them, though Roldan's men, Bobadilla's men knew well enough, and in truth the remnant of Ovando's men were not slow to learn, that the wise man, the wise and villainous man from Spain, did not work or die for gold, or for anything else, when there were savages that might be pricked to it by the sword.

[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT OF THE NATIVES.]

During this earliest period of Spanish domination in America, under successive viceroys and subordinate rulers, by far the most important matter which arose for consideration or action was the treatment of the aborigines. Most momentous to them it was, certainly, and of no small consequence to Spain. Unfortunately, much damage was done before the subject was fairly understood; and afterward, evils continued because bad men were always at hand ready to risk future punishment for present benefits. Spain was so far away, and justice moved so slowly, if it moved at all, that this risk was seldom of the greatest.

The sovereigns of Spain now found themselves called upon to rule two races in the New World, the white and the red. And it was not always easy to determine what should be done, what should be the relative attitude of one toward the other. As to the superiority of the white race there was no question. And among white men, Spaniards were the natural masters; and among Spaniards, Castilians possessed the first rights in the new lands the Genoese had found for them.

All was plain enough so far. It was natural and right that Spaniards should be masters in America. Their claim was twofold; as discoverers, and as propagandists. But in just what category to place the red man was a question almost as puzzling as to tell who he was, and whence he came. Several times the question arose as to whether he had a soul, or a semi-soul, and whether the liquid so freely let by the conquerors was brute blood, or of as high proof as that which ran in Castilian veins. The savages were to be governed, of course; but how, as subjects or as slaves? Columbus was strongly in favor of Indian slavery. He had participated in the Portuguese slave-trade, and had found it profitable. Spaniards enslaved infidels, and why not heathens? Mahometans enslaved Christians, and Christians Mahometans. Likewise Christians enslaved Christians, white as well as black, though it began to be questioned in Spain whether it was quite proper to enslave white Christians.

[Sidenote: SLAVERY.]

The negro slave-trade was at this time comparatively a new thing. It was one of the proximate results of fifteenth-century maritime discovery. The Portuguese were foremost in it, organizing for the purpose a company at Lagos, and a factory at Arguin, about the middle of the century, Prince Henry receiving his fifth. Europe, however, offered no profitable field for African slave labor, and but for the discovery of America the traffic probably never would have assumed large proportions. Public sentiment was not in those days averse to slavery, particularly to the enslavement of the children of Ham. And yet neither Isabella nor Ferdinand was at all disposed, in regard to their New World possessions, to follow the example of Portugal on the coast of Africa. Though they had scarcely made personal the application that the practice was one of the chief causes of Rome's ruin, yet they seemed instinctively opposed to it in this instance. They did not want these creatures in Spain, they had no use for them. In regard to the ancient custom of enslaving prisoners of war, particularly the detested and chronically hostile Moors, it was different. This New World had been given them for a higher purpose. Its natives were not the enemies of Spain; they were innocent of any offence against Spain. It was better, it was more glorious, there was higher and surer reward in it, to Christianize than to enslave. This the clergy constantly urged; so that in Spain the passion for propagandism was greater than the passion for enslaving.

Columbus must have been aware of this when in 1495 he sent by Torres, with the four ship-loads of Indian slaves, the apology to their Majesties that these were man-eating Caribs, monsters, the legitimate prey of slave-makers wherever found. Peradventure some of them might be made Christians, who when they had learned Castilian could be sent back to serve as missionaries and interpreters to aid in delivering their countrymen from the powers of darkness. This was plausible, and their Majesties seemed content; but when Columbus pressed the matter further, and requested that arrangements should be made for entering extensively into the traffic, they hesitated. Meanwhile the Genoese launched boldly forth in the old way, not only making slaves of cannibals but of prisoners of war; and whenever slaves were needed, a pretence for war was not long wanting. Thereupon, with another shipment, the admiral grows jubilant, and swears by the holy Trinity that he can send to Spain as many slaves as can be sold, four thousand if necessary, and enters upon the details of capture, carriage, sale, and return cargoes of goods, with all the enthusiasm of a sometime profitable experience in the business. Further than this he permits enforced labor where there had been failure to pay tribute, and finally gives to every one who comes an Indian for a slave.

