The golden Americas

Front matter

"oo^ xOo

THE GOLDEN AMERICAS.

THE

Chapter I

Gold— Ophir, Where Is It ?— Feet to Feet— Prince Harry— Map of Africa and Else-where, with MiichLeft Oat — The Impassable Cape — Yirtnous Obstinacy — Perestrelo's Son-in-Law — The Council of Salamanca— A Yoyage — The Penalty of Success — The Triumph of Inferiority— Savage Independence — Auriferous Lands— ISTunez-The South Sea.

TX every age and in every clime gold has been precious. If the -^ wandering Israelites demand an idol, it is a golden calf ; if Xebuchadnezzar proclaims a new and material divinity, it takes the form of an image of gold ; if a house be bnilt for the Lord, it must be overlaid v/ith pure gold ; the altar must be of gold, and the cherubim stretching their vrings over it must be covered with gold ; " and the candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side and five on the left, before the oracle, vrith the flowers and the lamps and the tongs of gold, and the bowls and the snuffers, and the basins and the spoons, and the censers of pure gold ; and the hinges of gold, both for the doors and for the inner house of the most holy place." Golden Solomon luxuriated in auriferous treasure, and Hiram's fleet brought gold from Ophir in great plenty, and " King Solomon made two hundred targets of beaten gold ; six hundred shekels of gold went to one target ; and he made three hundred shields of beaten gold ; three pounds of gold went to one shield," And his throne was of ivory overlaid with gold; "and all Iving Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold, none were of silver ; it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon ;" for the king " made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones." All the dreams of richest royalty are outrivalled by this wondrous monarch — great king of splendour, blest above all men with a golden genius, and wisdom that is better than gold— the golden sceptre-bearer of a golden age.

Whence came all this gold to golden Solomon ? Where was this golden Ophir which yielded its abundant treasure to the King of Israel ? It was somewhere in the golden east, but where ? Three years the argosies were on their voyage, and brought back produce, which it is said clearly settles that it could not be in Western Asia, or on the continent of Europe, and makes it doubtful whether it could be anywhere on the coast of Africa. There seems more reason to suppose that it was in the East Indies, and Ceylon is the site selected by Emerson Tennent. But as seven cities contended for the honour of being the birthplace of Homer, and seven cities boast of the tomb of the patriarch Job, so sixteen different places have been from time to time regarded as the land of Ophir, and no man knows its accurate position^ to this day.

Men dreamed of gold, and found it more or less, and valued it exceedingly. The splendour of the golden sunshine, the beauty of the golden corn, the golden glory of the sunlit sea, all seemed made to render homage to the precious metal, as if the Mighty Architect meant to set forth gold as the most glorious of all created things, and overlaid the things of earth and sea and sky, His universal temple, with symbols of gold — images also of that golden city where saints with golden crowns shall tread a golden pavement,

O that long-lost land of gold, the Ophir of King Solomon \ Is it lost for ever, like Eden, and do cherubim with flaming swords keep the gates that lead to it ? Is it to be found in the lost Atlantis— in the mysterious island each night swallowed up in the devil's hand ? Has all the world been searched — is every place known — or is there, as some visionaries contend, a world yet undiscovered — a world beyond -the Pillars of Hercules and the end of the earth ?

It is a difficult matter for us to conceive of the world with the Americas and Australia left out. Four hundred years ago the larger portion of the world was entirely unknown. Learned men had satisfactorily to their own minds settled its form and its foundations. It was a vast plane of land and water, with the heavens stretched over it like a canopy. That instead of this it should be a ball suspended in mid-air, whirling on its own axis with tremendous rapidity, and flying through space with inconceivable velocity, was foreseen four centuries ago by blind guessers at the truth, whom authority would have delighted to discredit for their audacity, and to have knocked on the head like querulous, carping dogs, and put to eternal silence.

THE GOLDEN^ AlIERICAS. 8

But there are some men who will think in spite of authority — who will not be silenced, and who escape being knocked on the head. There were those who guessed that the Straits of Gibraltar and Hercules' Pillars were not the boundary of the habitable world.

