Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 50

It will be recollected that the royal orders issued to him before leaving Spain were so far at variance with Columbus's wishes that he was denied the satisfaction of touching at Espanola. There can be little question as to the wisdom of an injunction which the Admiral now determined to disregard. His excuse was that his princ.i.p.al caravel was a poor sailer, and he thought he could commit no mistake in insuring greater success for his voyage by exchanging at that port this vessel for a better one. He forgot his own treatment of Ojeda when he drove that adventurer from the island, where, to provision a vessel whose crew was starving, Ojeda dared to trench on his government. When we view this pretense for thrusting himself upon an unwilling community in the light of his unusually quick and prosperous voyage and his failure to make any mention of his vessel's defects when he wrote from the Canaries, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that his determination to call at Espanola was suddenly taken. His whole conduct in the matter looks like an obstinate purpose to carry his own point against the royal commands, just as he had tried to carry it against the injunctions respecting the making of slaves. We must remember this when we come to consider the later neglect on the part of the King. We must remember, also, the considerate language with which the sovereigns had conveyed this injunction: "It is not fit that you should lose so much time; it is much fitter that you should go another way; though if it appears necessary, and G.o.d is willing, you may stay there a little while on your return."

Roselly de Lorgues, with his customary disingenuousness, merely says that Columbus came to Santo Domingo, to deliver letters with which he was charged, and to exchange one of his caravels.

[Sidenote: 1502. June 29. Columbus arrives off Santo Domingo.]

[Sidenote: Columbus forbidden to enter the harbor.]

It was the 29th of June when the little fleet of Columbus arrived off the port. He sent in one of his commanders to ask permission to shelter his s.h.i.+ps, and the privilege of negotiating for another caravel, since, as he says, "one of his s.h.i.+ps had become unseaworthy and could no longer carry sail." His request came to Ovando, who was now in command. This governor had left Spain in February, only a month before Columbus received his final instructions, and there can be little doubt that he had learned from Fonseca that those instructions would enjoin Columbus not to complicate in any way Ovando's a.s.sumption of command by approaching his capital. Las Casas seems to imply this. However it may be, Ovando was amply qualified by his own instructions to do what he thought the circ.u.mstances required. Columbus represented that a storm was coming on, or rather the _Historie_ tells us that he did. It is to be remarked that Columbus himself makes no such statement. At all events, word was sent back to Columbus by his boat that he could not enter the harbor. Irving calls this an "ungracious refusal," and it turned out that later events have opportunely afforded the apologists for the Admiral the occasion to point a moral to his advantage, particularly since Columbus, if we may believe the doubtful story, confident of his prognostications, had again sent word that the fleet lying in the harbor, ready to sail, would go out at great peril in view of an impending storm. It seems to be quite uncertain if at the time his crew had any knowledge of his reasons for nearing Espanola, or of his being denied admittance to the port. At least Porras, from the way he describes the events, leaves one to make such an inference.

[Sidenote: Ovando's fleet.]

[Sidenote: Bobadilla, Roldan, and others on the fleet.]

[Sidenote: Columbus's factor had placed his gold on one of the s.h.i.+ps.]

This fleet in the harbor was that which had brought Ovando, and was now laden for the return. There was on board of it, as Columbus might have learned from his messengers, the man of all men whom he most hated, Bobadilla, who had gracefully yielded the power to Ovando two months before, and of whom Las Casas, who was then fresh in his inquisitive seeking after knowledge respecting the Indies and on the spot, could not find that any one spoke ill. On the same s.h.i.+p was Columbus's old rebellious and tergiversating companion, Roldan, whose conduct had been in these two months examined, and who was now to be sent to Spain for further investigations. There was also embarked, but in chains, the unfortunate cacique of the Vega, Guarionex, to be made a show of in Seville. The lading of the s.h.i.+ps was the most wonderful for wealth that had ever been sent from the island. There was the gold which Bobadilla had collected, including a remarkable nugget which an Indian woman had picked up in a brook, and a large quant.i.ty which Roldan and his friends were taking on their own account, as the profit of their separate enterprises. Carvajal, whom Columbus had sent out with Ovando as his factor, to look after his pecuniary interests under the provisions which the royal commands had made, had also placed in one of the caravels four thousand pieces of the same precious metal, the result of the settlement of Ovando with Bobadilla, and the accretions of the Admiral's share of the Crown's profits.