Then the monarchs were angry. "What authority from me has the admiral to give to any one my vassals!" exclaimed the queen. All who had thus been stolen from home and country, among whom were pregnant women and babes newly born, were ordered returned. And from that moment the sovereigns of Spain were the friends of the Indians. Not Isabella alone but Ferdinand, Charles, and Philip, and their successors for two hundred years with scarcely an exceptional instance, stood manfully for the rights of the savages—always subordinate however to their own fancied rights—constantly and determinately interposing their royal authority between the persistent wrong-doing of their Spanish subjects, and their defenceless subjects of the New World. Likewise the Catholic Church is entitled to the highest praise for her influence in the direction of humanity, and for the unwearied efforts of her ministers in guarding from cruelty and injustice these poor creatures. Here and there in the course of this narrative we find a priest carried away by the spirit of proselytism commit acts of folly and unrighteousness; and men announcing as church measures proceedings which when known in the mother country received the prompt condemnation of the church. These men and measures I shall not be backward to condemn. But it is with no small degree of pleasure that I record thus early in this history the noble attributes of the self-sacrificing Christian heroes who while preaching their faith to the savage endeavored to bridle as best they could the cupidity and cruelty of the Spanish adventurers who accompanied them.

[Sidenote: LAWS RESPECTING THE ABORIGINES.]

After the first invasions, in various quarters, aggressive warfare on the natives, even on obdurate heathen nations, was prohibited. In the extension of dominion that followed, the very word 'conquest' was forbidden to be employed, even though it were a conquest gained by fighting, and the milder term 'pacification' was substituted.[V-4] Likewise, after the first great land robberies had been committed, side by side with the minor seizures was in practice the regulation that enough of the ancient territory should be left each native community to support it comfortably in a fixed residence. The most that was required of the Indians was to abolish their ancient inhuman practices, put on the outward apparel of civilization, and as fast as possible adapt themselves to Christian customs, paying a light tax, in kind, nominally for protection and instruction. This doing, they were to be left free and happy. Such were the wishes of crown and clergy; for which both strove steadily though unsuccessfully until the object of their solicitude crumbled into earth.[V-5]

For the soldier, the sailor, the cavalier, the vagabond, the governor, and all their subordinates and associates, all the New World rabble from viceroy to menial willed it otherwise, the New World clergy too often winking assent. However omnipotent in Spain, there were some things in America that the sovereigns and their confessors could not do. They could not control the bad passions of their subjects when beyond the reach of rope and dungeon. That these evil proclivities were of home engendering, having for their sanction innumerable examples from church and state, statesmen and prelates would hardly admit, but it is in truth a plausible excuse for the excesses committed. The fact is that for every outrage by a subject in the far away Indies, there were ten, each of magnitude tenfold for evil, committed by the sovereigns in Spain; so that it is by no means wonderful that the Spaniards determined here to practise a little sinfulness for their own gratification, even though their preceptors did oppose wickedness which by reason of their absence they themselves could not enjoy.

Though the monarchs protested earnestly, honestly, and at the length of centuries, their subjects went their way and executed their will with the natives. Were I to tell a tenth of the atrocities perpetrated by Christian civilization on the natives of America, I could tell nothing else. The catalogue of European crime, Spanish, English, French, is as long as it is revolting. Therefore, whenever I am forced to touch upon this most distasteful subject, I shall be as brief as possible.

[Sidenote: DASTARDLY DOINGS OF OVANDO.]

Passing the crimes of Columbus and Bobadilla, the sins of the two being, for biographical effect, usually placed upon the latter, let us look at the conduct of Ovando, who, as Spanish provincial rulers went in those days, was an average man. He ruled with vigor; and as if to offset his strict dealings with offending Spaniards, unoffending Indians were treated with treachery and merciless brutality.

Rumor reaching him that Anacaona, queen of Jaraguá, meditated revolt, he marched thither at the head of two hundred foot-soldiers and seventy horsemen. The queen came out to meet him, and escorted him with music and dancing to the great banqueting-hall, and entertained him there for several days. Still assured by evil tongues that his hostess intended treachery, he determined to forestall her. On a Sunday afternoon, while a tilting-match was in progress, Ovando gave the signal. He raised his hand and touched his Alcántara cross—a badge of honor it was called, which, had it been real, should have shrivelled the hand that for such a purpose touched it. On the instant Anacaona and her caciques were seized and a mock trial given them; after which the queen was hanged, the caciques tortured and burned, and the people of the province, men, women, and children, ruthlessly and indiscriminately butchered. Those who escaped the massacre were afterward enslaved. For intelligence, grace, and beauty Anacaona was the Isabella of the Indies, and there was no valid proof that she meditated the slightest injury to the Spaniards.