" Know that this theory is false ; his bark The daring mariner shall urge far o'er The western wave, a smooth and level plane, Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.

Man was in ancient days of grosser mould, And Hercules might blush to learn how far Beyond the limits he had vainly set The dullest sea-boat soon should wing her way ! Man shall descry another hemisphere, Since to one common centre all things tend ; So earth, by curious mystery divine, Well balanced hangs amid the starry spheres.

At our antipodes are cities, states.

Foremost among those who pushed forward the discovery are the Portuguese with Prince Henry at their head ; then there are Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus, and the whole band of brave captains after him, who found out and added a new world to the old in the discovery of the " Golden Americas."

Prince Henry of Portugal (born in 1394) was the third son of John the First of Portugal and Philippa of Lancaster, so he had got Plantagenet blood in his veins. He was well educated, so far as education was then understood, and he had a mighty liking for that learned treatise of which so many people have heard and comparatively so few have seen — the Imago Mandi of Cardinal Petro de Aliaco. He was very sure that the world was not all discovered— that all mundane conquests had not been achieved ; and so he sat down to study his maps, and found a very infant world indeed. We have heard of a Chinese map of the world which represented the Celestial continent only, with'a few islands for the barbarians ; we have heard also of a Presbyterian minister in one of the Shetlands who used to pray for his own place " and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland !" The maps four hundred years ago were of this calmly self-asserting character.

These maps are most fantastic and miserably incomplete. More than half the world is absent. What is represented is misrepresented, but what is wanting in accuracy is attempted to be made up in pictorial detail. All the principal cities are denoted by little houses and a church or two; Jerusalem occupies the centre of the globe; Paradise

4 THE GOLDEX AMEEICAS. - -

is surrounded with foliage, impenetrable brushwood ; the winds arc shown by fabulous deities sitting on leather bottles all round the earth. Western Africa terminates at Cape Kun, or Not, and there is no hint of a world beyond that forbidding negative ; the statue of the Canaries flourishes its club ; Prester John, signifying Abyssinia, wears a towering mitre of which even Theodore might have been proud ; and all the other countries of Africa are represented by their kings in royal costume, which is quite unlike the original, and we have over it all — scattered here and there according to the artist's humour — Portuguese camps and little black men, and giraffes and camels. Long after the issue of the map before us, Swift wrote —

" Geographers in Afric's maps

With savage picti-ires fill their gaps.

And o'er uninhabitable do^mis

Place elephants for want of towns."

And yet it v/as with a chart such as we have described that Columbus set sail.

Prince Henry of Portugal studied his maps, and thought of Ophir, and El Dorado, and the Garden of the Hesperides, where gold inexhaustible awaited the happy finder. Where was Prester John, the mythical pontifical prince who, it was asserted, governed first beyond Armenia, and then in Abyssinia? Would that almost omnipotent being ever be found ? Would El Dorado ever be entered ? Well, not if we stopped this side Cape Not. So Prince Henry sent out his captains to molest the Moors and make discoveries.

Q I The Portuguese mariners, we are told, had a proverb, " He who "vvould pass Cape Not, either will return or not" (Quem jmssar o Caho de Nam^ ou tornara ou navi), intimating that if he did not turn before passing the cape he would never turn at all. But it was passed by two of Prince Henry's captains, Johann Goncalvez Zara and Tristram Yaz. These sea worthies were driven out of their course by storms, and accidentally discovered a little island v^^here they took refuge, and from that reason called the island of Porto Santo. They found there a race of people by no means altogether barbarous, and possessing " a kindly

SALAMAXCA.

and fertile soil." The prince was delighted with the news his cajDtains brought him, more on account of its promise than its substance ; and in the same year he sent them out again together with a third captain, Bartolomeo Perestrelo, assigning a separate ship to each, to discover more islands, and improve Porto Santo.