[Sidenote: Ovando's fleet puts to sea and is wrecked;]

Undismayed by the warnings of Columbus, this fleet at once put to sea, the Admiral's little caravels having meanwhile crept under the sh.o.r.e at a distance to find such shelter as they could. The larger fleet stood homeward, and was scarcely off the easterly end of Espanola when a furious hurricane burst upon it. The s.h.i.+p which carried Bobadilla, Roldan, and Guarionex succ.u.mbed and went down.

[Sidenote: but s.h.i.+p with Columbus's gold is saved.]

Others foundered later. Some of the vessels managed to return to Santo Domingo in a shattered condition. A single caravel, it is usually stated, survived the shock, so that it alone could proceed on the voyage; and if the testimony is to be believed, this was the weakest of them all, but she carried the gold of Columbus. Among the caravels which put back to Santo Domingo for repairs was one on which Bastidas was going to Spain for trial. This one arrived at Cadiz in September, 1502.

[Sidenote: Columbus's s.h.i.+ps weather the gale.]

The s.h.i.+ps of Columbus had weathered the gale. That of the Admiral, by keeping close in to land, had fared best. The others, seeking sea-room, had suffered more. They lost sight of each other, however, during the height of the gale; but when it was over, they met together at Port Hermoso, at the westerly end of the island. The gale is a picture over which the glow of a retributive justice, under the favoring dispensation of chance, is so easily thrown by sympathetic writers that the effusions of the sentimentalists have got to stand at last for historic verity. De Lorgues does not lose the opportunity to make the most of it.

[Sidenote: 1502. July 14. Columbus sails away.]

[Sidenote: July 30. At Guanaja.]

[Sidenote: Meets a strange canoe.]

Columbus, having lingered about the island to repair his s.h.i.+ps and refresh his crews, and also to avoid a second storm, did not finally get away till July 14, when he steered directly for Terra Firma. The currents perplexed him, and, as there was little wind, he was swept west further than he expected. He first touched at some islands near Jamaica.

Thence he proceeded west a quarter southwest, for four days, without seeing land, as Porras tells us, when, bewildered, he turned to the northwest, and then north. But finding himself (July 24) in the archipelago near Cuba, which on his second voyage he had called The Gardens, he soon after getting a fair wind (July 27) stood southwest, and on July 30 made a small island, off the northern coast of Honduras, called Guanaja by the natives, and Isla de Pinos by himself. He was now in sight of the mountains of the mainland. The natives struck him as of a physical type different from all others whom he had seen. A large canoe, eight feet beam, and of great length, though made of a single log, approached with still stranger people in it.

[Sidenote: On the Honduras coast.]

They had apparently come from a region further north; and under a canopy in the waist of the canoe sat a cacique with his dependents. The boat was propelled by five and twenty men with paddles. It carried various articles to convince Columbus that he had found a people more advanced in arts than those of the regions earlier discovered. They had with them copper implements, including hatchets, bells, and the like. He saw something like a crucible in which metal had been melted. Their wooden swords were jagged with sharp flints, their clothes were carefully made, their utensils were polished and handy. Columbus traded off some trinkets for such specimens as he wanted. If he now had gone in the direction from which this marvelous canoe had come, he might have thus early opened the wondrous world of Yucatan and Mexico, and closed his career with more marvels yet. His beatific visions, which he supposed were leading him under the will of the Deity, led him, however, south.

The delusive strait was there. He found an old man among the Indians, whom he kept as a guide, since the savage could draw a sort of chart of the coast. He dismissed the rest with presents, after he had wrested from them what he wanted. Approaching the mainland, near the present Cape of Honduras, the Adelantado landed on Sunday, August 14, and ma.s.s was celebrated in a grove near the beach. Again, on the 17th, Bartholomew landed some distance eastward of the first spot, and here, by a river (Rio de la Posesion, now Rio Tinto), he planted the Castilian banner and formally took possession of the country. The Indians were friendly, and there was an interchange of provisions and trinkets. The natives were tattooed, and they had other customs, such as the wearing of cotton jackets, and the distending of their ears by rings, which were new to the Spaniards.

[Sidenote: Seeking a strait.]

[Sidenote: Columbus oppressed with the gout.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BELLIN'S HONDURAS.]

