Book: Christopher Columbus, Volume 7

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When he found that he was not to be allowed to enter the harbour himself
Columbus sent a message to Ovando warning him that a hurricane was coming
on, and begging him to take measures for the safety of his large fleet.
This, however, was not done, and the fleet put to sea that evening. It
had only got so far as the eastern end of Espanola when the hurricane, as
predicted by Columbus, duly came down in the manner of West Indian
hurricanes, a solid wall of wind and an advancing wave of the sea which
submerged everything in its path. Columbus's little fleet, finding
shelter denied them, had moved a little way along the coast, the Admiral
standing close in shore, the others working to the south for sea-room;
and although they survived the hurricane they were scattered, and only
met several days later, in an extremely battered condition, at the
westerly end of the island. But the large home-going fleet had not
survived. The hurricane, which was probably from the north-east, struck
them just as they lost the lee of the island, and many of them, including
the ships with the treasure of gold and the caravels bearing Roldan,
Bobadilla, and Guarionex, all went down at once and were never seen or
heard of again. Other ships survived for a little while only to founder
in the end; a few, much shattered, crept back to the shelter of San
Domingo; but only one, it is said, survived the hurricane so well as to
be able to proceed to Spain; and that was the one which carried Carvajal
and Columbus's little property of gold. The Admiral's luck again; or the
intervention of the Holy Trinity--whichever you like.

After the shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did
not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of
Espanola repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews. There were
threatenings of another storm which delayed them still further, and it
was not until the middle of July that the Admiral was able to depart on
the real purpose of his voyage. His object was to strike the mainland
far to the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back
eastward to find the passage which he believed to exist. But the winds
and currents were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land
after touching at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some
bewilderment, he altered his course more and more northerly until he
found his whereabouts by coming in sight of the archipelago off the
south-western end of Cuba which he had called the Gardens. From here he
took a departure south-west, and on the 30th of July came in sight of a
small island off the northern coast of Honduras which he called Isla de
Pinos, and from which he could see the hills of the mainland. At this
island he found a canoe of immense size with a sort of house or caboose
built amidships, in which was established a cacique with his family and
dependents; and the people in the canoe showed signs of more advanced
civilisation than any seen by Columbus before in these waters. They wore
clothing, they had copper hatchets, and bells, and palm-wood swords in
the edges of which were set sharp blades of flint. They had a fermented
liquor, a kind of maize beer which looked like English ale; they had some
kind of money or medium of exchange also, and they told the Admiral that
there was land to the west where all these things existed and many more.
It is strange and almost inexplicable that he did not follow this trail
to the westward; if he had done so he would have discovered Mexico. But
one thing at a time always occupied him to the exclusion of everything
else; his thoughts were now turned to the eastward, where he supposed the
Straits were; and the significance of this canoe full of natives was lost
upon him.

They crossed over to the mainland of Honduras on August 15th, Bartholomew
landing and attending mass on the beach as the Admiral himself was too
ill to go ashore. Three days later the cross and banner of Castile were
duly erected on the shores of the Rio Tinto and the country was formally
annexed. The natives were friendly, and supplied the ships with
provisions; but they were very black and ugly, and Columbus readily
believed the assertion of his native guide that they were cannibals.
They continued their course to the eastward, but as the gulf narrowed the
force of the west-going current was felt more severely. Columbus,
believing that the strait which he sought lay to the eastward, laboured
against the current, and his difficulties were increased by the bad
weather which he now encountered. There were squalls and hurricanes,
tempests and cross-currents that knocked his frail ships about and almost
swamped them. Anchors and gear were lost, the sails were torn out of the
bolt-ropes, timbers were strained; and for six weeks this state of
affairs went on to an accompaniment of thunder and lightning which added
to the terror and discomfort of the mariners.

