Book: Christopher Columbus, Volume 4
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Filson Young >> Christopher Columbus, Volume 4
He wrote also from Barcelona to his two brothers, Bartholomew and
Giacomo, or James, since we may as well give him the English equivalent
of his name. Bartholomew was in France, whither he had gone some time
after his return from his memorable voyage with Bartholomew Diaz; he was
employed as a map-maker at the court of Anne de Beaujeu, who was reigning
in the temporary absence of her brother Charles VIII. Columbus's letter
reached him, but much too late for him to be able to join in the second
expedition; in fact he did not reach Seville until five months after it
had sailed. James, however, who was now twenty-five years old, was still
at Savona; he, like Columbus, had been apprenticed to his father, but had
apparently remained at home earning his living either as a wool-weaver or
merchant. He was a quiet, discreet young fellow, who never pushed
himself forward very much, wore very plain clothes, and was apparently
much overawed by the grandeur and dignity of his elder brother. He was,
however, given a responsible post in the new expedition, and soon had his
fill of adventure.
The business of preparing for the new expedition was now put in hand, and
Columbus, having taken leave of Ferdinand and Isabella, went to Seville
to superintend the preparations. All the ports in Andalusia were ordered
to supply such vessels as might be required at a reasonable cost, and the
old order empowering the Admiral to press mariners into the service was
renewed. But this time it was unnecessary; the difficulty now was rather
to keep down the number of applicants for berths in the expedition, and
to select from among the crowd of adventurers who offered themselves
those most suitable for the purposes of the new colony. In this work
Columbus was assisted by a commissioner whom the Sovereigns had appointed
to superintend the fitting out of the expedition. This man was a cleric,
Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville, a person of excellent
family and doubtless of high piety, and of a surpassing shrewdness for
this work. He was of a type very commonly produced in Spain at this
period; a very able organiser, crafty and competent, but not altogether
trustworthy on a point of honour. Like so many ecclesiastics of this
stamp, he lived for as much power and influence as he could achieve; and
though he was afterwards bishop of three sees successively, and became
Patriarch of the Indies, he never let go his hold on temporal affairs.
He began by being jealous of Columbus, and by objecting to the personal
retinue demanded by the Admiral; and in this, if I know anything of the
Admiral, he was probably justified. The matter was referred to the
Sovereigns, who ordered Fonseca to carry out the Admiral's wishes; and
the two were immediately at loggerheads. When the Council for the Indies
was afterwards formed Fonseca became head, of it, and had much power to
make things pleasant or otherwise for Columbus.
It became necessary now to raise a considerable sum of money for the new
expedition. Two-thirds of the ecclesiastical tithes were appropriated,
and a large proportion of the confiscated property of the Jews who had
been banished from Spain the year before; but this was not enough; and
five million maravedis were borrowed from the Duke of Medina Sidonia in
order to complete the financial supplies necessary for this very costly
expedition. There was a treasurer, Francisco Pinelo, and an accountant,
Juan de Soria, who had charge of all the financial arrangements; but the
whole of the preparations were conducted on a ruinously expensive scale,
owing to the haste which the diplomatic relations with Portugal made
necessary. The provisioning was done by a Florentine merchant named
Juonato Beradi, who had an assistant named Amerigo Vespucci--who, by a
strange accident, was afterwards to give his name to the continent of the
New World.
While these preparations were going on the game of diplomacy was being
played between the Courts of Spain and Portugal. King John of Portugal
had the misfortune to be badly advised; and he was persuaded that,
although he had lost the right to the New World through his rejection of
Columbus's services when they were first offered to him, he might still
discover it for himself, relying for protection on the vague wording of
the papal Bulls. He immediately began to prepare a fleet, nominally to
go to the coast of Africa, but really to visit the newly discovered lands
in the west. Hearing of these preparations, King Ferdinand sent an
Ambassador to the Portuguese Court; and King John agreed also to appoint
an Ambassador to discuss the whole matter of the line of demarcation, and
in the meantime not to allow any of his ships to sail to the west for a
period of sixty days after his Ambassador had reached Barcelona. There
followed a good deal of diplomatic sharp practice; the Portuguese bribing
the Spanish officials to give them information as to what was going on,
and the Spaniards furnishing their envoys with double sets of letters and
documents so that they could be prepared to counter any movement on the
part of King John. The idea of the Portuguese was that the line of
demarcation should be a parallel rather than a meridian; and that
everything north of the Canaries should belong to Spain and everything
south to Portugal; but this would never do from the Spanish point of
view. The fact that a proposal had come from Portugal, however, gave
Ferdinand an opportunity of delaying the diplomatic proceedings until his
own expedition was actually ready to set sail; and he wrote to Columbus
repeatedly, urging him to make all possible haste with his preparations.
