Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 51

Porras, possibly at a later day, seems to have been better informed, or at least he imparts more in his narrative than Columbus does. He says he saw in the people of these parts many of the traits of those of the pearl coast at Paria, and that the maps, which they possessed, showed that it was to this point that the explorations of Ojeda and Bastidas had been pushed.

[Sidenote: Columbus turns back.]

[Sidenote: 1502. December 5.]

[Sidenote: A gale.]

There were other things that might readily have made him turn back, as well as this despair of finding a strait. His crew were dissatisfied with leaving the gold of Veragua. His s.h.i.+ps were badly bored by the worms, and they had become, from this cause and by reason of the heavy weather which had so mercilessly followed them, more and more unseaworthy. So on December 5, 1502, when he pa.s.sed out of the little harbor of El Retrete, he began a backward course. Pretty soon the wind, which had all along faced him from the east, blew strongly from the west, checking him as much going backward as it had in his onward course. It seemed as if the elements were turned against him. The gale was making sport of him, as it veered in all directions. It was indeed a Coast of Contrasts (La Costa de los Contrastes), as Columbus called it.

The lightning streaked the skies continually. The thunder was appalling.

For nine days the little s.h.i.+ps, strained at every seam, leaking at every point where the tropical sea worm had pierced them, writhed in a struggle of death. At one time a gigantic waterspout formed within sight. The sea surged around its base. The clouds stooped to give it force. It came staggering and lunging towards the fragile barks. The crews exorcised the watery spirit by repeating the Gospel of St. John the Evangelist, and the crazy column pa.s.sed on the other side of them.

Added to their peril through it all were the horrors of an impending famine. Their biscuit were revolting because of the worms. They caught sharks for food.

[Sidenote: 1502. December 17.]

[Sidenote: Bethlehem River.]

[Sidenote: 1503. January 24.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew seeks the mines.]

At last, on December 17, the fleet reunited,--for they had, during the gales, lost sight of each other,--and entered a harbor, where they found the native cabins built in the tree tops, to be out of the way of griffins, or some other beasts. After further buffeting of the tempests, they finally made a harbor on the coast of Veragua, in a river which Columbus named Santa Maria de Belen (Bethlehem), it being Epiphany Day; and here at last they anch.o.r.ed two of the caravels on January 9, and the other two on the 10th (1503). Columbus had been nearly a month in pa.s.sing thirty leagues of coast. The Indians were at first quieted in the usual way, and some gold was obtained by barter. The Spaniards had not been here long, however, when they found themselves (January 24, 1503) in as much danger by the sudden swelling of the river as they had been at sea. It was evidently occasioned by continued falls of rain in distant mountains, which they could see. The caravels were knocked about like c.o.c.kboats. The Admiral's s.h.i.+p snapped a mast. "It rained without ceasing," says the Admiral, recording his miseries, "until the 14th of February;" and during the continuance of the storm the Adelantado was sent on a boat expedition to ascend the Veragua River, three miles along the coast, where he was to search for mines. The party proceeded on February 6 as far as they could in the boats, and then, leaving part of the men for a guard, and taking guides, which the Quibian--that being the name, as he says, which they gave to the lord of the country--had provided, they reached a country where the soil to their eyes seemed full of particles of gold. Columbus says that he afterwards learned that it was a device of the crafty Quibian to conduct them to the mines of a rival chief, while his own were richer and nearer, all of which, nevertheless, did not escape the keen Spanish scent for gold.

Bartholomew made other excursions along the coast; but nowhere did it seem to him that gold was as plenty as at Veragua.

[Sidenote: Mines of Aurea.]

Columbus now reverted to his old fancies. He remembered that Josephus has described the getting of gold for the Temple of Jerusalem from the Golden Chersonesus, and was not this the very spot? "Josephus thinks that this gold of the Chronicles and the Book of Kings was found in the Aurea," he says. "If it were so, I contend that these mines of the Aurea are identical with those of Veragua. David in his will left 3,000 quintals of Indian gold to Solomon, to a.s.sist in building the Temple, and according to Josephus it came from these lands." He had seen, as he says, more promise of gold here in two days than in Espanola in four years. It was very easy now to dwarf his Ophir at Hayna! Those other riches were left to those who had wronged him. The pearls of the Paria coast might be the game of the common adventurer. Here was the princely domain of the divinely led discoverer, who was rewarded at last!