This was in August and the first half of September--six weeks of the
worst weather that Columbus had ever experienced. It was the more
unfortunate that his illness made it impossible for him to get actively
about the ship; and he had to have a small cabin or tent rigged up on
deck, in which he could lie and direct the navigation. It is bad enough
to be as ill as he was in a comfortable bed ashore; it is a thousand
times worse amid the discomforts of a small boat at sea; but what must it
have been thus to have one's sick-bed on the deck of a cockle-shell which
was being buffeted and smashed in unknown seas, and to have to think and
act not for oneself alone but for the whole of a suffering little fleet!
No wonder the Admiral's distress of mind was great; but oddly enough his
anxieties, as he recorded them in a letter, were not so much on his own
account as on behalf of others. The terrified seamen making vows to the
Virgin and promises of pilgrimages between their mad rushes to the sheets
and furious clinging and hauling; his son Ferdinand, who was only
fourteen, but who had to endure the same pain and fatigue as the rest of
them, and who was enduring it with such pluck that "it was as if he had
been at sea eighty years"; the dangers of Bartholomew, who had not wanted
to come on this voyage at all, but was now in the thick of it in the
worst ship of the squadron, and fighting for his life amid tempests and
treacherous seas; Diego at home, likely to be left an orphan and at the
mercy of fickle and doubtful friends--these were the chief causes of the
Admiral's anxiety. All he said about himself was that "by my misfortune
the twenty years of service which I gave with so much fatigue and danger
have profited me so little that to-day I have in Castile no roof, and if
I wished to dine or sup or sleep I have only the tavern for my last
refuge, and for that, most of the time, I would be unable to pay the
score." Not cheerful reflections, these, to add to the pangs of acute
gout and the consuming anxieties of seamanship under such circumstances.
Dreadful to him, these things, but not dreadful to us; for they show us
an Admiral restored to his true temper and vocation, something of the old
sea hero breaking out in him at last through all these misfortunes, like
the sun through the hurrying clouds of a stormy afternoon.


Forty days of passage through this wilderness of water were endured
before the sea-worn mariners, rounding a cape on September 12th, saw
stretching before them to the southward a long coast of plain and
mountain which they were able to follow with a fair wind. Gradually the
sea went down; the current which had opposed them here aided them, and
they were able to recover a little from the terrible strain of the last
six weeks. The cape was called by Columbus 'Gracios de Dios'; and on the
16th of September they landed at the entrance to a river to take in
water. The boat which was sent ashore, however, capsized on the sandy
bar of the entrance, two men being drowned, and the river was given the
name of Rio de Desastre. They found a better anchorage, where they
rested for ten days, overhauled their stores, and had some intercourse
with the natives and exploration on shore. Some incidents occurred which
can best be described in the Admiral's own language as he recorded them
in his letter to the Sovereigns.

" . . When I reached there, they immediately sent me two young
girls dressed in rich garments. The older one might not have been
more than eleven years of age and the other seven; both with so much
experience, so much manner, and so much appearance as would have
been sufficient if they had been public women for twenty years.
They bore with them magic powder and other things belonging to their
art. When they arrived I gave orders that they should be adorned
with our things and sent them immediately ashore. There I saw a
tomb within the mountain as large as a house and finely worked with
great artifice, and a corpse stood thereon uncovered, and, looking
within it, it seemed as if he stood upright. Of the other arts they
told me that there was excellence. Great and little animals are
there in quantities, and very different from ours; among which I saw
boars of frightful form so that a dog of the Irish breed dared not
face them. With a cross-bow I had wounded an animal which exactly
resembles a baboon only that it was much larger and has a face like
a human being. I had pierced it with an arrow from one side to the
other, entering in the breast and going out near the tail, and
because it was very ferocious I cut off one of the fore feet which
rather seemed to be a hand, and one of the hind feet. The boars
seeing this commenced to set up their bristles and fled with great
fear, seeing the blood of the other animal. When I saw this I
caused to be thrown them the 'uegare,'--[Peccary]--certain animals
they call so, where it stood, and approaching him, near as he was to
death, and the arrow still sticking in his body, he wound his tail
around his snout and held it fast, and with the other hand which
remained free, seized him by the neck as an enemy. This act, so
magnificent and novel, together with the fine country and hunting of
wild beasts, made me write this to your Majesties."


