Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 38

Vasco da Gama was finally put in command of a fleet specially equipped.

It was now some years since his pilot, Pero de Alemquer, had carried Diaz well off the cape. On Sunday, July 8, 1497, Da Gama sailed from below Lisbon, and on November 22 he pa.s.sed with full sheets the formidable cape. It was not, however, till December 17 that he reached the point where Diaz had turned back. His further progress does not concern us here. Suffice it to say that he cast anchor at Calicut May 20, 1498, and India was reached ten days before Columbus started a third time to verify his own beliefs, but really to find them errors.

Towards the end of August, or perhaps early in September, of the next year (1499), Da Gama arrived at Lisbon on his return voyage, antic.i.p.ated, indeed, by one of his caravels, which, separated from the commander in April or May, had pushed ahead and reached home on the 10th of July. Portugal at once resounded with jubilation. The fleet had returned crippled with disabled crews, and half the vessels had disappeared; but the solution of a great problem had been reached.

The voyage of Da Gama, opening a trade eagerly pursued and eagerly met, offered, as we shall see, a great contrast to the small immediate results which came from the futile efforts of Columbus to find a western way to the same regions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTHERN PART OF AFRICA.

[From the Ptolemy of 1513.]]

[Sidenote: Supposed voyage of Vespucius.]

There have been students of these early explorers who have contended that, while Columbus was hara.s.sed in Spain with these delays in preparing for his third voyage, the Florentine Vespucius, whom we have encountered already as helping Berardi in the equipment of Columbus's fleets, had, in a voyage of which we have some confused chronology, already in 1497 discovered and coursed the northern sh.o.r.es of the mainland south of the Caribbean Sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLIEST REPRESENTATION OF SOUTH AMERICAN NATIVES, 1497-1504.

[From Stevens's reproduction in his _American Bibliographer_.]]

Bernaldez tells us that, during the interval between the second and third voyages of Columbus, the Admiral "accorded permission to other captains to make discoveries at the west, who went and discovered various islands." Whether we can connect this statement with any such voyage as is now to be considered is a matter of dispute.

[Sidenote: Who discovered South America?]

This question of the first discovery of the mainland of South America,--we shall see that North America's mainland had already been discovered,--whether by Columbus or Vespucius, is one which has long vexed the historian and still does perplex him, though the general consensus of opinion at the present day is in favor of Columbus, while pursuing the voyage through which we are soon to follow him. The question is much complicated by the uncertainties and confusion of the narratives which are our only guides. The discovery, if not claimed by Vespucius, has been vigorously claimed for him. Its particulars are also made a part of the doubt which has clouded the recitals concerning the voyage of Pinzon and Solis to the Honduras coast, which are usually placed later; but by Oviedo and Gomara this voyage is said to have preceded that of Columbus.

[Sidenote: Claimed for Vespucius.]

The claim for Vespucius is at the best but an enforced method of clarifying the published texts concerning the voyages, in the hopes of finding something like consistency in their dates. Any commentator who undertakes to get at the truth must necessarily give himself up to some sort of conjecture, not only as respects the varied inconsistencies of the narrative, but also as regards the manifold blunders of the printer of the little book which records the voyages. Munoz had it in mind, it is understood, to prove that Vespucius could not have been on the coast at the date of his alleged discovery; but in the opinions of some the doc.u.ments do not prove all that Munoz, Navarrete, and Humboldt have claimed, while the advocacy of Varnhagen in favor of Vespucius does not allow that writer to see what he apparently does not desire to see. The most, perhaps, that we can say is that the proof against the view of Varnhagen, who is in favor of such a voyage in 1497, is not wholly substantiated. The fact seems to be, so far as can be made out, that Vespucius pa.s.sed from one commander's employ to another's, at a date when Ojeda, in 1499, had not completed his voyage, and when Pinzon started. So supposing a return to Spain in order for Vespucius to restart with Pinzon, it is also supposable that the year 1499 itself may have seen him under two different leaders. If this is the correct view, it of course carries forward the date to a time later than the discovery of the mainland by Columbus. It is nothing but plausible conjecture, after all; but something of the nature of conjecture is necessary to dissipate the confusion. The belief of this sharing of service is the best working hypothesis yet devised upon the question.

If Vespucius was thus with Pinzon, and this latter navigator did, as Oviedo claims, precede Columbus to the mainland, there is no proof of it to prevent a marked difference of opinion among all the writers, in that some ignore the Florentine navigator entirely, and others confidently construct the story of his discovery, which has in turn taken root and been widely believed.

[Sidenote: Alleged voyage of 1497.]