The natives of Saona and Higuey, in revenge for the death of a chief torn in pieces by a Spanish bloodhound, rose to arms, and slew a boat's crew of eight Spaniards. Juan de Esquivel with four hundred men was sent against them, and the usual indiscriminate hanging and burning followed. It is stated that over six hundred were slaughtered at one time in one house. A peace was conquered, a fort built; fresh outrages provoked a fresh outbreak; and the horrors of the extermination that followed Las Casas confessed himself unable to describe. A passion arose for mutilation, and for prolonging agony by new inventions for refining cruelty. And the irony of Christianity was reached when thirteen men were hanged side by side in honor of Christ and his apostles. Cotubano, the last of the five native kings of Española, was taken to Santo Domingo, and hanged by order of Ovando. In Higuey were then formed two settlements, Salvaleon and Santa Cruz. To take the places in the Spanish service of the Indians thus slain in Española, forty thousand natives of the Lucayas Islands were enticed thither upon the pretext of the captors that they were the Indians' dead ancestors come from heaven to take their loved ones back with them. Española was indeed their shortest way to heaven, though not the way they had been led to suppose. When tidings of Ovando's doings reached Spain, notably of his treatment of Anacaona, Queen Isabella was on her death-bed; but raising herself as best she was able, she exclaimed to the president of the council, "I will have you take of him such a residencia as was never taken."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE LABOR QUESTION.]

Both the Spaniards and the Indians, as we have seen, were averse to labor. To both it was degrading; to the latter, killing. And yet it was necessary that mines should be worked, lands cultivated, and cattle raised. Else of what avail was the New World?

The colonists clamored, and the crown was at a loss what to do. In her dilemma there is no wonder the queen appeared to equivocate; but when in December, 1503, she permitted Ovando to use force in bringing the natives to a sense of their duty, though they must be paid fair wages and made to work "as free persons, for so they are," she committed a fatal error. The least latitude was sure to be abused. Under royal permission of 1501 a few negro slaves from time to time were taken to the Indies. Las Casas urged the extension of this traffic in order to save the Indians. Ovando complained that the negroes fled and hid themselves among the natives, over whom they exercised an unwholesome influence; nevertheless in September, 1505, we find the king sending over more African slaves to work in the mines, this time about one hundred. From 1517, when importations from the Portuguese establishments on the Guinea coast were authorized by Charles V., the traffic increased, and under the English, particularly, assumed enormous proportions. This unhappy confusion of races led to a negro insurrection at Española in 1522.

We come now to some of the results of the temporizing policy of Spain—always a bad one when the subject is beyond the reach of the ruling arm—in regard to the Indians. For out of a desire to avoid the odium of Indian slavery, and yet secure the benefits thereof, grew a system of servitude embodying all the worst features of absolute bondage, with none of its mitigations.

[Sidenote: REPARTIMIENTOS AND ENCOMIENDAS.]

It will be remembered that during his second voyage Columbus made war on the natives of Española, and after sending some as slaves to Spain, imposed a tribute on the rest; on some a bell-measure of gold, and on others an arroba[V-6] of cotton, every three months. So severe was this tax that many could not meet it, and in 1496 service was accepted in place of tribute. This was the beginning in the New World of the repartimiento,[V-7] or as it shortly afterward became the encomienda, system, under which the natives of a conquered country were divided among the conquerors, recommended to their care, and made tributary to them.

[Sidenote: ADMINISTRATION OF THE INDIES.]

The theory was that the Indians were the vassals of Spain, no more to be imposed upon than other Spanish subjects. The sovereigns wishing to stimulate discovery, pacification, and settlement, were willing to waive their right to the tribute due the crown in favor of enterprising and meritorious persons, who had taken upon themselves the hardships incident to life in a new country. At first in certain instances, but later to an extent which became general, they settled this tribute upon worthy individuals among the conquerors and colonists and their descendants, on condition that those who thus directly received a portion of the royal revenue should act the part of royalty to the people placed temporarily in their care. They were to be as a sovereign lord and father, and not as a merciless or unjust taskmaster. They were to teach their wards the arts of civilization, instruct them in the Christian doctrine, watch over and guide and guard them, and never to restrict them in the use of their liberties, nor impose burdens on them, nor in any way to injure or permit injury to befall them. And for this protection they were neither to demand nor receive more than the legal tribute fixed by the royal officers, and always such as the natives could without distress or discomfort pay. What the system was in practice we shall have ample opportunity of judging as we proceed in this history. Suffice it to say here that to the fatherly-protection part of their compact the colonists paid little heed, but evaded the law in many ways, and ground the poor savages under their iron heel, while the crown by ordering, and threatening, earnestly but vainly sought to carry out in good faith and humanity what they deemed a sacred trust.