[Sidenote: Columbus seeks to make a settlement.]

A plan was soon made of founding a settlement to hold the region and gain information, while Columbus returned to Spain for supplies. Eighty men were to stay. They began to build houses. They divided the stock of provisions and munitions, and transferred that intended for the colony to one of the caravels, which was to be left with them. Particular pains were taken to propitiate the natives by presents, and the Quibian was regaled with delicacies and gifts. When this was done, it was found that a dry season had come on, and there was not water enough on the bar to float the returning caravels.

[Sidenote: Diego Mendez's exploits.]

[Sidenote: The Quibian taken,]

[Sidenote: but escapes.]

Meanwhile the Quibian had formed a league to exterminate the intruders.

Columbus sent a brave fellow, Diego Mendez, to see what he could learn.

He found a force of savages advancing to the attack; but this single Spaniard disconcerted them, and they put off the plan. Again, with but a single companion, one Rodrigo de Escobar, Mendez boldly went into the Quibian's village, and came back alive to tell the Admiral of all the preparations for war which he had seen, or which were inferred at least.

The news excited the quick spirits of the Adelantado, and, following a plan of Mendez, he at once started (March 30) with an armed force. He came with such celerity to the cacique's village that the savages were not prepared for their intrusion, and by a rapid artifice he surrounded the lodge of the Quibian, and captured him with fifty of his followers.

The Adelantado sent him, bound hand and foot, and under escort, down the river, in charge of Juan Sanchez, who rather resented any intimation of the Adelantado to be careful of his prisoner. As the boat neared the mouth of the river, her commander yielded to the Quibian's importunities to loosen his bonds, when the chief, watching his opportunity, slipped overboard and dove to the bottom. The night was dark, and he was not seen when he came to the surface, and was not pursued. The other prisoners were delivered to the Admiral. The Adelantado meanwhile had sacked the cacique's cabin, and brought away its golden treasures.

[Sidenote: 1503. April 6.]

[Sidenote: The settlement attacked.]

Columbus, confident that the Quibian had been drowned, and that the chastis.e.m.e.nt which had been given his tribe was a wholesome lesson, began again to arrange for his departure. As the river had risen a little, he succeeded in getting his lightened caravels over the bar, and anch.o.r.ed them outside, where their lading was again put on board. To offer some last injunctions and to get water, Columbus, on April 6, sent a boat, in command of Diego Tristan, to the Adelantado, who was to be left in command. When the boat got in, Tristan found the settlement in great peril. The Quibian, who had reached the sh.o.r.e in safety after his adventure, had quickly organized an attacking party, and had fallen upon the settlement. The savages were fast getting their revenge, for the unequal contest had lasted nearly three hours, when the Adelantado and Mendez, rallying a small force, rushed so impetuously upon them that, with the aid of a fierce bloodhound, the native host was scattered in a trice. Only one Spaniard had been killed and eight wounded, including the Adelantado; but the rout of the Indians was complete.

[Sidenote: Tristan murdered.]

It was while these scenes were going on that Tristan arrived in his boat opposite the settlement. He dallied till the affair was ended, and then proceeded up the river to get some water. Those on sh.o.r.e warned him of the danger of ambuscade; but he persisted. When he had got well beyond the support of the settlement, his boat was beset with a shower of javelins from the overhanging banks on both sides, while a cloud of canoes attacked him front and rear. But a single Spaniard escaped by diving, and brought the tale of disaster to his countrymen.

The condition of the settlement was now alarming. The Indians, encouraged by their success in overcoming the boat, once more gathered to attack the little group of "encroaching Spaniards," as Columbus could but call them. The houses which sheltered them were so near the thick forest that the savages approached them on all sides under shelter. The woods rang with their yells and with the blasts of their conch-sh.e.l.ls.

The Spaniards got, in their panic, beyond the control of the Adelantado.