The natives at this anchorage of Cariari were rather suspicious, but
Columbus seized two of them to act as guides in his journey further down
the coast. Weighing anchor on October 5th he worked along the Costa Rica
shore, which here turns to the eastward again, and soon found a tribe of
natives who wore large ornaments of gold. They were reluctant to part
with the gold, but as usual pointed down the coast and said that there
was much more gold there; they even gave a name to the place where the
gold could be found--Veragua; and for once this country was found to have
a real existence. The fleet anchored there on October 17th, being
greeted by defiant blasts of conch shells and splashing of water from the
indignant natives. Business was done, however: seventeen gold discs in
exchange for three hawks' bells.

Still Columbus went on in pursuit of his geographical chimera; even gold
had no power to detain him from the earnest search for this imaginary
strait. Here and there along the coast he saw increasing signs of
civilisation--once a wall built of mud and stone, which made him think of
Cathay again. He now got it into his head that the region he was in was
ten days' journey from the Ganges, and that it was surrounded by water;
which if it means anything means that he thought he was on a large island
ten days' sail to the eastward of the coast of India. Altogether at sea
as to the facts, poor Admiral, but with heart and purpose steadfast and
right enough.

They sailed a little farther along the coast, now between narrow islands
that were like the streets of Genoa, where the boughs of trees on either
hand brushed the shrouds of the ships; now past harbours where there were
native fairs and markets, and where natives were to be seen mounted on
horses and armed with swords; now by long, lonely stretches of the coast
where there was nothing to be seen but the low green shore with the
mountains behind and the alligators basking at the river mouths. At last
(November 2nd) they arrived at the cape known as Nombre de Dios, which
Ojeda had reached some time before in his voyage to the West.

The coast of the mainland had thus been explored from the Bay of Honduras
to Brazil, and Columbus was obliged to admit that there was no strait.
Having satisfied himself of that he decided to turn back to Veragua,
where he had seen the natives smelting gold, in order to make some
arrangement for establishing a colony there. The wind, however, which
had headed him almost all the way on his easterly voyage, headed him
again now and began to blow steadily from the west. He started on his
return journey on the 5th of December, and immediately fell into almost
worse troubles than he had been in before. The wood of the ships had
been bored through and through by seaworms, so that they leaked very
badly; the crews were sick, provisions were spoilt, biscuits rotten.
Young Ferdinand Columbus, if he did not actually make notes of this
voyage at the time, preserved a very lively recollection of it, and it is
to his Historie, which in its earlier passages is of doubtful
authenticity, that we owe some of the most human touches of description
relating to this voyage. Any passage in his work relating to food or
animals at this time has the true ring of boyish interest and
observation, and is in sharp contrast to the second-hand and artificial
tone of the earlier chapters of his book. About the incident of the
howling monkey, which the Admiral's Irish hound would not face, Ferdinand
remarks that it "frighted a good dog that we had, but frighted one of our
wild boars a great deal more"; and as to the condition of the biscuits
when they turned westward again, he says that they were "so full of
weevils that, as God shall help me, I saw many that stayed till night to
eat their sop for fear of seeing them."

After experiencing some terrible weather, in the course of which they had
been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly
overwhelmed by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words
of young Ferdinand, "we saw the people living like birds in the tops of
the trees, laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their
huts upon them; and though we knew not the reason of the custom we
guessed that it was done for fear of their enemies, or of the griffins
that are in this island." After further experiences of bad weather they
made what looked like a suitable harbour on the coast of Veragua, which
harbour, as they entered it on the day of the Epiphany (January 9, 1503),
they named Belem or Bethlehem. The river in the mouth of which they were
anchored, however, was subject to sudden spouts and gushes of water from
the hills, one of which occurred on January 24th and nearly swamped the
caravels. This spout of water was caused by the rainy season, which had
begun in the mountains and presently came down to the coast, where it
rained continuously until the 14th of February. They had made friends
with the Quibian or chief of the country, and he had offered to conduct
them to the place where the gold mines were; so Bartholomew was sent off
in the rain with a boat party to find this territory. It turned out
afterwards that the cunning Quibian had taken them out of his own country
and showed them the gold mined of a neighbouring chief, which were not so
rich as his own.

