Book: Christopher Columbus, Volume 6
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Filson Young >> Christopher Columbus, Volume 6
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
AND THE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY
A NARRATIVE BY FILSON YOUNG
Volume 6
CHAPTER V
THE THIRD VOYAGE
Columbus was at sea again; firm ground to him, although so treacherous
and unstable to most of us; and as he saw the Spanish coast sinking down
on the horizon he could shake himself free from his troubles, and feel
that once more he was in a situation of which he was master. He first
touched at Porto Santo, where, if the story of his residence there be
true, there must have been potent memories for him in the sight of the
long white beach and the plantations, with the Governor's house beyond.
He stayed there only a few hours and then crossed over to Madeira,
anchoring in the Bay of Funchal, where he took in wood and water. As it
was really unnecessary for him to make a port so soon after leaving,
there was probably some other reason for his visit to these islands;
perhaps a family reason; perhaps nothing more historically important than
the desire to look once more on scenes of bygone happiness, for even on
the page of history every event is not necessarily big with significance.
From Madeira he took a southerly course to the Canary Islands, and on
June 16th anchored at Gomera, where he found a French warship with two
Spanish prizes, all of which put to sea as the Admiral's fleet
approached. On June 21st, when he sailed from Gomera, he divided his
fleet of six vessels into two squadrons. Three ships were despatched
direct to Espanola, for the supplies which they carried were urgently
needed there. These three ships were commanded by trustworthy men: Pedro
de Arana, a brother of Beatriz, Alonso Sanchez de Carvajal, and Juan
Antonio Colombo--this last no other than a cousin of Christopher's from
Genoa. The sons of Domenico's provident younger brother had not
prospered, while the sons of improvident Domenico were now all in high
places; and these three poor cousins, hearing of Christopher's greatness,
and deciding that use should be made of him, scraped together enough
money to send one of their number to Spain. The Admiral always had a
sound family feeling, and finding that cousin Antonio had sea experience
and knew how to handle a ship he gave him command of one of the caravels
on this voyage--a command of which he proved capable and worthy. From
these three captains, after giving them full sailing directions for
reaching Espanola, Columbus parted company off the island of Ferro. He
himself stood on a southerly course towards the Cape Verde Islands.
His plan on this voyage was to find the mainland to the southward, of
which he had heard rumours in Espanola. Before leaving Spain he had
received a letter from an eminent lapidary named Ferrer who had travelled
much in the east, and who assured him that if he sought gold and precious
stones he must go to hot lands, and that the hotter the lands were, and
the blacker the inhabitants, the more likely he was to find riches there.
This was just the kind of theory to suit Columbus, and as he sailed
towards the Cape Verde Islands he was already in imagination gathering
gold and pearls on the shores of the equatorial continent.
He stayed for about a week at the Cape Verde Islands, getting in
provisions and cattle, and curiously observing the life of the Portuguese
lepers who came in numbers to the island of Buenavista to be cured there
by eating the flesh and bathing in the blood of turtles. It was not an
inspiriting week which he spent in that dreary place and enervating
climate, with nothing to see but the goats feeding among the scrub, the
turtles crawling about the sand, and the lepers following the turtles.
It began to tell on the health of the crew, so he weighed anchor on July
5th and stood on a southwesterly course.
This third voyage, which was destined to be the most important of all,
and the material for which had cost him so much time and labour, was
undertaken in a very solemn and determined spirit. His health, which he
had hoped to recover in Spain, had been if anything damaged by his
worryings with officialdom there; and although he was only forty-seven
years of age he was in some respects already an old man. He had entered,
although happily he did not know it, on the last decade of his life; and
was already beginning to suffer from the two diseases, gout and
ophthalmia, which were soon to undermine his strength and endurance.
Religion of a mystical fifteenth-century sort was deepening in him;
he had undertaken this voyage in the name of the Holy Trinity; and to
that theological entity he had resolved to dedicate the first new land
that he should sight.
For ten days light baffling winds impeded his progress; but at the end of
that time the winds fell away altogether, and the voyagers found
themselves in that flat equatorial calm known to mariners as the
Doldrums. The vertical rays of the sun shone blisteringly down upon
them, making the seams of the ships gape and causing the unhappy crews
mental as well as bodily distress, for they began to fear that they had
reached that zone of fire which had always been said to exist in the
southern ocean.