From Porto Santo, Goncalvez Zara and Tristram Yaz saw something that seemed like a cloud, made for it in two boats, and found it to be an island very abundant in trees, and thence called Madeira (wood).

- Prince Henry was still further pleased with his captains' successes, and made them rulers over the island of Madeira, while the governorshii^ of

^ Porto Santo was given to Perestrelo. This Perestrelo is interesting to

- us as being the father-in-law of Columbus, who indeed lived at Porto ' Santo for some time, meditating new discoveries.

Other adventurers there were who got as far as Cape Bojador, but shrank from going farther, because, they said, "it is clear that beyond this cape there is no people whatever; the land is as bare as Lybia ; no water, no trees, no grass ; the sea so shallow that a league; from the land it is only a fathom deep ; the currents so fierce that the ship which passes that cape will never return." The people at home^ of course being farther oif from the strange land, and knowing lessi about it, exaggerated these reports, and declared that the men who arrived in those foreign parts turned from white to black ; that th€fc natives, if any, were cannibals, and that the Portuguese were not required to supply those savages with fresh meat ; that it was very plain those far-off countries were only meant for wild beasts, and that to attempt the civilisation of such lands was to strive to change the decrees of Providence.

But Prince Henry had in him the incitement of what has been called " a virtuous obstinacy," He was not to be overawed by vulga and ignorant criticism, so he sent out other expeditions that sailed far beyond Cape Bojador, and came back with good news. AVho should say but that they were straight on the way to the El Dorado ? Then Prince Henry applied to Pope Martin the Fifth, praying that his holiness would grant to the Portuguese crown all that it should conquer from Bojador to the Indies, together with plenary indulgence for those who should die in the attempt. The pope granted this.

"And now," says a Portuguese historian, "with this apostolic grace, with the bounty of royal favour, and already with the applause of the people, the prince pursued his purpose with more courage and with greater outlay."

Goncalvez obtained some gold-dust — real gold —

" Gold, gold, gold, gold, Hard and yellow, shining and cold"

— and expectation was on tiptoe. He got some black slaves also, which were very much admired for their colour. As to the gold, we are told by an historian (Faria y Sousa), "it awakened, as always, covetous^ ness." A sad thing, we supjjose, but nothing is more true. Mammon was the "least erected spirit that fell from heaven," ever going with; downcast eyes — " admiring more the riches of heaven's pavement — trodden gold — than aught divine or holy." Perhaps the Portuguese had found a richer treasure for the time in seizing slaves than Guinea gold, and they worked this mine — man-stealing — with considerable success, sustaining themselves for a cruel traffic by reflecting — or persuading themselves — that in thus enslaving the bodies they were freeing the souls of the poor heathen. So the prince carried on his work of discovery and conversion, got what gold he could, and slaves as good as gold in the market. He was not particularly successful ; his fleet of fourteen vessels came back with neither news nor produce ; and of the two gentlemen sent out to the Cape de Verde Islands, instructed to introduce the Christian religion, one was killed and the other glad to make his escape.

We must hasten, however, with the narrative of African discovery, all of which tended to the discovery of America. We must leave Ca da Mosto, who has given the most valuable information with regard to Africa in those days; we see the- voyagers touching here and there along the coast from Cape Bojador — the once impassable " outstretcher" to Sierra Leone ; we see King Alfonso adopting a new system of African commerce ; we see Fernando Gomez, by his captains, Juan de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, discovering the Gold Coast, which they call Ora de la Mina ; we see Don Juan the Second succeeding his father Alfonso on the throne, and his captains taking possession of the Gold Coast in his name as Lord of Guinea ; we see the discoverers extending still further to the Cape of Good Hope ; and then we turn away to Perestrelo's son-in-law — Columbus.