[Sidenote: THE PARTITION SYSTEM.]

First, repartimientos of lands were authorized by the sovereigns. This was in 1497, and nothing was then said about the natives. But after dividing the land it was but a step to the dividing of the inhabitants. With the shipment of six hundred slaves in 1498, and an offer to their Majesties of as many more as they could find sale for, Columbus wrote asking permission to enforce the services of the natives until settlement should be fairly begun, say for a year or two; but without waiting for a reply he at once began the practice, which introduced a new feature into repartimientos. Then to all who chose to take them, to Roldan and his followers, to the worst characters on the island, among whom were the late occupants of Spanish prisons, the vilest of humankind, was given absolute dominion over these helpless and innocent creatures. Having paid nothing for them, having no pecuniary interest in them, they had no object in caring whether they were fed or starved, whether they lived or died, for if they died there were more at hand upon the original terms.

Under Bobadilla the infamy assumed bolder proportions. Columbus had apportioned to certain lands certain natives to labor for the benefit of Spaniards, but they worked under their cacique. Natives were forced by Spaniards to work mines, but only under special monthly license. Bobadilla not only permitted the exaction from the natives of mining and farming labor, but all restrictions were laid aside, and from working their own soil they became mere labor-gangs to be driven anywhere. Before sailing for the New World Ovando had been charged by the sovereigns with the exercise of extreme moderation in levying tributes and making repartimientos. Those who came with him not only failed in mining, but neglected to plant, as did likewise the natives, thinking thereby the quicker to rid themselves of the invaders. Hence famine, engendering new diseases, was at hand for both white men and red. Then the Indians were systematically parcelled among the Spaniards, to one fifty, to another one hundred, and the repartimiento unfolded into the encomienda. Columbus and Bobadilla had each endeavored to fasten Indian slavery upon the New World, but this legalizing by Ovando what had been illegally done by them, was the heaviest blow in that direction. "To you is given an encomienda of Indians with their chief; and you are to teach them the things of our holy Catholic faith," was the thin subterfuge by which this foul act was accomplished.

[Sidenote: THE KING'S STRONG BOX.]

In 1508 was sent to Santo Domingo as treasurer-general Miguel de Pasamonte to supersede Bernardino de Santa Clara, who had received the office of treasurer from Ovando. Santa Clara loved display and lacked honesty. Using freely the king's money he bought estates, and gave feasts, in one of which the salt-cellars were filled with gold-dust. This folly reaching the king's ears, Gil Gonzalez Dávila, of whom we shall know more presently, was sent to investigate the matter, and found Santa Clara a defaulter to the extent of eighty thousand pesos de oro. His property was seized and offered at auction. Ovando, with whom Santa Clara was a favorite, stood by at the sale, and holding up a pineapple offered it to the most liberal bidder, which pleasantry was so stimulating that the estate brought ninety-six thousand pesos de oro, more than twice its value. Afterward the plan was adopted of having three locks upon the government's strong-box, the keys to which were carried by the three chief treasury officials.[V-8] Pasamonte was an Aragonese, in the immediate service of Ferdinand, with whom he corresponded in cipher during his residence in the Indies. A very good repartimiento of Indians was ordered by the king to be given the faithful Pasamonte. In 1511 Gil Gonzalez Dávila was made contador of Española, and Juan de Ampues factor; to each were given two hundred Indians, and they were ordered to examine the accounts of the treasurer, Pasamonte. For the faithful must be kept faithful by the strictest watching; such was Spanish discretion, whether in the management of men or women.

* * * * *

The removal of Ovando was delayed by the death of Isabella in 1504, and of Columbus in 1506. After persistent importunities Diego Colon, son of the admiral, was permitted in 1508 to plead in the courts of Spain his claim, as his father's successor, to the viceroyalty of the Indies. His marriage, meanwhile, with María de Toledo, a lady of high birth and connection, assisted in opening the eyes of the law to the justness of his demands, fully as much as did any argument of counsel. Ovando was recalled and Diego authorized to take his place.

