Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 20

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEHAIM'S GLOBE, 1492.

_Note._ The curved sides of these cuts divide the Globe in the mid Atlantic.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEHAIM'S GLOBE, 1492.

[Taken from Ernest Mayer's _Die Hilfsmittel der Schiffahrtkunde_ (Wein, 1879).]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOPPELMAYER'S ENGRAVING OF BEHAIM'S GLOBE, MUCH REDUCED.]

[Sidenote: Laon globe.]

It shows the equator, the tropics, the polar circle, in a lat.i.tudinal way; but the first meridian, pa.s.sing through Madeira, is the only one of the longitudinal sectors which it represents. Behaim had in this work the help of Holtzschner, and the globe has come down to our day, preserved in the town hall at Nuremberg, one of the sights and honors of that city. It shares the credit, however, with another, called the Laon globe, as the only well-authenticated geographical spheres which date back of the discovery of America. This Laon globe is much smaller, being only six inches in diameter; and though it is dated 1493, it is thought to have been made a few years earlier,--as D'Avezac thinks, in 1486.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ACTUAL AMERICA IN RELATION TO BEHAIM'S GEOGRAPHY.]

Clements K. Markham, in a recent edition of Robert Hues' _Tractatus de Globis_, cites Nordenskiold as considering Behaim's globe, without comparison, the most important geographical doc.u.ment since the atlas of Ptolemy, in A. D. 150. "He points out that it is the first which unreservedly adopts the existence of antipodes; the first which clearly shows that there is a pa.s.sage from Europe to India; the first which attempts to deal with the discoveries of Marco Polo. It is an exact representation of geographical knowledge immediately previous to the first voyage of Columbus."

The Behaim globe has become familiar by many published drawings.

[Sidenote: Toscanelli's map.]

It has been claimed that Columbus probably took with him, on his voyage, the map which he had received from Toscanelli, with its delineation of the interjacent and island-studded ocean, which washed alike the sh.o.r.es of Europe and Asia, and that it was the subject of study by him and Pinzon at a time when Columbus refers in his journal to the use they made of a chart.

That Toscanelli's map long survived the voyage is known, and Las Casas used it. Humboldt has not the same confidence which Sprengel had, that at this time it crossed the sea in the "Santa Maria;" and he is inclined rather to suppose that the details of Toscanelli's chart, added to all others which Columbus had gathered from the maps of Bianco and Benincasa--for it is not possible he could have seen the work of Behaim, unless indeed, in fragmentary preconceptions--must have served him better as laid down on a chart of his own drafting. There is good reason to suppose that, more than once, with the skill which he is known to have possessed, he must have made such charts, to enforce and demonstrate his belief, which, though in the main like that of Toscanelli, were in matters of distance quite different.

[Sidenote: 1492, August 3, Columbus sails.]

So, everything being ready, on the third of August, 1492, a half hour before sunrise, he unmoored his little fleet in the stream and, spreading his sails, the vessels pa.s.sed out of the little river roadstead of Palos, gazed after, perhaps, in the increasing light, as the little crafts reached the ocean, by the friar of Rabida, from its distant promontory of rock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: s.h.i.+PS OF COLUMBUS'S TIME.

(From Medina's _Arte de Navegar_, 1545.)]

[Sidenote: On Friday.]

The day was Friday, and the advocates of Columbus's canonization have not failed to see a purpose in its choice, as the day of our Redemption, and as that of the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre by Geoffrey de Bouillon, and of the rendition of Granada, with the fall of the Moslem power in Spain. We must resort to the books of such advocates, if we would enliven the picture with a mult.i.tude of rites and devotional feelings that they gather in the meshes of the story of the departure.

They supply to the embarkation a variety of detail that their holy purposes readily imagine, and place Columbus at last on his p.o.o.p, with the standard of the Cross, the image of the Saviour nailed to the holy wood, waving in the early breezes that heralded the day. The embellishments may be pleasing, but they are not of the strictest authenticity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: s.h.i.+P, 1486.]

[Sidenote: Keeps a journal.]

In order that his performance of an emba.s.sy to the princes of the East might be duly chronicled, Columbus determined, as his journal says, to keep an account of the voyage by the west, "by which course," he says, "unto the present time, we do not know, _for certain_, that any one has pa.s.sed." It was his purpose to write down, as he proceeded, everything he saw and all that he did, and to make a chart of his discoveries, and to show the directions of his track.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [From Bethencourt's _Canarian_, London, 1872.]]

[Sidenote: The "Pinta" disabled.]

Nothing occurred during those early August days to mar his run to the Canaries, except the apprehension which he felt that an accident, happening to the rudder of the "Pinta,"--a steering gear now for some time in use, in place of the old lateral paddles,--was a trick of two men, her owners, Gomez Rascon and Christopher Quintero, to impede a voyage in which they had no heart. The Admiral knew the disposition of these men well enough not to be surprised at the mishap, but he tried to feel secure in the prompt energy of Pinzon, who commanded the "Pinta."