Columbus was a native of Genoa, and born of humble parents. His father was a wool-comber, but he had the boy taught as well as his means would allow. He learned to read and write, obtained some knowledge of arithmetic, drawing, and painting, little Latin, and no Greek. But he loved the sea— the open sea— and as the habits of the people among whom he dwelt were nautical, and the age was one of adventure and discovery, the boy took very naturally to the ocean wave, and at fourteen years old began a seafaring life. Navigation in those days was but little understood ; to navigate meant to sail from some port of the Mediterranean — " hugging the shore," as the sailors say — and exposed all the while to the attacks of those water-rats the Barbary pirates, as merciless a set of villains as ever hoisted a black flag. So amid these frequent cruisings from port to port, and frequent struggles with sea-robbers, Columbus passed the early days of his life. He made the best use he could of the scanty education which had been afforded him, treasured it up, and added to it every day ; and amid the greatest privations, and the uncongenial society of men who had no thought above the wants and duties of the hour, kept alive his lofty aspirations.

People were talking of the admirable doings of Prince Henry of Portugal — of strange discoveries which had been made. They talked of countries where the rocks were red-hot, and the sea boiled — where men walked about with their heads under their arms. They talked of lands where the city streets were paved with gold, and jewels as common as dewdrops 5 and Columbus listened to it all and wondered. He wondered whether there could be any truth in it — whether there was land beyond the water, land not yet discovered, whence could have drifted the singular canes which he had heard of, and the pieces

TENEKIFFE, THE LARGEST OE THE CANARY ISLANDS.

of carved wood that had been cast ashore on the African coast. He wondered whether the earth was really a plain level, as was then believed ; and he thought of these things through the day, and dreamed of them through the night.

Columbus went to Lisbon to hear more of the discoveries that had been made, and day after day you might have seen him, for he was a religious man, entering the Church of All Saints at prayer-time. Men noticed him ; children looked curiously into his face-; the eyes of a noble lady fell upon him; her heart was touched, she sought an interview, and shortly afterwards they were married. This marriage introduced Columbus to those who were able to help him forward with his project. His father-in-law, Don Bartolomeo Marrio de Perestrelo, had been one of Prince Henry's most distinguished officers, and the use of his maps, plans, and charts was of great service to Columbus, who now began to correspond with the learned men of the day. He felt thoroughly convinced that an undiscoveiel region lay beyond the

Western Ocean ; he felt a deep impression that it was the will of God he should discover it : he determined^to devote the whole of his life to that object.

Trouble came upon him. Sickness and death vrere in his house. Trials and afflictions followed fast on one another. The grave closed over his wife. He lost his fortune in consequence of the war which then devastated the land, and quitted his house in deep poverty, with his little son for his only companion. He was so poor that he begged a,t a monastic house, not so much for himself as for his boy ; but he never lost sight of the object of his life — to find a new world. Columbus suggested a plan to the Portuguese court for the fitting out of an

THE ARMS O? SPAIN.

expedition to search for the continent which he himsalf felt firmly persuaded was to be found. But his proposal was coldly received, and ultimately rejected. He next determined to solicit help from the court of Spain, and began to beg his way to the capital. It was during this journey, that, weary and footsore, his child almost dead with fatigue, he craved a little bread and water at a convent door. The prior of the convent was interested in the noble-looking stranger, and began to talk to him. That conversation convinced the churchman that he had to deal with no common man. Columbus revealed his project, and the prior introduced him to the Cardinal Mendoza, first minister and confidential adviser of the crown.