The new governor, accompanied by his wife, his brother Fernando, his uncles Bartolomé and Diego, and a retinue brilliant with rank and beauty, landed at Santo Domingo in July, 1509. Although Ferdinand had withheld the title of viceroy, Diego evidently regarded his appointment nothing less than a viceroyalty, although the two mainland governors, Alonso de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa, for the provinces east and west of Urabá, remained independent of him.

[Sidenote: THE SOVEREIGN TRIBUNAL.]

Diego's administration was but little if any improvement on those of his predecessors. He possessed neither the ability nor the prudence of Ovando. He had intended equity and honesty in his rulings, and exceptional kindness to the natives; notwithstanding which he began by granting repartimientos to himself, his wife, and kindred, and giving the best of the remainder to his favorites. So that the now standard evils of favoritism and cruelty were in no wise mitigated. Not only were the Indians no better used than formerly, but falling into the errors of his father in the management of men Diego's weak government soon found opposed to it a faction at whose head was the powerful Pasamonte. Charges of a serious nature against the son of the Genoese so frequently reached Spain that in 1511 the king found it necessary to establish at Santo Domingo a sovereign tribunal to which appeals might be made from the decisions of the governor. This tribunal which at first was only a royal court of law, superior to any other colonial power, was the germ of the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo by which the greater part of the Indies, islands and firm land, were governed for a period subsequent to 1521. It was at first composed of three jueces de apelacion, or judges of appeal, Marcelo de Villalobos, Juan Ortiz de Matienzo, and Lúcas Vazquez de Aillon. These licenciados, having brought with them instructions from Spain, and also orders on Diego Colon for partitions of land and two hundred Indians each, in 1511 were ready to rule. They were empowered to hear and determine appeals from the governor, his tenientes and alcaldes mayores, and from any other judges that had been or should be appointed either by the colonial governor or by the crown, appeal from their decision being only to the Council of the Indies in Spain. Although from its creation clothed with many of the powers of an audiencia, it did not all at once possess that title, but gradually assumed it.[V-9] By decree of September 14, 1526, we find the emperor ordering that in the city of Santo Domingo there should reside the Audiencia y Chancillería Real, "como está fundada," as at present constituted. It was to consist of a president; four oidores, who were also alcaldes del crímen, or criminal judges; a fiscal, a prosecuting officer in this case; an alguacil mayor, or high sheriff; a teniente de gran canciller, or deputy grand chancellor, and other necessary officers. Indeed, beside some of the other officers, a president had already been provided in 1521, in the person of Luis de Figueroa, bishop of Concepcion. Francisco de Prado was appointed fiscal in 1523, at which time the salaries of the oidores were raised, as they had been deprived of the right of holding Indians. All appeals from the jueces de residencia, where the amount involved was less than six hundred pesos de oro, were thereafter referred to this tribunal. Alonso de Zuazo took his seat among the oidores in 1526. To the audiencia of Santo Domingo was given for its district the West India Islands; and on the mainland the governments of Venezuela, Nueva Andalucía, Rio de Hacha, and Guayana, or el Dorado, this district being bounded by those of the audiencias of the Nuevo Reino de Granada, Tierra Firme, Guatemala, Nueva España, and the provinces of Florida. The president was empowered to make such ordinances as he should deem essential to the good government and defence of the island, just as was done, within their jurisdiction, by other governors of Indian provinces. He might fill vacancies in the various subordinate offices until the pleasure of the king should be known, and he might do generally all things pertaining to the executive power. In these matters the oidores were forbidden to interfere; nor could the president exercise judicial functions, but must nevertheless sign with the judges all sentences. In other respects this tribunal was on an equal footing with others of its class.[V-10]

[Sidenote: AUDIENCIAS.]

Meanwhile the most disturbing question in the colony was that of labor. To govern the few Spaniards at Española, under the arbitrary system of Spain, was a small matter; but to divide among them lands, agricultural and mineral, and laborers in such a way as to satisfy at once the colonists and the many tender and enlightened consciences in Spain, in such a way as to prevent the utter ruin either of colonial enterprise or of the natives themselves, was indeed a difficult task.

[Sidenote: END OF DIEGO COLON.]

