Christopher Columbus Part 4

At last the solemn hour has come to those quaking Palos souls. It is early dawn of August 3, and a Friday at that! The _Santa Maria_ and the _Pinta_ and the _Nina_ are moored out in the copper- colored river, ready to go with the tide. Last night the last sack of flour and the last barrel of wine came aboard; likewise, the last straggler of the crew, for they must be ready for the early tide. It is still quite dark, and on the sh.o.r.e all Palos appears to be running about with lanterns. Friar Juan is there to wring the hands of the one-time wanderer who came to his gate, and to a.s.sure him that one of the Rabida monks will conduct Columbus's little son Diego safely to Cordova.

Columbus is rowed out to the largest ship. He gives the command and those ash.o.r.e hear the pulling up of anchors, the hoisting of sails, and the cutting of moorings. Then the flags are raised--the Admiral's with a great cross in the center--and down the murky Tinto go the three little caravels with their unwilling, frightened, human freight. Those on sh.o.r.e turn tearfully into church to pray; and those aboard watch the dim outline of Palos fade away; by and by they notice that the reddish Tinto has become the blue ocean sparkling in the early sunshine; but no sparkle enters their timid souls. They can only keep looking longingly backward till the last tawny rocks of Spain and Portugal are left behind, and then there is nothing to do but sigh and mutter a dismal prayer. But Christopher's prayer is one of thankfulness.

CHAPTER IX

"LAND! LAND!"

On the fourth day out from Palos the _Pinta's_ rudder became loose, and unless the damage could be speedily repaired the ship would soon be a prey to current and wind. The _Pinta_ was the vessel whose owners repented having sold her. No wonder then that Columbus suspected the rascals of having bribed the crew to tamper with the rudder, in the hope of forcing their ship to put back into Palos. But he would not put back, he declared. Martin Pinzon was commanding the _Pinta_, and Martin knew what to do with perverse rudders and perverse men. He immediately set to work to have the damage repaired. The ship's carpenter must have done his work very badly, however, for the following day the rudder was again disabled. Still Columbus would not turn back and risk the chance of all his crew deserting him. Instead, he continued sailing southwest to the Canaries--the point from which the shipwrecked pilot was supposed to have started on his unexpected trip across the Atlantic. These beautiful islands, from which the imposing peak of Teneriffe rises, had been known to the ancients as "The Fortunate Isles"; Spain now owned them and had colonized them, and after the great discovery they became a regular stopping-place for western-bound vessels.

When Columbus came to repair the rudder, he found the entire ship to be in even worse order than he had supposed. She was full of leaks, and her poor sails were not of the right shape to respond to heavy ocean breezes. He would have given her up altogether could he have found another boat to take her place; but the spa.r.s.ely settled Canaries of 1492 were not the much-visited winter resort that they are to-day; no big ships were then in the harbors; and so there was nothing to do but patch up the _Pinta_ and change the shape of her sails.

While this was being done, Columbus's waiting crew became acquainted with the Spanish colonists, and with very good results; for these islanders had a curious delusion to the effect that every year, at a certain season, they _saw_ land far off to the west. Men were very credulous in those days. It is probable that their "land" was nothing more than clouds which, owing to certain winds of that particular region, lie low on the horizon for a long time; but the people of the Canaries, and of the Madeiras too, all firmly believed they saw Antilla and the other "western lands" of legend; and Columbus, nodding his head wisely, told how the king of Portugal had shown him some reeds, as large as those of India, that had been washed up on the western sh.o.r.e of the Azores. "We shall find land seven hundred and fifty leagues from here,"

he repeated over and over, for that was the distance the pilot said he had gone. So sure was Columbus that, on leaving the islands, he handed each pilot sealed instructions to cease navigating during the night after they had gone seven hundred leagues.

The tales and delusions that flourished in the Canaries put heart into the crew, so when the little squadron again set forth on September 6 the men were less hostile to the expedition.