Cardinal Mendoza was a man of extensive information and liberal mind. He was struck by the good sense of the poor stranger, and recommended him to the king. You must know that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were then reigning in Spain, and that Spain was a colossal power, boasting to be the mistress of the sea. The king and the cardinal agreed that a council should Ice held for the purpose of taking into consideration the credibility of Columbus's statements. This council met at Salamanca. It was entii^ely composed of priors, priests, and monks, who monopolised all the learning, both secular and religious, of that age. Some v/ere men of large and philosophic minds, others narrow bigots, but all were imbued with the notion that geographical discovery had reached its limits long previously. Before this learned body had Columbus, a simple seaman, strong in nothing save the energy of his convictions and the fire of his enthusiasm, to appear, and defend a scheme which to them must have appeared little short of the dream of a madman. The difficulties of his position may be guessed from the nature of some of the objections made to his undertaking*. If Columbus supported one of his statements by a mathematical demonstration, he was met by quotations from the Book of Genesis, the Psalms of David, the Prophets, the Epistles and the Gospels, St. Chrysostom and St, Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Basil, St. Ambrose, and, last and greatest, Lactantius Firmianus. Columbus quoted Pliny to show that many of the wisest of the ancients entertained a belief in the existence of a southern antipodes. But Pliny was ably rebutted by Lactantius, who, renowned doctor and learned theologian that he was, thus speaks : — " Is there any one so foolish as to believe that there are antipodes with their feet opposite to ours ; people who walk with their heels upwards and their heads hanging down ; that there is a part of the world in which all things are topsy-turvy, where the trees grow with their branches downwards, and where it rains, hails, and snows upwards ? The idea of the roundness of the earth was the cause of inventing this fable of the antipodes with. their heels in the air, for philosophers having once erred go on in their absurdities, defending one another." Let clerks, shopmen, golddiggers of every class, and adventurous young ladies hearken to this reverend father, and beware ! Better bear those evils that you have in Old England than fly to a region where you hang with your heels uppermost, and where the trees, like cows' tails, grow downwards !

St. Augustine was next quoted, but he combats the doctrine of the antipodes in a calmer strain, and by arguments which have their weight with some persons at the present day.. He declares that to assert that there were inhabited lands on the opposite sides of the globe would be to maintain that there were nations not descended from Adam, it being impossible for them to have crossed the intervening ocean. But this would be to disbeheve the Bible, v/hich expressly declares that all men are descended from a common parent ; ergo^ &c. Columbus's simplest and fundamental proposition that tlie earth was spherical like a ball way met by the passage in Psalm ciy., where the heavens are said to be extended like hide (extendens calum sicut pellern) ; and Paul comparesthem to a tabernacle, all clearly showing that the heavens are flat. Others of the council admitted the rotundity of the earth, but denied the possibility of circumnavigating it ; firstly, on account of tlie^ scorching heat of the torrid zone, and secondly, because at least it would take three years to do so, in which time the explorers would perish of hunger, it being impossible to carry provisions sufEcient for so long a period. Others said that, suppose a ship did reach India, she could never get back, for the rotundity of the globe would place a hill ii:^ her way, up which the strongest wind could not blow her.

It would be useless to enumerate the arguments by which Columbus refuted all these absurdities; They were those which every schoolboyis acquainted with at the present day ; but our admiration of his talents and courage is increased when we remember that so intimately werequestions of science connected with religious belief in that day, and particularly in Spain, that he ran imminent risk of being charged with heresy.

For five long weary years Columbus continued at intervals to urge his project on the attention of the court. At length Queen Isabella was moved by his earnest eloquence and untiring patience. Refusing longer to listen to cold and timid counsellors, she said — •

"I will assume the undertaking for my own crown of Castille, and am ready to pledge my jewels to defray the expenses."

So a treaty was signed on the 17th day of April, 1492, by which Columbus bound himself to be the faithful vassal of Spain ; and on the 3rd of August, in the same year, he and his companions weighed anchor from the port of Palos, in Andalusia. The armament consisted of three small vessels — the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina. On board the first, which was the largest, Columbus hoisted his flag. The second was commanded by Martin Alonzo Pinzon; the thu'd by Vincente Janez Pinzon.

A few days brought them to the Canary Islands, the western boundary of the known world. Beyond this all was unknown — a sea in which no craft had floated since man was for the first time " taught by the little nautilus to sail." For days and weeks they sailed onward —

''' The fair breeze blew, tlie Tvliite foam flew, The furrow followed free, Tliey were tbe first tbat ever beat Over tliat silent sea."