Tracking the coast still eastward, Columbus struggled against the current, apparently without reasoning that he might be thus sailing away from the strait, so engrossed was he with the thought that such a channel must be looked for farther south. His visions had not helped him to comprehend the sweep of waters that would disprove his mock oaths of the Cuban coast. So he wore s.h.i.+p constantly against the tempest and current, and crawled with bewildered expectation along the sh.o.r.e. All this tacking tore his sails, racked his caravels, and wore out his seamen. The men were in despair, and confessed one another. Some made vows of penance, if their lives were preserved. Columbus was himself wrenched with the gout, and from a sort of pavilion, which covered his couch on the quarter deck, he kept a good eye on all they encountered.

"The distress of my son," he says, "grieved me to the soul, and the more when I considered his tender age; for he was but thirteen years old, and he enduring so much toil for so long a time." "My brother," he adds further, "was in the s.h.i.+p that was in the worst condition and the most exposed to danger; and my grief on this account was the greater that I brought him with me against his will."

[Sidenote: 1502. September. Cape Gracios a Dios.]

[Sidenote: Loses a boat's crew.]

[Sidenote: 1502. September 25. The Garden.]

It was no easy work to make the seventy leagues from Cape Honduras to Cape Gracios a Dios, and the bestowal of this name denoted his thankfulness to G.o.d, when, after forty days of this strenuous endeavor, his caravels were at last able to round the cape, on September 12 (or 14). A seaboard stretching away to the south lay open before him,--now known as the Mosquito Coast. The current which sets west so persistently here splits and sends a branch down this coast. So with a "fair wind and tide," as he says, they followed its varied scenery of crag and lowland for more than sixty leagues, till they discovered a great flow of water coming out of a river. It seemed to offer an opportunity to replenish their casks and get some store of wood. On the 16th of September, they anch.o.r.ed, and sent their boats to explore. A meeting of the tide and the river's flow raised later a tumultuous sea at the bar, just as the boats were coming out. The men were unable to surmount the difficulty, and one of the boats was lost, with all on board. Columbus recorded their misfortune in the name which he gave to the river, El Rio del Desastre.

Still coasting onward, on September 25 they came to an alluring roadstead between an island and the main, where there was everything to enchant that verdure and fragrance could produce. He named the spot The Garden (La Huerta). Here, at anchor, they had enough to occupy them for a day or two in restoring the damage of the tempest, and in drying their stores, which had been drenched by the unceasing downpour of the clouds.

The natives watched them from the sh.o.r.e, and made a show of their weapons. The Spaniards remaining inactive, the savages grew more confident of the pacific intent of their visitors, and soon began swimming off to the caravels. Columbus tried the effect of largesses, refusing to barter, and made gifts of the Spanish baubles. Such gratuities, however, created distrust, and every trinket was returned.

[Sidenote: Character of the natives.]

Two young girls had been sent on board as hostages, while the Spaniards were on sh.o.r.e getting water; but even they were stripped of their Spanish finery when restored to their friends, and every bit of it was returned to the givers. There seem to be discordant statements by Columbus and in the _Historie_ respecting these young women, and Columbus gives them a worse character than his chronicler. When the Adelantado went ash.o.r.e with a notary, and this official displayed his paper and inkhorn, it seemed to strike the wondering natives as a spell.

They fled, and returned with something like a censer, from which they scattered the smoke as if to disperse all baleful spirits.

These unaccustomed traits of the natives worked on the superst.i.tions of the Spaniards. They began to fancy they had got within an atmosphere of sorceries, and Columbus, thinking of the two Indian maiden hostages, was certain there was a spell of witchcraft about them, and he never quite freed his mind of this necromantic ghost.

The old Indian whom Columbus had taken for a guide when first he touched the coast, having been set ash.o.r.e at Cape Gracios a Dios, enriched with presents, Columbus now seized seven of this new tribe, and selecting two of the most intelligent as other guides, he let the rest go. The seizure was greatly resented by the tribe, and they sent emissaries to negotiate for the release of the captives, but to no effect.

[Sidenote: 1502. October. Cariari.]

[Sidenote: Gold sought at Veragua.]

Departing on October 5 from the region which the natives called Cariari, and where the fame of Columbus is still preserved in the Bahia del Almirante, the explorers soon found the coast trending once more towards the east. They were tracking what is now known as the sh.o.r.e of Costa Rica. They soon entered the large and island-studded Caribaro Bay. Here the Spaniards were delighted to find the natives wearing plates of gold as ornaments. They tried to traffic for them, but the Indians were loath to part with their treasures. The natives intimated that there was much more of this metal farther on at a place called Veragua. So the s.h.i.+ps sailed on, October 17, and reached that coast. The Spaniards came to a river; but the natives sent defiance to them in the blasts of their conch-sh.e.l.ls, while they shook at them their lances. Entering the tide, they splashed the water towards their enemies, in token of contempt.