In the meantime he despatched a solemn embassy to Portugal, the purport
of which, much beclouded and delayed by preliminary and impossible
proposals, was to submit the whole question to the Pope for arbitration.
And all the time he was busy petitioning the Pope to restore to Spain
those concessions granted in the second Bull, but taken away again in the
third.
This, being much egged on to it, the Pope ultimately did; waking up on
September 26th, the day after Columbus's departure, and issuing another
Bull in which the Spanish Sovereigns were given all lands and islands,
discovered or not discovered, which might be found by sailing west and
south. Four Bulls; and after puzzling over them for a year, the Kings of
Spain and Portugal decided to make their own Bull, and abide by it,
which, having appointed commissioners, they did on June 7, 1494., when by
the Treaty of Tordecillas the line of demarcation was finally fixed to
pass from north to south through a point 370 leagues west of the Cape
Verde Islands.
CHAPTER V
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
July, August, and September in the year 1493 were busy months for
Columbus, who had to superintend the buying or building and fitting of
ships, the choice and collection of stores, and the selection of his
company. There were fourteen caravels, some of them of low tonnage and
light draught, and suitable for the navigation of rivers; and three large
carracks, or ships of three to four hundred tons. The number of
volunteers asked for was a thousand, but at least two thousand applied
for permission to go with the expedition, and ultimately some fourteen or
fifteen hundred did actually go, one hundred stowaways being included in
the number. Unfortunately these adventurers were of a class compared
with whom even the cut-throats and gaol-birds of the humble little
expedition that had sailed the year before from Palos were useful and
efficient. The universal impression about the new lands in the West was
that they were places where fortunes could be picked up like dirt, and
where the very shores were strewn with gold and precious stones; and
every idle scamp in Spain who had a taste for adventure and a desire to
get a great deal of money without working for it was anxious to visit the
new territory. The result was that instead of artisans, farmers,
craftsmen, and colonists, Columbus took with him a company at least half
of which consisted of exceedingly well-bred young gentlemen who had no
intention of doing any work, but who looked forward to a free and lawless
holiday and an early return crowned with wealth and fortune. Although
the expedition was primarily for the establishment of a colony, no
Spanish women accompanied it; and this was but one of a succession of
mistakes and stupidities.
The Admiral, however, was not to be so lonely a person as he had been on
his first voyage; friends of his own choice and of a rank that made
intimacy possible even with the Captain-General were to accompany him.
There was James his brother; there was Friar Bernardo Buil, a Benedictine
monk chosen by the Pope to be his apostolic vicar in the New World; there
was Alonso de Ojeda, a handsome young aristocrat, cousin to the
Inquisitor of Spain, who was distinguished for his dash and strength and
pluck; an ideal adventurer, the idol of his fellows, and one of whose
daring any number of credible and incredible tales were told. There was
Pedro Margarite, a well-born Aragonese, who was destined afterwards to
cause much trouble; there was Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of
Florida; there was Juan de La Cosa, Columbus's faithful pilot on the
Santa Maria on his first voyage; there was Pedro de Las Casas, whose son,
at this time a student in Seville, was afterwards to become the historian
of the New World and the champion of decency and humanity there. There
was also Doctor Chanca, a Court physician who accompanied the expedition
not only in his professional capacity but also because his knowledge of
botany would enable him to make, a valuable report on the vegetables and
fruits of the New World; there was Antonio de Marchena, one of Columbus's
oldest friends, who went as astronomer to the expedition. And there was
one Coma, who would have remained unknown to this day but that he wrote
an exceedingly elegant letter to his friend Nicolo Syllacio in Italy,
describing in flowery language the events of the second voyage; which
letter, and one written by Doctor Chanca, are the only records of the
outward voyage that exist. The journal kept by Columbus on this voyage
has been lost, and no copy of it remains.