The men grew terrified — mutinous, and were inclined to tlirow Columbus overboard and steer for home ; but thej were kept from anyopen act of violence, and after sixty days hope began to revive. Here and there, tossed and toyed with by the ocean, were pieces of curiouslycarved wood ; occasionally an abundance of weeds would be seen, which had evidently been but recently- torn from the rocks ; strange birds were discovered wheeling about in the air, and settling on the rigging ; and one day, as a seaman leaned overboard, he observed a fresh thorn branch filled with red berries. Columbus addressed his people that evening as the sun sank, and besought them to be very watchful during the night. Besides the gratuity of thirty crowns for life, he engaged to bestov/ upon him who should first discover land a velvet doublet. At two in the morning the signal was given by one Roderick Triava.

The land they saw was an island about fifteen leagues in length, Avithout any hills, and all covered with trees. Columbus went ashore in a boat with a well-armed crew. Groups of simple natives, olive colour in complexion, and with black hair, gazed with astonishment at the new comers, especially when Columbus, who was clothed in scarlet, knelt and kissed the ground, and then planting the standard of Leon and Castille, took formal possession in the name of the sovereigns of Spain, The island was one of the Bahamas, and Columbus gave it the name of St. Salvador. His discoveries were subsequently extended to the mainland of the American continent.

It was a grand holiday when Columbus returned to Spain, and made his triumphal entry into Barcelona, Clouds of banners and flags were waving, throngs of gaily-dressed people crowded the public ways, the prolonged roar of cannon burst from the battlements of the port, and the bells rang out from all the churches a mass of merry music, that rushed like a whirlwind over the town. And Columbus rode through the streets with almost royal pomp — petted and caressed by all, but hated by many for his great success. Indians from the New World marched in two ranks, with rings of gold on their legs, and crowns of feathers on their heads ; then came the crews of the vessels, bearing crowns of gold, stone idols, beautiful flamingoes, glittering with brilliant hues, land tortoises, alKgators, brandies of strange trees. Oyer them all the admiral's flag, with the inscription —

The history of the further discoveries of Columbus need net be traced in detail here. His many successes made him many foes. He had found a new continent, which promised to be anlnexhau&tible mine of wealth to Spain. Envy, hatred, malice, and their friend and partner, uncharitableness, leagued against him. He was popular, and

LABOXJKER IN THE GOLD MINES.

must pay the penalty. He was accused of exercising too great an authority in the new settlements, of arrogating to himself a princely state, rightfully belonging only to the king, of diverting money from the royal treasury into liis own pocket. A commissioner was sent out to inquire into these charges — a man who hated Columbus, and was resolved to ruin him, if it were at all practicable. The admiral resented the interference of the commissioner, who took possession of his house, and, on the pretence of treasonable conduct, put Columbus in chains, and sent the gallant hero back to Spain a prisoner. On arriving at the court he was released, and treated with respect ; but his heart was

* To Castille and Leon Columbus gave a new world.

broken, and lie did not long survive the disgrace to which, he had been subjected. He died May 29, 1506. He was buried in the Cathedral of Seville, the city which he had rendered famous, and his name became for ever illustrious in the annals of the great and good.

There are two facts in connection with the life of Columbus which it is important we should observe. First, that the indomitable energy of his character led him to remain steadfast to the one purpose of his life, through circumstances of the most distressing and adverse nature ; he persevered and triumphed ; he discovered the l^Tew World. And the second fact is, that great and good men are seldom rewarded as they ought to be. The continent which Columbus discovered is called "by the name of a man who was but a follower and imitator of the famous Genoese. The claims of Americus Vespucius are not to be compared with those of Columbus; but the New World has been christened by his name. The value of the discovery which Columbus made was underrated. " If Columbus had not crossed the Western main and found the New World, somebody else v/ould," So said detractors. "After all, it was an easy matter." It was then that Columbus asked his critics to stand an egg on its apex ; and they tried, and tried, and failed, and said it was impossible, until, with a smile, the old sailor slightly broke and compressed the shell at the apex, and lo ! the egg stood erect before their astounded gaze. It was Tery simple, very easy ; but not one of their wise heads had hit upon it till they saw it was done. And thus, when America was found, it was easy to find America.