Columbus's Indian guides soon pacified them, and a round of barter followed, by which seventeen of their gold disks were secured for three hawks' bells. The intercourse ended, however, in a little hostile bout, during which the Spanish crossbows and lombards soon brought the savages to obedience.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BELLINI'S VERAGUA.]

[Sidenote: Ciguare.]

[Sidenote: At the isthmus.]

Still the caravels went on. The same scene of startled natives, in defiant att.i.tude, soon soothed by the trinkets was repeated everywhere.

In one place the Spaniards found what they had never seen before, a wall laid of stone and lime, and Columbus began to think of the civilized East again. Coast peoples are always barbarous, as he says; but it is the inland people who are rich. As he pa.s.sed along this coast of Veragua, as the name has got to be written, though his notary at the time caught the Indian p.r.o.nunciation as Cobraba, his interpreters pointed out its villages, and the chief one of all; and when they had pa.s.sed on a little farther they told him he was sailing beyond the gold country. Columbus was not sure but they were trying to induce him to open communication again with the sh.o.r.e, to offer chances for their escape. The seeker of the strait could not stop for gold. His vision led him on to that marvelous land of Ciguare, of which these successive native tribes told him, situated ten days inland, and where the people reveled in gold, sailed in s.h.i.+ps, and conducted commerce in spices and other precious commodities. The women there were decked, so they said, with corals and pearls. "I should be content," he says, "if a t.i.the of this which I hear is true." He even fancied, from all he could understand of their signs and language, that these Ciguare people were as terrible in war as the Spaniards, and rode on beasts. "They also say that the sea surrounds Ciguare, and that ten days' journey from thence is the river Ganges." Humboldt seems to think that in all this Columbus got a conception of that great western ocean which was lying so much nearer to him than he supposed. It may be doubted if it was quite so clear to Columbus as Humboldt thinks; but there is good reason to believe that Columbus imagined this wonderful region of Ciguare was half-way to the Ganges. If, as his canonizers fondly suppose, he had not mistaken in his visions an isthmus for a strait, he might have been prompted to cross the slender barrier which now separated him from his goal.

[Sidenote: 1502. November 2.]

[Sidenote: Porto Bello.]

[Sidenote: Nombre de Dios.]

On the 2d of November, the s.h.i.+ps again anch.o.r.ed in a s.p.a.cious harbor, so beautiful in its groves and fruits, and with such deep water close to the sh.o.r.e, that Columbus gave it the name of Puerto Bello (Porto Bello),--an appellation which has never left it. It rained for seven days while they lay here, doing nothing but trading a little with the natives for provisions. The Indians offered no gold, and hardly any was seen. Starting once more, the Spaniards came in sight of the cape known since as Nombre de Dios, but they were thwarted for a while in their attempts to pa.s.s it. They soon found a harbor, where they stayed till November 23; then going on again, they secured anchorage in a basin so small that the caravels were placed almost beside the sh.o.r.e. Columbus was kept here by the weather for nine days. The basking alligators reminded him of the crocodiles of the Nile. The natives were uncommonly gentle and gracious, and provisions were plenty. The ease with which the seamen could steal ash.o.r.e at night began to be demoralizing, leading to indignities at the native houses. The savage temper was at last aroused, and the Spanish revelries were brought to an end by an attack on the s.h.i.+ps. It ceased, as usual, after a few discharges of the s.h.i.+ps' guns.

[Sidenote: Bastidas's exploration of this coast.]

Columbus had not yet found any deflection of that current which sweeps in this region towards the Gulf of Mexico. He had struggled against its powerful flow in every stage of his progress along the coast. Whether this had brought him to believe that his vision of a strait was delusive does not appear. Whether he really knew that he had actually joined his own explorations, going east, to those which Bastidas had made from the west is equally unknown, though it is possible he may have got an intimation of celestial and winged monsters from the natives. If he comprehended it, he saw that there could be no strait, this way at least. Bastidas, as we have seen, was on board Bobadilla's fleet when Columbus lay off Santo Domingo. There is a chance that Columbus's messenger who went ash.o.r.e may have seen him and his charts, and may have communicated some notes of the maps to the Admiral. Some of the companions of Bastidas on his voyage had reached Spain before Columbus sailed, and there may have been some knowledge imparted in that way. If Columbus knew the truth, he did not disclose it.