A voyage of 1497 does not find mention in any of the contemporary Portuguese chroniclers. This absence of reference is serious evidence against it. It seems to be certain that within twenty years of their publication, there were doubts raised of the veracity of the narratives attributed to Vespucius, and Sebastian Cabot tells us in 1505 that he does not believe them in respect to this one voyage at any rate, and Las Casas is about as well convinced as Cabot was that the story was unfounded. Las Casas's papers pa.s.sed probably to Herrera, who, under the influence of them, it would seem, formulated a distinct allegation that Vespucius had falsified the dates, converting 1499 into 1497. To destroy all the claims a.s.sociated with Pinzon and Solis, Herrera carried their voyage forward to 1506. It was in 1601 that this historian made these points, and so far as he regulated the opinions of Europe for a century and a half, including those of England as derived through Robertson, Vespucius lived in the world's regard with a clouded reputation. The attempt of Bandini in the middle of the last century to lift the shadow was not very fortunate, but better success followed later, when Canovai delivered an address which then and afterwards, when it was reinforced by other publications of his, was something like a gage thrown to the old-time defamatory spirit. This denunciatory view was vigorously worked, with Navarrete's help, by Santarem in the _Coleccion_ of that Spanish scholar, whence Irving in turn got his opinions. Santarem professed to have made most extensive examinations of Portuguese and French ma.n.u.scripts without finding a trace of the Florentine.

Undaunted by all such negative testimony, the Portuguese Varnhagen, as early as 1839, began a series of publications aimed at rehabilitating the fame of Vespucius, against the views of all the later writers, Humboldt, Navarrete, Santarem, and the rest. Humboldt claimed to adduce evidence to show that Vespucius was all the while in Europe. Varnhagen finally brought himself to the belief that in this disputed voyage of 1497 Vespucius, acting under the orders of Vicente Yanez Pinzon and Juan Diaz de Solis, really reached the main at Honduras, whence he followed the curvatures of the coast northerly till he reached the capes of Chesapeake. Thence he steered easterly, pa.s.sed the Bermudas, and arrived at Seville. If this is so, he circ.u.mnavigated the archipelago of the Antilles, and disproved the continental connection of Cuba. Varnhagen even goes so far as to maintain that Vespucius had not been deceived into supposing the coast was that of Asia, but that he divined the truth. Varnhagen stands, however, alone in this estimate of the evidence.

Valentini, in our day, has even supposed that the incomplete Cuba of the Ruysch map of 1508 was really the Yucatan sh.o.r.e, which Vespucius had skirted.

The claim which some French zealots in maritime discovery have attempted to sustain, of Norman adventurers being on the Brazil coast in 1497-98, is hardly worth consideration.

[Sidenote: The English expedition under Cabot.]

We turn now to other problems. The Bull of Demarcation was far from being acceptable as an ultimate decision in England, and the spirit of her people towards it is well shown in the _Westerne Planting_ of Hakluyt. This chronicler mistrusts that its "certain secret causes"--which words he had found in the papal bull, probably by using an inaccurate version--were no other than "the feare and jelousie that King Henry of England, with whom Bartholomew Columbus had been to deal in this enterprise, and who even now was ready to send him into Spain to call his brother Christopher to England, should put a foot into this action;" and so the Pope, "fearing that either the King of Portugal might be reconciled to Columbus, or that he might be drawn into England, thought secretly by his unlawful division to defraud England and Portugal of that benefit." So England and Portugal had something like a common cause, and the record of how they worked that cause is told in the stories of Cabot first, and of Cortereal later. We will examine at this point the Cabot story only.

[Sidenote: Newfoundland fisheries.]

Bristol had long been the seat of the English commerce with Iceland, and one of the commodities received in return for English goods was the stockfish, which Cabot was to recognize on the Newfoundland banks. These stories of the codfish noticed by Cabot recalled in the mind of Galvano in 1555, and again more forcibly to Hakluyt a half century later, when Germany was now found to be not far from the lat.i.tude of Baccalaos, that there was a tale of some strange men, in the time of Frederick Barbarossa (A. D. 1153), being driven to Lubec in a canoe.

It is by no means beyond possibility that the Basque and other fishermen of Europe may have already strayed to these fis.h.i.+ng grounds of Newfoundland, at some period anterior to this voyage of Cabot, and even traces of their frequenting the coast in Bradore Bay have been pointed out, but without convincing as yet the careful student.

[Sidenote: John Cabot.]

A Venetian named Zuan Caboto, settling in England, and thenceforward calling himself John Cabot, being a man of experience in travel, and having seen at one time at Mecca the caravans returning from the east, was impressed, as Columbus had been, with a belief in the roundness of the earth. It is not unlikely that this belief had taken for him a compelling nature from the stories which had come to England of the successful voyage of the Spaniards. Indeed, Ramusio distinctly tells us that it was the bruit of Columbus's first voyage which gave to Cabot "a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing."

[Sidenote: 1496. March 5. Cabot's patent.]

[Sidenote: 1497. May. Cabot sails.]

When Cabot had received for himself and his three sons--one of whom was Sebastian Cabot--a patent (March 5, 1496) from Henry VII. to discover and trade with unknown countries beyond the seas, the envoy of Ferdinand and Isabella at the English court was promptly instructed to protest against any infringement of the rights of Spain in the western regions.

Whether this protest was accountable for the delay in sailing, or not, does not appear, for Cabot did not set sail from Bristol till May, 1497.

[Sidenote: Ruysch with Cabot.]