In 1509 possession had been taken of Jamaica by Juan de Esquivel, and toward the end of 1511[V-11] the governor of Española had sent Diego Velazquez to occupy Cuba, which was done without the loss of a Spaniard. Ojeda and Nicuesa having failed in colonizing Darien, the mainland in that vicinity was offered by the king in 1514 to the adelantado, Bartolomé Colon, but he was then too ill to accept the charge, and died not long after. In April, 1515, Diego Colon embarked for Spain; and we find him attempting his vindication at court, when Ferdinand died, the 23d of January, 1516. Cardinal Jimenez, who held the reins of Spanish government for a time, refused to decide between the governor and treasurer; but in 1520 the emperor directed Pasamonte to molest Diego no more. Then affairs at Española became more intolerable than ever, and in 1523 Diego was divested of authority by the Council of the Indies, the sovereign tribunal at Santo Domingo furnishing ample information of a condemnatory character. Diego succeeded, however, in having a commission appointed to examine the matter more carefully, but this tended only to further complications; and the last days of the son, which ended in 1526, were not more happy than those of the father had been.[V-12]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS.]

A steadily growing character, impressing itself more and more upon the affairs of the Indies as time went by, was that of Bartolomé de las Casas. Born at Seville in 1474, he conned his humanities at Salamanca, making little stir among the Gamaliels there, but taking the bachelor's degree in his eighteenth year. After a residence of about eight years in the Indies, having come with Ovando in 1502, he was admitted to priestly orders, from which time he takes his place in history. He was a man of very pronounced temperament and faculties, as much man of business as ecclesiastic, but more philanthropist than either; possessed of a burning enthusiasm, when once the fire of his conviction was fairly kindled, he gave rest neither to himself nor to his enemies. For every evil-minded man who came hither was his enemy, between whom and himself was a death-struggle. The Apostle of the Indies he was sometimes called, and the mission he took upon himself was to stand between the naked natives and their steel-clad tormentors. In this work he was ardent, ofttimes imprudent, always eloquent and truthful, and as impudently bold and brazen as any cavalier among them all. Nor was he by any means a discontented man. He sought nothing for himself; he had nothing that man could take from him except life, upon which he set no value, or except some of its comforts, which were too poor at best to trouble himself about. His cause, which was the right, gave breadth and volume to his boldness, beside which the courage of the hare-brained babbler was sounding brass.

When the attention of the church was first seriously drawn toward the amelioration of the condition of the Indians, which was in 1511, there were at Española some thirteen Dominicans, living with their vicar, Pedro de Córdoba, according to the strictest rules of the order, and likewise several Franciscans, among whom was Antonio de Espinal. The Dominicans began their protest by a sermon denouncing the course of the colonists, and when ordered to retract, they repeated their charges with still greater emphasis. The colonists sent agents to Spain to have the contumacious monks displaced, and among them Espinal; for the Franciscans, as much in a spirit of opposition to the Dominicans as to find favor with the laity, showed a leaning toward the repartimiento system, though they could not decently defend it. The Dominicans sent Antonio Montesino, he who had preached the distasteful sermon, all the Dominicans present having signed approval of it. To consider the matter, a junta was summoned in Spain, which pronounced the Indians a free people, a people to be Christianized, and not enslaved; they were innocent heathen, not infidel enemies like the Moors, or natural-born slaves like the negroes. Ferdinand and Fonseca were both earnest in obtaining this verdict, for so had said the king's preachers. Meanwhile Montesino encountering Espinal in Spain, won him over to the side of humanity. But all the same the repartimientos were continued, for they were fatherly protection only in theory, and the colonists went on scourging the poor red men.

In the occupation of Cuba, Pánfilo de Narvaez was named by Velazquez his lieutenant, and sent forth to subjugate other parts of the island. With Narvaez went Las Casas, who put forth almost superhuman exertions in vain to stay the merciless slaughter of the helpless and innocent. A warm friend of Las Casas was Velazquez' alcalde, Pedro de Rentería, who in the division of the spoils joined Las Casas in accepting a large tract of land, and a proportionate repartimiento of Indians. This was before Las Casas had seriously considered the matter, and he was at first quite delighted with his acquisition. But the enormity of the wrong coming upon him, his conversion was as decisive as that of St Paul. Like the Dominicans of Española, Las Casas began by preaching against repartimientos. In 1515 he sailed for Spain in company with Montesino, leaving his charge with certain monks sent over from Española by the prelate Córdoba. These Dominican brothers did what they could, but to such straits were the savages driven after the departure of Las Casas that to escape the bloodhounds and other evils set upon them by the Spaniards thousands of them took refuge in suicide. When Diego Colon arrived in 1509 there were left in Española forty thousand natives. A repartidor was appointed in the person of Rodrigo de Alburquerque to repartition the Indians, but when he arrived in 1514 there were but thirteen thousand left to divide. After proclaiming himself with great pomp, Alburquerque plainly intimated that bribery was in order, that he who paid the most money should have the best repartimiento. Afterward the Licentiate Ibarra, sent to Española to take the residencia of the alcalde Aguilar, was authorized to make a new partition. Large numbers of natives were given to the king's favorites in Spain, and the evil grew apace. Nor were affairs at Española mended by sending out so frequently new officials with new and conflicting powers.