[Sidenote: Reaches the Canaries.]

As he pa.s.sed (August 24-25, 1492) the peak of Teneriffe, it was the time of an eruption, of which he makes bare mention in his journal. It is to the corresponding pa.s.sages of the _Historie_, that we owe the somewhat sensational stories of the terrors of the sailors, some of whom certainly must long have been accustomed to like displays in the volcanoes of the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: 1492. September 6, leaves Gomera.]

At the Gran Canaria the "Nina" was left to have her lateen sails changed to square ones; and the "Pinta," it being found impossible to find a better vessel to take her place, was also left to be overhauled for her leaks, and to have her rudder again repaired, while Columbus visited Gomera, another of the islands. The fleet was reunited at Gomera on September 2. Here he fell in with some residents of Ferro, the westernmost of the group, who repeated the old stories of land occasionally seen from its heights, lying towards the setting sun.

Having taking on board wood, water, and provisions, Columbus finally sailed from Gomera on the morning of Thursday, September 6. He seems to have soon spoken a vessel from Ferro, and from this he learned that three Portuguese caravels were lying in wait for him in the neighborhood of that island, with a purpose as he thought of visiting in some way upon him, for having gone over to the interests of Spain, the indignation of the Portuguese king. He escaped encountering them.

[Sidenote: Sunday, September 9, 1492.]

[Sidenote: Falsifies his reckoning.]

Up to Sunday, September 9, they had experienced so much calm weather, that their progress had been slow. This tediousness soon raised an apprehension in the mind of Columbus that the voyage might prove too long for the constancy of his men. He accordingly determined to falsify his reckoning. This deceit was a large confession of his own timidity in dealing with his crew, and it marked the beginning of a long struggle with deceived and mutinous subordinates, which forms so large a part of the record of his subsequent career.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROUTES OF COLUMBUS'S FOUR VOYAGES.

[Taken from the map in Blanchero's _La Tavola di Bronzo_ (Geneva, 1857).]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMBUS'S TRACK IN 1492.] The result of Monday's sail, which he knew to be sixty leagues, he noted as forty-eight, so that the distance from home might appear less than it was. He continued to practice this deceit.

[Sidenote: His dead reckoning.]

The distances given by Columbus are those of dead reckoning beyond any question. Lieutenant Murdock, of the United States navy, who has commented on this voyage, makes his league the equivalent of three modern nautical miles, and his mile about three quarters of our present estimate for that distance. Navarrete says that Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, which are a quarter less than a Spanish mile. The Admiral had expected to make land after sailing about seven hundred leagues from Ferro; and in ordering his vessels in case of separation to proceed westward, he warned them when they sailed that distance to come to the wind at night, and only to proceed by day.

The log as at present understood in navigation had not yet been devised.

Columbus depended in judging of his speed on the eye alone, basing his calculations on the pa.s.sage of objects or bubbles past the s.h.i.+p, while the running out of his hour gla.s.ses afforded the multiple for long distances.

[Sidenote: 1492. September 13.]

[Sidenote: Reaches point of no variation of the needle.]

[Sidenote: Knowledge of the magnet.]

On Thursday, the 13th of September, he notes that the s.h.i.+ps were encountering adverse currents. He was now three degrees west of Flores, and the needle of the compa.s.s pointed as it had never been observed before, directly to the true north. His observation of this fact marks a significant point in the history of navigation. The polarity of the magnet, an ancient possession of the Chinese, had been known perhaps for three hundred years, when this new spirit of discovery awoke in the fifteenth century. The Indian Ocean and its traditions were to impart, perhaps through the Arabs, perhaps through the returning Crusaders, a knowledge of the magnet to the dwellers on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, and to the hardier mariners who pushed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, so that the new route to that same Indian Ocean was made possible in the fifteenth century. The way was prepared for it gradually. The Catalans from the port of Barcelona pushed out into the great Sea of Darkness under the direction of their needles, as early at least as the twelfth century. The pilots of Genoa and Venice, the hardy Majorcans and the adventurous Moors, were followers of almost equal temerity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [From the _United States Coast Survey Report_, 1880, No.

84.]]

[Sidenote: Variation of the needle.]

A knowledge of the variation of the needle came more slowly to be known to the mariners of the Mediterranean. It had been observed by Peregrini as early as 1269, but that knowledge of it which rendered it greatly serviceable in voyages does not seem to be plainly indicated in any of the charts of these transition centuries, till we find it laid down on the maps of Andrea Bianco in 1436.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [From Hirth's _Bilderbuch_, vol. iii.]]

It was no new thing then when Columbus, as he sailed westward, marked the variation, proceeding from the northeast more and more westerly; but it was a revelation when he came to a position where the magnetic north and the north star stood in conjunction, as they did on this 13th of September, 1492.