It is inferred from what Beneventa.n.u.s says in his _Ptolemy_ of 1508 that Ruysch, who gives us the earliest engraved map of Cabot's discoveries, was a companion of Cabot in this initial voyage. When that editor says that he learned from Ruysch of his experiences in sailing from the south of England to a point in 53 degrees of north lat.i.tude, and thence due west, it may be referred to such partic.i.p.ancy in this expedition from Bristol. We know from a conversation which is reported in Ramusio--unless there is some mistake in it--that Cabot apprehended the nature of what we call great circle sailing, and claimed that his course to the northwest would open India by a shorter route than the westerly run of Columbus.

[Sidenote: 1497. June 24. Cabot sees land.]

[Sidenote: Date of the voyage, 1494 or 1497?]

When Cabot had ventured westerly 700 leagues, he found land, June 24, 1497. There has been some confidence at different times, early and late, that the date of this first Cabot voyage was in reality three years before this. The belief arose from the date of 1494 being given in what seem to have been early copies of a map ascribed to Sebastian Cabot, whence the date 1494 was copied by Hakluyt in 1589, though eleven years later he changed it to 1497. It is sufficient to say that few of the critics of our day, except D'Avezac, hold to this date of 1494. Major supposes that the map of 1544, now in the Paris library and ascribed to Cabot, was a re-drawn draft from the lost Spanish original, in which the date in Roman letters, VII, may have been so carelessly made in joining the arms of the V that it was read IIII; and some such inference was apparently in the mind of Henry Stevens when he published his little tract on Sebastian Cabot in 1870.

The country which Cabot thus first saw was supposed by him to be a part of Asia, and to be occupied, though no inhabitants were seen.

[Sidenote: Cabot's landfall.]

Cabot was for over three hundred years considered as having made his landfall on the coast of Labrador, or at least we find no record that the legend of the map of 1544, placing it at Cape Breton, had impressed itself authoritatively upon the minds of Cabot's contemporaries and successors. Biddle and Humboldt, in the early part of the present century, accepted the Labrador landfall with little question. So it happened that when, in 1843, the Cabot mappemonde of 1544 was discovered, and it was found to place the landfall at the island of Cape Breton, a certain definiteness, where there had been so much vagueness, afforded the student some relief; but as the novelty of the sensation wore off, confidence was again lost, inasmuch as the various uncertainties of the doc.u.ment give much ground for the rejection of all parts of its testimony at variance with better vouched beliefs. It is quite possible that more satisfactory proofs can be adduced of another region for the landfall, but none such have yet been presented to scholars.

It is commonly held now that, sighting land at Cape Breton, Cabot coursed northerly, pa.s.sed the present Prince Edward Island, and then sailed out of the Strait of Belle Isle,--or at least this is as reasonable a route to make out of the scant record as any, though there is nothing like a commonly received opinion on his track. There is some ground for thinking that he could not have entered the Gulf of St.

Lawrence at all. He landed nowhere and saw no inhabitants. If he struck the mainland, it was probably the coasts of New Brunswick or Labrador bordering on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The two islands which he observed on his right may have been headlands of Newfoundland, seeming to be isolated.

[Sidenote: 1497. August. Cabot returns.]

He reached Bristol in August, having been absent about three months.

Raimondo de Soncino, under date of the 24th of that month, wrote to Italy of Cabot's return, and a fortnight earlier (August 10) we find record of a gratuity of ten pounds given to Cabot in recognition of this service. It proved to be an expedition which was to create a greater sensation of its kind than the English had before known. Bristol had nurtured for some years a race of hardy seamen. They had risked the dangers of the great unknown ocean in efforts to find the fabulous island of Brazil, and they had pushed adventurously westward at times, but always to return without success. The intercourse of England with the northern nations and with Iceland may have given them tidings of Greenland; but there is no reason to believe that they ever supposed that country to be other than an extended peninsula of Europe, enfolding the North Atlantic.

[Sidenote: Cabot in England.]

Cabot's telling of a new land, his supposing it the empire of the Great Khan, his tales of the wonderful fis.h.i.+ng ground thereabouts, where the water was so dense with fish that his vessels were impeded, and his expectation of finding the land of spices if he went southward from the region of his landfall, were all stories calculated to incite wonder and speculation. It was not strange, then, that England found she had her new sea-hero, as Spain had hers in Columbus; that the king gave him money and a pension; and that, conscious of a certain dignity, Cabot went about the city, drawing the attention of the curious by reason of the fine silks in which he arrayed himself.

[Sidenote: Spain jealous of England.]

Cabot had no sooner returned than Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish envoy in London, again entered a protest, and gave notice to the English king that the land which had been discovered belonged to his master. There is some evidence that Spain kept close watch on the country at the north through succeeding years, and even intended settlement.

[Sidenote: Cabot in Seville?]

This Spanish amba.s.sador wrote home from London, July 25, 1498, that after his first voyage, Cabot had been in Seville and Lisbon. This renders somewhat probable the suspicion that he may have had conferences with La Cosa and Columbus.