They prepared to take the caravel and leave the river; but it was found she would not float over the bar. They then sought to send a boat to the Admiral, lying outside, to prevent his sailing without them; but the current and tide commingling made such a commotion on the bar that no boat could live in the sea. The bodies of Tristan and his men came floating down stream, with carrion crows perched upon them at their ghastly feast. It seemed as if nature visited them with premonitions. At last the Adelantado brought a sufficient number of men into such a steady mood that they finally constructed out of whatever they could get some sort of a breastwork near the sh.o.r.e, where the ground was open.

Here they could use their matchlocks and have a clear sweep about them.

They placed behind this bulwark two small falconets, and prepared to defend themselves. They were in this condition for four days. Their provisions, however, began to run short, and every Spaniard who dared to forage was sure to be cut off. Their ammunition, too, was not abundant.

[Sidenote: Columbus at anchor outside the bar.]

Meanwhile Columbus was in a similar state of anxiety. "The Admiral was suffering from a severe fever," he says, "and worn with fatigue." His s.h.i.+ps were lying at anchor outside the bar, with the risk of being obliged to put to sea at any moment, to work off a lee sh.o.r.e. Tristan's prolonged absence hara.s.sed him. Another incident was not less ominous.

The companions of the Quibian were confined on board in the forecastle; and it was the intention to take them to Spain as hostages, as it was felt they would be, for the colony left behind. Those in charge of them had become careless about securing the hatchway, and one night they failed to chain it, trusting probably to the watchfulness of certain sailors who slept upon the hatch. The savages, finding a footing upon some ballast which they piled up beneath, suddenly threw off the cover, casting the sleeping sailors violently aside, and before the guard could be called the greater part of the prisoners had jumped into the sea and escaped. Such as were secured were thrust back, but the next morning it was found that they all had strangled themselves.

[Sidenote: Ledesma's exploit.]

After such manifestations of ferocious determination, Columbus began to be further alarmed for the safety of his brother's companions and of Tristan's. For days a tossing surf had made an impa.s.sable barrier between him and the sh.o.r.e. He had but one boat, and he did not dare to risk it in an attempt to land. Finally, his Sevillian pilot, Pedro Ledesma, offered to brave the dangers by swimming, if the boat would take him close to the surf. The trial was made; the man committed himself to the surf, and by his strength and skill so surmounted wave after wave that he at length reached stiller water, and was seen to mount the sh.o.r.e. In due time he was again seen on the beach, and plunging in once more, was equally successful in pa.s.sing the raging waters, and was picked up by the boat. He had a sad tale to tell the Admiral. It was a story of insubordination, a powerless Adelantado, and a frantic eagerness to escape somehow. Ledesma said that the men were preparing canoes to come off to the s.h.i.+ps, since their caravel was unable to pa.s.s the bar.

[Sidenote: Resolve to abandon the region.]

There was long consideration in these hours of disheartenment; but the end of it was a decision to rescue the colony and abandon the coast. The winds never ceased to be high, and Columbus's s.h.i.+ps, in their weakened condition, were only kept afloat by care and vigilance. The loss of the boat's crew threw greater burdens and strains upon those who were left.

It was impossible while the surf lasted to send in his only boat, and quite as impossible for the fragile canoes of his colony to brave the dangers of the bar in coming out. There was nothing for Columbus to do but to hold to his anchor as long as he could, and wait.

[Sidenote: Columbus in delirium hears a voice.]

Our pity for the man is sometimes likely to unfit us to judge his own record. Let us try to believe what he says of himself, and watch him in his delirium. "Groaning with exhaustion," he says, "I fell asleep in the highest part of the s.h.i.+p, and heard a compa.s.sionate voice address me."

It bade him be of good cheer, and take courage in the service of G.o.d!

What the G.o.d of all had done for Moses and David would be done for him!

As we read the long report of this divine utterance, as Columbus is careful to record it, we learn that the Creator was aware of his servant's name resounding marvelously throughout the earth. We find, however, that the divine belief curiously reflected the confidence of Columbus that it was India, and not America, that had been revealed.

"Remember David," said the Voice, "how he was a shepherd, and was made a king. Remember Abraham, how he was a hundred when he begat Isaac, and that there is youth still for the aged." Columbus adds that when the Voice chided him he wept for his errors, and that he heard it all as in a trance.