Columbus, left idle in the absence of Bartholomew, listening to the
continuous drip and patter of the rain on the leaves and the water,
begins to dream again--to dream of gold and geography. Remembers that
David left three thousand quintals of gold from the Indies to Solomon for
the decoration of the Temple; remembers that Josephus said it came from
the Golden Chersonesus; decides that enough gold could never have been
got from the mines of Hayna in Espanola; and concludes that the Ophir of
Solomon must be here in Veragua and not there in Espanola. It was always
here and now with Columbus; and as he moved on his weary sea pilgrimages
these mythical lands with their glittering promise moved about with him,
like a pillar of fire leading him through the dark night of his quest.


The rain came to an end, however, the sun shone out again, and activity
took the place of dreams with Columbus and with his crew. He decided to
found a settlement in this place, and to make preparations for seizing
and working the gold mines. It was decided to leave a garrison of eighty
men, and the business of unloading the necessary arms and provisions and
building houses ashore was immediately begun. Hawks' bells and other
trifles were widely distributed among the natives, with special toys and
delicacies for the Quibian, in order that friendly relations might be
established from the beginning; and special regulations were framed to
prevent the possibility of any recurrence of the disasters that overtook
the settlers of Isabella.

Such are the orderly plans of Columbus; but the Quibian has his plans
too, which are found to be of quite a different nature. The Quibian does
not like intruders, though he likes their hawks' bells well enough; he is
not quite so innocent as poor Guacanagari and the rest of them were; he
knows that gold is a thing coveted by people to whom it does not belong,
and that trouble follows in its train. Quibian therefore decides that
Columbus and his followers shall be exterminated--news of which intention
fortunately came to the ears of Columbus in time, Diego Mendez and
Rodrigo de Escobar having boldly advanced into the Quibian's village and
seen the warlike preparations. Bartholomew, returning from his visit to
the gold mines, was informed of this state of affairs. Always quick to
strike, Bartholomew immediately started with an armed force, and advanced
upon the village so rapidly that the savages were taken by surprise,
their headquarters surrounded, and the Quibian and fifty of his warriors
captured. Bartholomew triumphantly marched the prisoners back, the
Quibian being entrusted to the charge of Juan Sanchez, who was rowing him
in a little boat. The Quibian complained that his bonds were hurting
him, and foolish Sanchez eased them a little; Quibian, with a quick
movement, wriggled overboard and dived to the bottom; came up again
somewhere and reached home alive. No one saw him come up, however, and
they thought had had been drowned.

Columbus now made ready to depart, and the caravels having been got over
the shallow bar, their loading was completed and they were ready to sail.
On April 6th Diego Tristan was sent in charge of a boat with a message to
Bartholomew, who was to be left in command of the settlement; but when
Tristan had rounded the point at the entrance to the river and come in
sight of the shore he had an unpleasant surprise; the settlement was
being savagely attacked by the resurrected Quibian and his followers.
The fight had lasted for three hours, and had been going badly against
the Spaniards, when Bartholomew and Diego Mendes rallied a little force
round them and, calling to Columbus's Irish dog which had been left with
them, made a rush upon the savages and so terrified them that they
scattered. Bartholomew with eight of the other Spaniards was wounded,
and one was killed; and it was at this point that Tristan's boat arrived
at the settlement. Having seen the fight safely over, he went on up the
river to get water, although he was warned that it was not safe; and sure
enough, at a point a little farther up the river, beyond some low green
arm of the shore, he met with a sudden and bloody death. A cloud of
yelling savages surrounded his boat hurling javelins and arrows, and only
one seaman, who managed to dive into the water and crawl ashore, escaped
to bring the evil tidings.

The Spaniards under Bartholomew's command broke into a panic, and taking
advantage of his wounded condition they tried to make sail on their
caravel and join the ships of Columbus outside; but since the time of the
rains the river had so much gone down that she was stuck fast in the
sand. They could not even get a boat over the bar, for there was a heavy
cross sea breaking on it; and in the meantime here they were, trapped
inside this river, the air resounding with dismal blasts of the natives'
conch-shells, and the natives themselves dancing round and threatening to
rush their position; while the bodies of Tristan and his little crew were
to be seen floating down the stream, feasted upon by a screaming cloud of
birds. The position of the shore party was desperate, and it was only by
the greatest efforts that the wounded Adelantado managed to rally his
crew and get them to remove their little camp to an open place on the
shore, where a kind of stockade was made of chests, casks, spars, and the
caravel's boat. With this for cover, the Spanish fire-arms, so long as
there was ammunition for them, were enough to keep the natives at bay.