Day after day the three ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with
wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat
putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened
casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the
stifling hold even to save the provisions. And through all this the
Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his
prostrate crew that they would soon be out of it.
There were showers of rain sometimes, but the moisture in that baking
atmosphere only added to its stifling and enervating effects. All the
while, however, the great slow current of the Atlantic was moving
westward, and there came a day when a heavenly breeze, stirred in the
torrid air and the musical talk of ripples began to rise again from the
weedy stems of the ships. They sailed due west, always into a cooler and
fresher atmosphere; but still no land was sighted, although pelicans
and smaller birds were continually seen passing from south-west to
north-east. As provisions were beginning to run low, Columbus decided
on the 31st July to alter his course to north-by-east, in the hope of
reaching the island of Dominica. But at mid-day his servant Alonso
Perez, happening to go to the masthead, cried out that there was land in
sight; and sure enough to the westward there rose three peaks of land
united at the base. Here was the kind of coincidence which staggers
even the unbeliever. Columbus had promised to dedicate the first land
he saw to the Trinity; and here was the land, miraculously provided when
he needed it most, three peaks in one peak, in due conformity with the
requirements of the blessed Saint Athanasius. The Admiral was deeply
affected; the God of his belief was indeed a good friend to him; and he
wrote down his pious conviction that the event was a miracle, and
summoned all hands to sing the Salve Regina, with other hymns in praise
of God and the Virgin Mary. The island was duly christened La Trinidad.
By the hour of Compline (9 o'clock in the evening) they had come up with
the south coast of the island, but it was the next day before the
Admiral found a harbour where he could take in water. No natives were
to be seen, although there were footprints on the shore and other signs
of human habitation.
He continued all day to sail slowly along the shore of the island, the
green luxuriance of which astonished him; and sometimes he stood out from
the coast to the southward as he made a long board to round this or that
point. It must have been while reaching out in this way to the southward
that he saw a low shore on his port hand some sixty miles to the south of
Trinidad, and that his sight, although he did not know it, rested for the
first time on the mainland of South America. The land seen was the low
coast to the west of the Orinoco, and thinking that it was an island he
gave it the name of Isla Sancta.
On the 2nd of August they were off the south-west of Trinidad, and saw
the first inhabitants in the shape of a canoe full of armed natives, who
approached the ships with threatening gestures. Columbus had brought out
some musicians with him, possibly for the purpose of impressing the
natives, and perhaps with the idea of making things a little more
cheerful in Espanola; and the musicians were now duly called upon to give
a performance, a tambourine-player standing on the forecastle and beating
the rhythm for the ships' boys to dance to. The effect was other than
was anticipated, for the natives immediately discharged a thick flight of
arrows at the musicians, and the music and dancing abruptly ceased.
Eventually the Indians were prevailed upon to come on board the two
smaller ships and to receive gifts, after which they departed and were
seen no more. Columbus landed and made some observations of the
vegetation and climate of Trinidad, noticing that the fruits and-trees
were similar to those of Espanola, and that oysters abounded, as well as
"very large, infinite fish, and parrots as large as hens."
He saw another peak of the mainland to the northwest, which was the
peninsula of Paria, and to which Columbus, taking it to be another
island, gave the name of Isla de Gracia. Between him and this land lay a
narrow channel through which a mighty current was flowing--that press of
waters which, sweeping across the Atlantic from Africa, enters the
Caribbean Sea, sprays round the Gulf of Mexico, and turns north again in
the current known as the Gulf Stream. While his ships were anchored at
the entrance to this channel and Columbus was wondering how he should
cross it, a mighty flood of water suddenly came down with a roar, sending
a great surging wave in front of it. The vessels were lifted up as
though by magic; two of them dragged their anchors from the bottom, and
the other one broke her cable. This flood was probably caused by a
sudden flush of fresh water from one of the many mouths of the Orinoco;
but to Columbus, who had no thought of rivers in his mind, it was very
alarming. Apparently, however, there was nothing for it but to get
through the channel, and having sent boats on in front to take soundings
and see that there was clear water he eventually piloted his little
squadron through, with his heart in his mouth and his eyes fixed on the
swinging eddies and surging circles of the channel. Once beyond it he
was in the smooth water of the Gulf of Paria. He followed the westerly
coast of Trinidad to the north until he came to a second channel narrower
than the first, through which the current boiled with still greater
violence, and to which he gave the name of Dragon's Mouth. This is the
channel between the northwesterly point of Trinidad and the eastern
promontory of Paria. Columbus now began to be bewildered, for he
discovered that the water over the ship's side was fresh water, and he
could not make out where it came from. Thinking that the peninsula of
Paria was an island, and not wishing to attempt the dangerous passage of
the Dragon's Mouth, he decided to coast along the southern shore of the
land opposite, hoping to be able to turn north round its western
extremity.