[Sidenote: THE JERONIMITE FATHERS.]

Whatever hopes the monks may have derived from Ferdinand's benign reception, death cut short the proposed relief. Fonseca, now bishop of Búrgos, with coarse ribaldry dismissed the subject; but when Las Casas applied to the regent, Cardinal Jimenez, an earnest and active interest was manifest. Las Casas, Montesino, and Palacios Rubios were directed to present a plan for the government of the Indies, which resulted in sending thither three Jeronimite Fathers, Luis de Figueroa, Alonso de Santo Domingo, and Bernardino Manzanedo, monks of the order of St Jerome, being selected because they were free from the complications in which those of St Francis and St Dominic already found themselves involved in the New World. The Jeronimites were ordered to visit the several islands and inform themselves regarding the condition of the Indians, and adopt measures for the formation of native settlements. These settlements or communities were to be governed each by a cacique, together with an ecclesiastic; and for every two or three settlements a civil officer, called an administrator, having supreme power in the settlements, was to be appointed. The cacique, after obtaining the consent of the ecclesiastic, should inflict no higher punishment on his subjects than stripes; none should be capitally punished except under regular process of law. The matters of education, labor, tribute, mining, and farming were then treated, in all which the welfare of the natives was carefully considered, although the repartimiento system remained. Las Casas was named Protector of the Indians with a salary of one hundred pesos de oro. Zuazo, a lawyer of repute, was sent with the most ample powers to take a residencia of all the judges in the New World, and against his decisions there was to be no appeal.

The Jeronimites set out wrapped in mighty determinations. They would not even sail in the same ship with Las Casas, wishing to be wholly free. In this they were right; but unfortunately, on arriving among the wrangling colonists, and having the actual issues thrust upon them, they found themselves by no means infallible. Their measures were tame, and they soon found the Protector arrayed against them. The result was their open defence of the repartimiento system, as the only one by which Spain could colonize the Indies. The burden should be laid as lightly as possible on the shoulders of the natives, but they must be made to work. Las Casas set out in 1517 to enter his complaints at court, closely followed by an emissary of the Jeronimites to represent their side of the question; but they arrived in Spain only to find the regent dying. Had Charles V. remained in Flanders, and had the life of Cardinal Jimenez been spared to Spain and the New World a few years longer, it is certain that the cruelties to the Indians would many of them have been prevented, and it is doubtful if negro slavery would ever have been introduced into America.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: DIVERS RULES AND RULERS.]

Though the change of rulers which now occurred seriously clogged the wheels of government in Spain, the affairs of the Indies seemed directly to suffer little inconvenience therefrom. It was indeed a great change, Isabella and Ferdinand gone, Columbus and Jimenez also; and the presence of this young Charles, undemonstrative, thoughtful, cautious, even when a boy, and enveloped in a Flemish atmosphere that shut out all that was most beautiful in Spain, even Castile's liquid language, made it seem strange there even to Spaniards, made it seem a long, long time since the Moors were beaten and America discovered. The Indies, however, were far away, and so little understood by the Flemings that they did not trouble themselves much about them.

Las Casas was fortunate in winning the favor of the Flemish chancellor, Selvagius, but as in the two previous cases, scarcely was the friendly footing established when the great man died, and the bishop of Búrgos, whose influence in the government of the Indies had fallen low of late, was again elevated. All the measures that Las Casas had proposed to Selvagius fell to the ground—all save one, the only bad one, and one concerning which Las Casas afterward asserted that he would give all he possessed on earth to recall it; it was the introduction of negro slaves to relieve the Indians.

If the Jeronimite Fathers accomplished no great things in the Indies, they at least did little harm. Small-pox attended the herding of the natives in settlements, but it never prevailed to the extent represented. The fact that Fonseca held an encomienda of eight hundred Indians, the Comendador Conchillos one of eleven hundred, Vega one of two hundred, and other influential men at court other numbers, may have had something to do with the hostility manifested in that quarter toward Las Casas, who was unflinching to the end in denouncing the system as unjust, unchristian, and inhuman.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CASA DE CONTRATACION.]