Outside the bar, in his anchorage beyond the green wooded point, the
Admiral meanwhile was having an anxious time. One supposes the entrance
to the river to have been complicated by shoals and patches of broken
water extending some considerable distance, so that the Admiral's
anchorage would be ten or twelve miles away from the camp ashore, and of
course entirely hidden from it. As day after day passed and Diego
Tristan did not return, the Admiral's anxiety increased. Among the three
caravels that now formed his little squadron there was only one boat
remaining, the others, not counting one taken by Tristan and one left
with Bartholomew, having all been smashed in the late hurricanes. In the
heavy sea that was running on the bar the Admiral dared not risk his last
remaining boat; but in the mean time he was cut off from all news of the
shore party and deprived of any means of finding out what had happened to
Tristan. And presently to these anxieties was added a further disaster.
It will be remembered that when the Quibian had been captured fifty
natives had been taken with him; and these were confined in the
forecastle of the Capitana and covered by a large hatch, on which most of
the crew slept at night. But one night the natives collected a heap of
big stones from the ballast of the ship, and piled them up to a kind of
platform beneath the hatch; some of the strongest of them got upon the
platform and set their backs horizontally against the hatch, gave a great
heave and, lifted it off. In the confusion that followed, a great many
of the prisoners escaped into the sea, and swam ashore; the rest were
captured and thrust back under the hatch, which was chained down; but
when on the following morning the Spaniards went to attend to this
remnant it was found that they had all hanged themselves.

This was a great disaster, since it increased the danger of the garrison
ashore, and destroyed all hope of friendship with the natives. There was
something terrible and powerful, too, in the spirit of people who could
thus to a man make up their minds either to escape or die; and the
Admiral must have felt that he was in the presence of strange, powerful
elements that were far beyond his control. At any moment, moreover, the
wind might change and put him on a lee shore, or force him to seek safety
in sea-room; in which case the position of Bartholomew would be a very
critical one. It was while things were at this apparent deadlock that a
brave fellow, Pedro Ledesma, offered to attempt to swim through the surf
if the boat would take him to the edge of it. Brave Pedro, his offer
accepted, makes the attempt; plunges into the boiling surf, and with
mighty efforts succeeds in reaching the shore; and after an interval is
seen by his comrades, who are waiting with their boat swinging on the
edge of the surf, to be returning to them; plunges into the sea, comes
safely through the surf again, and is safely hauled on board, having
accomplished a very real and satisfactory bit of service.

The story he had to tell the Admiral was as we know not a pleasant one
--Tristan and his men dead, several of Bartholomew's force, including the
Adelantado himself, wounded, and all in a state of panic and fear at the
hostile natives. The Spaniards would do nothing to make the little
fortress safer, and were bent only on escaping from the place of horror.
Some of them were preparing canoes in which to come out to the ships when
the sea should go down, as their one small boat was insufficient; and
they swore that if the Admiral would not take them they would seize their
own caravel and sail out themselves into the unknown sea as soon as they
could get her floated over the bar, rather than remain in such a dreadful
situation. Columbus was in a very bad way. He could not desert
Bartholomew, as that would expose him to the treachery of his own men
and the hostility of the savages. He could not reinforce him, except by
remaining himself with the whole of his company; and in that case there
would be no means of sending the news of his rich discovery to Spain.
There was nothing for it, therefore, but to break up the settlement and
return some other time with a stronger force sufficient to occupy the
country. And even this course had its difficulties; for the weather
continued bad, the wind was blowing on to the shore, the sea was--so
rough as to make the passage of the bar impossible, and any change for
the worse in the weather would probably drive his own crazy ships ashore
and cut off all hope of escape.

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