Sweeter blew the breezes, fresher grew the water, milder and more balmy
the air, greener and deeper the vegetation of this beautiful region. The
Admiral was ill with the gout, and suffering such pain from his eyes that
he was sometimes blinded by it; but the excitement of the strange
phenomena surrounding him kept him up, and his powers of observation,
always acute, suffered no diminution. There were no inhabitants to be
seen as they sailed along the coast, but monkeys climbed and chattered in
the trees by the shore, and oysters were found clinging to the branches
that dipped into the water. At last, in a bay where they anchored to
take in water, a native canoe containing three, men was seen cautiously
approaching; and the men, who were shy, were captured by the device of a
sailor jumping on to the gunwale of the canoe and overturning it, the
natives being easily caught in the water, and afterwards soothed and
captivated by the unfailing attraction of hawks' bells. They were tall
men with long hair, and they told Columbus that the name of their country
was Paria; and when they were asked about other inhabitants they pointed
to the west and signified that there was a great population in that
direction.
On the 10th of August 1498 a party landed on this coast and formally took
possession of it in the name of the Sovereigns of Spain. By an unlucky
chance Columbus himself did not land. His eyes were troubling him so
much that he was obliged to lie down in his cabin, and the formal act of
possession was performed by a deputy. If he had only known! If he could
but have guessed that this was indeed the mainland of a New World that
did not exist even in his dreams, what agonies he would have suffered
rather than permit any one else to pronounce the words of annexation!
But he lay there in pain and suffering, his curious mystical mind
occupied with a conception very remote indeed from the truth.
For in that fertile hotbed of imagination, the Admiral's brain, a new and
staggering theory had gradually been taking shape. As his ships had been
wafted into this delicious region, as the airs had become sweeter, the
vegetation more luxuriant, and the water of the sea fresher,--he had
solemnly arrived at the conclusion that he was approaching the region of
the true terrestrial Paradise: the Garden of Eden that some of the
Fathers had declared to be situated in the extreme east of the Old World,
and in a region so high that the flood had not overwhelmed it. Columbus,
thinking hard in his cabin, blood and brain a little fevered, comes to
the conclusion that the world is not round but pear-shaped. He knows
that all this fresh water in the sea must come from a great distance and
from no ordinary river; and he decides that its volume and direction have
been acquired in its fall from the apex of the pear, from the very top of
the world, from the Garden of Eden itself. It was a most beautiful
conception; a theory worthy to be fitted to all the sweet sights and
sounds in the world about him; but it led him farther and farther away
from the truth, and blinded him to knowledge and understanding of what he
had actually accomplished.
He had thought the coast of Cuba the mainland, and he now began to
consider it at least possible that the peninsula of Paria was mainland
also--another part of the same continent. That was the truth--Paria was
the mainland--and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and
theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and
significance of his discovery. But no; in his profoundly unscientific
mind there was little of that patience which holds men back from
theorising and keeps them ready to receive the truth. He was patient
enough in doing, but in thinking he was not patient at all. No sooner
had he observed a fact than he must find a theory which would bring it
into relation with the whole of his knowledge; and if the facts would not
harmonise of themselves he invented a scheme of things by which they were
forced into harmony. He was indeed a Darwinian before his time, an adept
in the art of inventing causes to fit facts, and then proving that the
facts sprang from the causes; but his origins were tangible, immovable
things of rock and soil that could be seen and visited by other men, and
their true relation to the terrestrial phenomena accurately established;
so that his very proofs were monumental, and became themselves the
advertisements of his profound misjudgment. But meanwhile he is the
Admiral of the Ocean Seas, and can "make it so"; and accordingly, in a
state of mental instability, he makes the Gulf of Paria to be a slope of
earth immediately below the Garden of Eden, although fortunately he does
not this time provide a sworn affidavit of trembling ships' boys to
confirm his discovery.