Columbus settled at Cadiz during the time in which he was engaged upon
the fitting out of the expedition. It was no light matter to superintend
the appointment of the crews and passengers, every one of whom was
probably interviewed by Columbus himself, and at the same time to keep
level with Archdeacon Fonseca. This official, it will be remembered,
had a disagreement with Columbus as to the number of personal attendants
he was to be allowed; and on the matter being referred to the King and
Queen they granted Columbus the ridiculous establishment of ten footmen
and twenty other servants.
Naturally Fonseca held up his hands and wondered where it would all end.
It was no easy matter, moreover, on receipt of letters from the Queen
about small matters which occurred to her from time to time, to answer
them fully and satisfactorily, and at the same time to make out all the
lists of things that would likely be required both for provisioning the
voyage and establishing a colony. The provisions carried in those days
were not very different from the provisions carried on deep-sea vessels
at the present time--except that canned meat, for which, with its horrors
and conveniences, the world may hold Columbus responsible, had not then
been invented. Unmilled wheat, salted flour, and hard biscuit formed the
bulk of the provisions; salted pork was the staple--of the meat supply,
with an alternative of salted fish; while cheese, peas, lentils and
beans, oil and vinegar, were also carried, and honey and almonds and
raisins for the cabin table. Besides water a large provision of rough
wine in casks was taken, and the dietary scale would probably compare
favourably with that of the British and American mercantile service sixty
years ago. In addition a great quantity of seeds of all kinds were taken
for planting in Espanola; sugar cane, rice, and vines also, and an
equipment of agricultural implements, as well as a selection of horses
and other domestic animals for breeding purposes. Twenty mounted
soldiers were also carried, and the thousand and one impedimenta of
naval, military, and domestic existence.
In the middle of all these preparations news came that a Portuguese
caravel had set sail from Madeira in the direction of the new lands.
Columbus immediately reported this to the King and Queen, and suggested
detaching part of his fleet to pursue her; but instead King John was
communicated with, and he declared that if the vessel had sailed as
alleged it was without his knowledge and permission, and that he would
send three ships after her to recall her--an answer which had to be
accepted, although it opened up rather alarming possibilities of four
Portuguese vessels reaching the new islands instead of one. Whether
these ships ever really sailed or not, or whether the rumour was merely a
rumour and an alarm, is not certain; but Columbus was ordered to push on
his preparations with the greatest possible speed, to avoid Portuguese
waters, but to capture any vessels which he might find in the part of the
ocean allotted to Spain, and to inflict summary punishment on the crews.
As it turned out he never saw any Portuguese vessels, and before he had
returned to Spain again the two nations had come to an amicable agreement
quite independently of the Pope and his Bulls. Spain undertook to make
no discoveries to the east of the line of demarcation, and Portugal none
to the west of it; and so the matter remained until the inhabitants of
the discovered lands began to have a voice in their own affairs.
With all his occupations Columbus found time for some amenities, and he
had his two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, staying with him at Cadiz. Great
days they must have been for these two boys; days filled with excitement
and commotion, with the smell of tar and the loading of the innumerable
and fascinating materials of life; and many a journey they must have made
on the calm waters of Cadiz harbour from ship to ship, dreaming of the
distant seas that these high, quaintly carven prows would soon be
treading, and the wonderful bays and harbours far away across the world
into the waters of which their anchors were to plunge.
September 24th, the day before the fleet sailed, was observed as a
festival; and in full ceremonial the blessing of God upon the enterprise
was invoked. The ships were hung with flags and with dyed silks and
tapestries; every vessel flew the royal standard; and the waters of the
harbour resounded with the music of trumpets and harps and pipes and the
thunder of artillery. Some Venetian galleys happened to enter the
harbour as the fleet was preparing to weigh, and they joined in the
salutes and demonstrations which signalled the departure. The Admiral
hoisted his flag on the 'Marigalante', one of the largest of the ships;
and somewhere among the smaller caravels the little Nina, re-caulked and
re-fitted, was also preparing to brave again the dangers over which she
had so staunchly prevailed. At sunrise on the 25th the fleet weighed
anchor, with all the circumstance and bustle and apparent confusion that
accompanies the business of sailing-ships getting under weigh. Up to the
last minute Columbus had his two sons on board with him, and it was not
until the ripples were beginning to talk under the bow of the Marigalante
that he said good-bye to them and saw them rowed ashore. In bright
weather, with a favourable breeze, in glory and dignity, and with high
hopes in his heart, the Admiral set out once more on the long sea-road.
CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND VOYAGE
The second voyage of Columbus, profoundly interesting as it must have
been to him and to the numerous company to whom these waters were a
strange and new region, has not the romantic interest for us that his
first voyage had. To the faith that guided him on his first venture
knowledge and certainty had now been added; he was going by a familiar
road; for to the mariner a road that he has once followed is a road that
he knows. As a matter of fact, however, this second voyage was a far
greater test of Columbus's skill as a navigator than the first voyage had
been. If his navigation had been more haphazard he might never have
found again the islands of his first discovery; and the fact that he made
a landfall exactly where he wished to make it shows a high degree of
exactness in his method of ascertaining latitude, and is another instance
of his skill in estimating his dead-reckoning. If he had been equipped
with a modern quadrant and Greenwich chronometers he could not have made
a quicker voyage nor a more exact landfall.
It will be remembered that he had been obliged to hurry away from
Espanola without visiting the islands of the Caribs as he had wished to
do. He knew that these islands lay to the south-east of Espanola, and on
his second voyage he therefore took a course rather more southerly in
order, to make them instead of Guanahani or Espanola. From the day they
left Spain his ships had pleasant light airs from the east and north-east
which wafted them steadily but slowly on their course. In a week they
had reached the Grand Canary, where they paused to make some repairs to
one of the ships which, was leaking. Two days later they anchored at
Gomera, and loaded up with such supplies as could be procured there
better than in Spain. Pigs, goats, sheep and cows were taken on board;
domestic fowls also, and a variety of orchard plants and fruit seeds, as
well as a provision of oranges, lemons, and melons. They sailed from
Gomera on the 7th of October, but the winds were so light that it was a
week later before they had passed Ferro and were once more in the open
Atlantic.
On setting his course from Ferro Columbus issued sealed instructions to
the captain of each ship which, in the event of the fleet becoming
scattered, would guide them to the harbour of La Navidad in Espanola;
but the captains had strict orders not to open these instructions unless
their ships became separated from the fleet, as Columbus still wished to
hold for himself the secret of this mysterious road to the west. There
were no disasters, however, and no separations. The trade wind blew soft
and steady, wafting them south and west; and because of the more
southerly course steered on this voyage they did not even encounter the
weed of the Sargasso Sea, which they left many leagues on their starboard
hand. The only incident of the voyage was a sudden severe hurricane, a
brief summer tempest which raged throughout one night and terrified a
good many of the voyagers, whose superstitious fears were only allayed
when they saw the lambent flames of the light of Saint Elmo playing about
the rigging of the Admiral's ship. It was just the Admiral's luck that
this phenomenon should be observed over his ship and over none of the
others; it added to his prestige as a person peculiarly favoured by the
divine protection, and confirmed his own belief that he held a heavenly
as well as a royal commission.
The water supply had been calculated a little too closely, and began to
run low. The hurried preparation of the ships had resulted as usual in
bad work; most of them were leaking, and the crew were constantly at work
at the pumps; and there was the usual discontent. Columbus, however,
knew by the signs as well as by his dead-reckoning that he was somewhere
close to land; and with a fine demonstration of confidence he increased
the ration of water, instead of lowering it, assuring the crews that they
would be ashore in a day or two. On Saturday evening, November 2nd,
although no land was in sight, Columbus was so sure of his position that
he ordered the fleet to take in sail and go on slowly until morning. As
the Sunday dawned and the sky to the west was cleared of the morning bank
of clouds the look-out on the Marigalante reported land ahead; and sure
enough the first sunlight of that day showed them a green and verdant
island a few leagues away.