The office of Indian distributor was most important, and one in which the vital interests of the colonists were involved. It should have been filled by one of high integrity who would hold aloof from contaminating influences. Such was not Ibarra, who became offensively meddlesome in the affairs of the common council, and died under suspicious circumstances not long after, Lebron being sent out to take his place. When the Jeronimites countenanced negro slavery to relieve the Indians, the colonists were benignant; when they undertook civil service reform, some of them became furious, especially Pasamonte, who had been enriching himself as fast as possible while his patron lived, but who had now sunk into insignificance. The favorites of the Flemish ministers, such as Rodrigo de Figueroa, to whom was given charge of the Indian settlements, were now the recipients of the fat offices; and the fact of their being Flemish favorites was sufficient to array the colonists against them. It was not long before they succeeded in having the residencia of Figueroa ordered, and Lebron installed as overseer of Indians in his place. In 1518, Jimenez who sent the Jeronimites being dead and Fonseca once more manager, the monks were recalled to Spain, and the affairs of Española and of the Indies were left with the audiencia of Santo Domingo, acting in conjunction with the Consejo de Indias[V-13] in Spain, the Casa de Contratacion having more especial charge of commercial matters.

Many schemes for the benefit of the Indians filled the mind of Las Casas, who continued to labor for them indefatigably. One, originating with Pedro de Córdoba, was to set apart on the mainland one hundred leagues as a place of refuge for the savages, into which no Spaniards but priests might enter. This measure was opposed by Fonseca, who said: "The king would do well, indeed, to give away a hundred leagues without any profit to himself." After this Las Casas spent some time travelling through Spain and inducing Spaniards to emigrate to the Indies, but little that was beneficial came of it. Succeeding finally in enlisting the sympathies of the king's preachers in behalf of the Indians, a plan for founding a colony on the Pearl Coast was carried, and notwithstanding Oviedo appeared in opposition to his brother chronicler by offering a larger royalty, a grant of two hundred and sixty leagues was signed in May, 1520. Failing as a colonist, Las Casas retired for a time to the Dominican convent at Santo Domingo. After many years spent as missionary and preacher in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru, he was appointed bishop of Chiapas, where in the progress of this history we shall again meet him.

[Sidenote: SUNDRY PROVISIONS.]

Certain attention which the Indies were now receiving may be mentioned here. Some little attention was paid by the ever-watchful government to the welfare of society in these distant parts. The wearing of rich apparel in Española was forbidden by the king in 1523. The appellations of certain of the islands were undergoing change, so that in due time their aboriginal names were restored to Cuba and Jamaica, the authorities thereby evincing a good taste which rulers and explorers of other nations might well have profited by at a later period. In 1515 six loaves of sugar and twenty cassia fistula were taken by Oviedo to Spain. In 1517 the pope made bishops in the Indies inquisitors; and when in 1521-2 the bulls of Leo X. and Adrian VI. ordered the Franciscans to prepare for mission work in the New World, liberal concessions were made to friars going thence. After the death of Pedro de Córdoba, who had been appointed inquisitor of the Indies, authority became vested in the audiencia of Santo Domingo. Desirous of stimulating emigration, the emperor in 1522 granted further privileges to settlers in the Indies. Colonists were ordered to take their families to the New World under severe penalties for neglect. Licenses were revised, and regulations concerning the going to the New World of the religious orders as well as of all others were made to the utmost extent favorable, but friars found in the New World without a license must be sent forthwith to Spain. Then laws were made attempting to regulate the method of making war on Indians; and in 1523 it was decreed that idols should be destroyed and cannibalism prevented. Provision was made for the annual payment of thirty thousand maravedís for the support of a preceptor of grammar. And because of the heavy expenses of living, the emperor permitted the salaries of New World officials to be increased. The tribunals were likewise reorganized to fit the emergency and facilitate business. Directions were issued how gold chains should be made and dye-woods cut. It seemed to the emperor necessary in 1526 to issue orders facilitating the arrest of dishonest mercantile agents in the Indies, and to send Padre de Bobadilla, a provincial of the order of La Merced, to look after the baptism of the Indians. And as to the question of negroes, vexatious from the beginning, the emperor in 1523 revoked for a time the permission given in 1511 to send negroes as slaves to the Indies; and it was again ordered in 1526 that Indian slaves then in Spain should be returned to their country and treated as vassals.[V-14]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us