Meanwhile also here were pearls; the native women wore ropes of them all
over their bodies, and a fair store of them were bartered for pieces of
broken crockery. Asked as usual about the pearls the natives, also as
usual, pointed vaguely to the west and south-west, and explained that
there were more pearls in that direction. But the Admiral would not
tarry. Although he believed that he was within reach of Eden and pearls,
he was more anxious to get back to Espanola and send the thrilling news
to Spain than he was to push on a little farther and really assure
himself of the truth. How like Christopher that was! Ideas to him were
of more value than facts, as indeed they are to the world at large; but
one is sometimes led to wonder whether he did not sometimes hesitate to
turn his ideas into facts for very fear that they should turn out to be
only ideas. Was he, in his relations with Spain and the world, a trader
in the names rather than the substance of things? We have seen him going
home to Spain and announcing the discovery of the Golden Chersonesus,
although he had only discovered what he erroneously supposed to be an
indication of it; proclaiming the discovery of the Ophir of Solomon
without taking the trouble to test for himself so tremendous an
assumption; and we now see him hurrying away to dazzle Spain with the
story that he has discovered the Garden of Eden, without even trying to
push on for a few days more to secure so much as a cutting from the Tree
of Life.
These are grave considerations; for although happily the Tree of Life is
now of no importance to any human being, the doings of Admiral
Christopher were of great importance to himself and to his fellow-men at
that time, and are still to-day, through the infinite channels in which
human thought and action run and continue thoughout the world, of grave
importance to us. Perhaps this is not quite the moment, now that the
poor Admiral is lying in pain and weakness and not quite master of his
own mind, to consider fully how he stands in this matter of honesty; we
will leave it for the present until he is well again, or better still,
until his tale of life and action is complete, and comes as a whole
before the bar of human judgment.
On August 11th Columbus turned east again after having given up the
attempt to find a passage to the north round Paria. There were practical
considerations that brought him to this action. As the water was growing
shoaler and shoaler he had sent a caravel of light draft some way further
to the westward, and she reported that there lay ahead of her a great
inner bay or gulf consisting of almost entirely fresh water. Provisions,
moreover, were running short, and were, as usual, turning bad; the
Admiral's health made vigorous action of any kind impossible for him; he
was anxious about the condition of Espanola--anxious also, as we have
seen, to send this great news home; and he therefore turned back and
decided to risk the passage of the Dragon's Mouth. He anchored in the
neighbouring harbour until the wind was in the right quarter, and with
some trepidation put his ships into the boiling tideway. When they were
in the middle of the passage the wind fell to a dead calm, and the ships,
with their sails hanging loose, were borne on the dizzy surface of
eddies, overfalls, and whirls of the tide. Fortunately there was deep
water in the passage, and the strength of the current carried them safely
through. Once outside they bore away to the northward, sighting the
islands of Tobago and Grenada and, turning westward again, came to the
islands of Cubagua and Margarita, where three pounds of pearls were
bartered from the natives. A week after the passage of the Dragon's
Mouth Columbus sighted the south coast of Espanola, which coast he made
at a point a long way to the east of the new settlement that he had
instructed Bartholomew to found; and as the winds were contrary, and he
feared it might take him a long time to beat up against them, he sent a
boat ashore with a letter which was to be delivered by a native messenger
to the Adelantado. The letter was delivered; a few days later a caravel
was sighted which contained Bartholomew himself; and once more, after a
long separation, these two friends and brothers were united.