As they approached it Columbus christened it Dominica in honour of the
day on which it was discovered. He sailed round it; but as there was no
harbour, and as another island was in sight to the north, he sailed on in
that direction. This little island he christened Marigalante; and going
ashore with his retinue he hoisted the royal banner, and formally took
possession of the whole group of six islands which were visible from the
high ground. There were no inhabitants on the island, but the voyagers
spent some hours wandering about its tangled woods and smelling the rich
odours of spice, and tasting new and unfamiliar fruits. They next sailed
on to an island to the north which Columbus christened Guadaloupe as a
memorial of the shrine in Estremadura to which he had made a pious
pilgrimage. They landed on this island and remained a week there, in the
course of which they made some very remarkable discoveries.
The villagers were not altogether unfriendly, although they were shy at
first; but red caps and hawks' bells had their usual effect. There were
signs of warfare, in the shape of bone-tipped arrows; there were tame
parrots much larger than those of the northern islands; they found
pottery and rough wood carving, and the unmistakable stern timber of a
European vessel. But they discovered stranger things than that. They
found human skulls used as household utensils, and gruesome fragments of
human bodies, unmistakable remains of a feast; and they realised that at
last they were in the presence of a man-eating tribe. Later they came to
know, something of the habits of the islanders; how they made raiding
expeditions to the neighbouring islands, and carried off large numbers of
prisoners, retaining the women as concubines and eating the men. The
boys were mutilated and fattened like capons, being employed as labourers
until they had arrived at years of discretion, at which point they were
killed and eaten, as these cannibal epicures did not care for the flesh
of women and boys. There were a great number of women on the island, and
many of them were taken off to the ships--with their own consent,
according to Doctor Chanca. The men, however, eluded the Spaniards and
would not come on board, having doubtless very clear views about the
ultimate destination of men who were taken prisoners. Some women from a
neighbouring island, who had been captured by the cannibals, came to
Columbus and begged to be taken on board his ship for protection; but
instead of receiving them he decked them with ornaments and sent them
ashore again. The cannibals artfully stripped off their ornaments and
sent them back to get some more.
The peculiar habits of the islanders added an unusual excitement to shore
leave, and there was as a rule no trouble in collecting the crews and
bringing them off to the ships at nightfall. But on one evening it was
discovered that one of the captains and eight men had not returned. An
exploring party was sent of to search for them, but they came back
without having found anything, except a village in the middle of the
forest from which the inhabitants had fled at their approach, leaving
behind them in the cooking pots a half-cooked meal of human remains--an
incident which gave the explorers a distaste for further search. Young
Alonso de Ojeda, however, had no fear of the cannibals; this was just the
kind of occasion in which he revelled; and he offered to take a party of
forty men into the interior to search for the missing men. He went right
across the island, but was able to discover nothing except birds and
fruits and unknown trees; and Columbus, in great distress of mind, had to
give up his men for lost. He took in wood and water, and was on the
point of weighing anchor when the missing men appeared on the shore and
signalled for a boat. It appeared that they had got lost in a tangled
forest in the interior, that they had tried to climb the trees in order
to get their bearings by the stars, but without success; and that they
had finally struck the sea-shore and followed it until they had arrived
opposite the anchorage.
They brought some women and boys with them, and the fleet must now have
had a large number of these willing or unwilling captives. This was the
first organised transaction of slavery on the part of Columbus, whose
design was to send slaves regularly back to Spain in exchange for the
cattle and supplies necessary for the colonies. There was not very much
said now about religious conversion, but only about exchanging the
natives for cattle. The fine point of Christopher's philosophy on this
subject had been rubbed off; he had taken the first step a year ago on
the beach at Guanahani, and after that the road opened out broad before
him. Slaves for cattle, and cattle for the islands; and wealth from
cattle and islands for Spain, and payment from Spain for Columbus, and
money from Columbus for the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre--these were
the links in the chain of hope that bound him to his pious idea. He had
seen the same thing done by the Portuguese on the Guinea coast, and it
never occurred to him that there was anything the matter with it. On the
contrary, at this time his idea was only to take slaves from among the
Caribs and man-eating islanders as a punishment for their misdeeds; but
this, like his other fine ideas, soon had to give way before the tide of
greed and conquest.