The obvious interpretation of all this is either that by the record Columbus intended a fable to impress the sovereigns, for whom he was writing, or that he was so moved to hallucinations that he believed what he wrote. The hero wors.h.i.+p of Irving decides the question easily. "Such an idea," says Irving, referring to the argument of deceit, and forgetting the Admiral's partiality for such practices, "is inconsistent with the character of Columbus. In recalling a dream, one is unconsciously apt to give it a little coherency." Irving's plea is that it was a mere dream, which was mistaken by Columbus, in his feverish excitement, for a revelation. "The artless manner," adds that biographer, "in which he mingles the rhapsodies and dreams of his imagination with simple facts and sound practical observations, pouring them forth with a kind of Scriptural solemnity and poetry of language, is one of the most striking ill.u.s.trations of a character richly compounded of extraordinary and apparently contradictory elements." We may perhaps ask, Was Irving's hero a deceiver, or was he mad? The chances seem to be that the whole vision was simply the product of one of those fits of aberration which in these later years were no strangers to Columbus's existence. His mind was not infrequently, amid disappointments and distractions, in no fit condition to ward off hallucination.

Humboldt speaks of Columbus's letter describing this vision as showing the disordered mind of a proud soul weighed down with dead hopes. He has no fear that the strange mixture of force and weakness, of pride and touching humility, which accompanies these secret contortions will ever impress the world with other feelings than those of commiseration.

It is a hard thing for any one, seeking to do justice to the agonies of such spirits, to measure them in the calmness of better days. "Let those who are accustomed to slander and aspersion ask, while they sit in security at home, Why dost thou not do so and so under such circ.u.mstances?" says Columbus himself. It is far easier to let one's self loose into the vortex and be tossed with sympathy. But if four centuries have done anything for us, they ought to have cleared the air of its mirages. What is pitiable may not be n.o.ble.

[Sidenote: The colony embark.]

The Voice was, of course, a.s.sociated in Columbus's mind with the good weather which followed. During this a raft was made of two canoes lashed together beneath a platform, and, using this for ferrying, all the stores were floated off safely to the s.h.i.+ps, so that in the end nothing was left behind but the decaying and stranded caravel. This labor was done under the direction of Diego Mendez, whom the Admiral rewarded by kissing him on the cheek, and by giving him command of Tristan's caravel, which was the Admiral's flags.h.i.+p.

[Sidenote: 1503. April, Columbus sails away.]

It is a strange commentary on the career and fame of Columbus that the name of this disastrous coast should represent him to this day in the t.i.tle of his descendant, the Duke of Veragua. Never a man turned the prow of his s.h.i.+p from scenes which he would sooner forget, with more sorrow and relief, than Columbus, in the latter days of April, 1503, with his enfeebled crews and his crazy hulks, stood away, as he thought, for Espanola. And yet three months later, and almost in the same breath with which he had rehea.r.s.ed these miseries, with that obliviousness which so often caught his errant mind, he wrote to his sovereigns that "there is not in the world a country, whose inhabitants are more timid; added to which there is a good harbor, a beautiful river, and the whole place is capable of being easily put into a state of defense. Your people that may come here, if they should wish to become masters of the products of other lands, will have to take them by force, or retire empty-handed. In this country they will simply have to trust their persons in the hands of a savage." The man was mad.

It was easterly that Columbus steered when his s.h.i.+ps swung round to their destined course. It was not without fear and even indignation that his crews saw what they thought a purpose to sail directly for Spain in the sorry plight of the s.h.i.+ps. Mendez, indeed, who commanded the Admiral's own s.h.i.+p, says "they thought to reach Spain." The Admiral, however, seems to have had two purposes. He intended to run eastward far enough to allow for the currents, when he should finally head for Santo Domingo. He intended also to disguise as much as he could the route back, for fear that others would avail themselves of his crew's knowledge to rediscover these golden coasts. He remembered how the companions of his Paria voyage had led other expeditions to that region of pearls. He is said also to have taken from his crew all their memoranda of the voyage, so that there would be no such aid available to guide others. "None of them can explain whither I went, nor whence I came," he says. "They do not know the way to return thither."