The see-saw motion of all affairs with which Columbus had to do was in
full swing. We have seen him patching up matters in Espanola; hurrying
to Spain just in time to rescue his damaged reputation and do something
to restore it; and now when he had come back it was but a sorry tale that
Bartholomew had to tell him. A fortress had been built at the Hayna
gold-mines, but provisions had been so scarce that there had been
something like a famine among the workmen there; no digging had been
done, no planting, no making of the place fit for human occupation and
industry. Bartholomew had been kept busy in collecting the native
tribute, and in planning out the beginnings of the settlement at the
mouth of the river Ozema, which was at first called the New Isabella, but
was afterwards named San Domingo in honour of old Domenico at Savona.
The cacique Behechio had been giving trouble; had indeed marched out with
an army against Bartholomew, but had been more or less reconciled by the
intervention of his sister Anacaona, widow of the late Caonabo, who had
apparently transferred her affections to Governor Bartholomew. The
battle was turned into a friendly pagan festival--one of the last ever
held on that once happy island--in which native girls danced in a green
grove, with the beautiful Anacaona, dressed only in garlands, carried on
a litter in their midst.
But in the Vega Real, where a chapel had been built by the priests of the
neighbouring settlement who were beginning to make converts, trouble had
arisen in consequence of an outrage on the wife of the cacique Guarionex.
The chapel was raided, the shrine destroyed, and the sacred vessels
carried off. The Spaniards seized a number of Indians whom they
suspected of having had a hand in the desecration, and burned them at the
stake in the most approved manner of the Inquisition--a hideous
punishment that fanned the remaining embers of the native spirit into
flame, and produced a hostile combination of Guarionex and several other
caciques, whose rebellion it took the Adelantado some trouble and display
of arms to quench.
But the worst news of all was the treacherous revolt of Francisco Roldan,
a Spaniard who had once been a servant of the Admiral's, and who had been
raised by him to the office of judge in the island--an able creature,
but, like too many recipients of Christopher's favour, a treacherous
rascal at bottom. As soon as the Admiral's back was turned Roldan had
begun to make mischief, stirring up the discontent that was never far
below the surface of life in the colony, and getting together a large
band of rebellious ruffians. He had a plan to murder Bartholomew
Columbus and place himself at the head of the colony, but this fell
through. Then, in Bartholomew's absence, he had a passage with James
Columbus, who had now returned to the island and had resumed his.
official duties at Isabella. Bartholomew, who was at another part of the
coast collecting tribute, had sent a caravel laden with cotton to
Isabella, and well-meaning James had her drawn up on the beach. Roldan
took the opportunity to represent this innocent action as a sign of the
intolerable autocracy of the Columbus family, who did not even wish a
vessel to be in a condition to sail for Spain with news of their
misdeeds. Insolent Roldan formally asks James to send the caravel to
Spain with supplies; poor James refuses and, perhaps being at bottom
afraid of Roldan and his insolences, despatches him to the Vega Real with
a force to bring to order some caciques who had been giving trouble.
Possibly to his surprise, although not to ours, Roldan departs with
alacrity at the head of seventy armed men. Honest, zealous James, no
doubt; but also, we begin to fear, stupid James.
The Vega Real was the most attractive part of the colony, and the scene
of infinite idleness and debauchery in the early days of the Spanish
settlement. As Margarite and other mutineers had acted, so did Roldan
and his soldiers now act, making sallies against several of the chain of
forts that stretched across the island, and even upon Isabella itself;
and returning to the Vega to the enjoyment of primitive wild pleasures.
Roldan and Bartholomew Columbus stalked each other about the island with
armed forces for several months, Roldan besieging Bartholomew in the
fortress at the Vega, which he had occupied in Roldan's absence, and
trying to starve him out there. The arrival in February 1498 of the two
ships which had been sent out from Spain in advance, and which brought
also the news of the Admiral's undamaged favour at Court, and of the
royal confirmation of Bartholomew's title, produced for the moment a good
moral effect; Roldan went and sulked in the mountains, refusing to have
any parley or communication with the Adelantado, declining indeed to
treat with any one until the Admiral himself should return. In the
meantime his influence with the natives was strong enough to produce a
native revolt, which Bartholomew had only just succeeded in suppressing
when Christopher arrived on August 30th.