Some excitement was given to this fresh start by a rumor, brought from one of the islands, that Portuguese ships were seeking the Spanish fleet, in order to punish Columbus for having sailed in the service of Spain instead of Portugal. As the pursuers never were seen by the Spanish ships, that story, too, may have been some islander's delusion; but it made the crew believe that Columbus's undertaking must look promising to the great navigating Portuguese nation, or they would not be jealous of Spain's enterprise.

More than a month had now pa.s.sed since Columbus had left Palos, and only a hundred miles out from the African coast were accomplished! Was ever a man subjected to more delays than our patient discoverer! And now, when at last he was ready to start due west, a strong head sea prevailed for two days and would not let them push forward. So that it was actually not until September 8 that the voyage toward the "western lands" may be said to have begun.

We have mentioned that Columbus kept a diary on this voyage. He was, in fact, a prodigious writer, having left behind him when he died a vast quant.i.ty of memoirs, letters, and even good verse; and besides these, maps and charts in great numbers. No matter how trying the day had been, with fractious crews and boisterous ocean, no matter how little sleep the anxious commander had had the night before, no matter how much the ill-smelling swinging lamp in his cabin rocked about, he never failed to write in his journal.

This precious ma.n.u.script was long in the possession of Columbus's friend Bartolome de las Casas, who borrowed it because he was writing a history of Columbus and wished to get all the information, possible in the navigator's own words.

Las Casas was a monk who spent his life in befriending the Indians. When quite old, he ceased journeying to the New World and stayed at home writing history. He copied a great deal of Columbus's diary word for word, and what he did not actually copy he put into other words. In this way, although the original log of the _Santa Maria_ no longer exists, its contents have been saved for us, and we know the daily happenings on that first trip across the Atlantic.

Nearly every day some little phenomenon was observed which kept up the spirits of the crew. On September 13 one of them saw a bright-colored bird, and the sight encouraged everybody; for instead of thinking that it had flown unusually far out from its African home, they thought it belonged to the new land they were soon to see. Three days later they saw large patches of seaweed and judged they would soon see at least a tiny island. On the 18th the mended _Pinta_, which had run ahead of the other two boats, reported that a large flock of birds had flown past; next day two pelicans hovered around, and all the sailors declared that a pelican never flew more than sixty or seventy miles from home. On September 21 a whale was seen--"an indication of land," wrote the commander, "as whales always keep near the coast." The next day there was a strong head wind, and though it kept them back from the promised land, Columbus was glad it blew. "This head wind was very necessary for me," he wrote, "because the crew dreaded that they might never meet in these seas with a fair wind to drive them back to Spain."

Soon they were pa.s.sing through the Sarga.s.so Sea (named from the Portuguese word meaning "floating seaweed"). Its thick ma.s.ses of drifting vegetation rea.s.sured them, for the silly legend that it could surround and embed a ship had not then found believers. Many years after it was discovered that several undercurrents met there and died down, leaving all their seaweed to linger on the calm, currentless surface.

But back in 1492 the thicker the seaweed, the surer were those sailors that it indicated land.

Birds and seaweed, seaweed and birds, for over two weeks. Then on September 25 the monotony was broken. Captain Martin Pinzon called out from the _Pinta_ that he saw land. Columbus says that when he heard this shout, he fell on his knees and thanked G.o.d. Scanning the horizon, he too thought he saw land; all of the next day they sailed with every eye fixed on a far-off line of mountains which never appeared any nearer. At last the supposed mountains literally rose and rolled away!

It was nothing but low-lying clouds, such as those the Canary Islanders had mistaken for _terra firma_.

Christopher's heart must have sunk, for they had come over seven hundred leagues, and for two days he had supposed he was gazing on the island of his search.

In spite of this disappointment they kept on, for a plant floated by that had roots which had grown in the earth; also a piece of wood that had been rudely carved by man; and the number of birds kept increasing.

One can readily see how even the most skeptical man on the expedition should have felt sure by this time that the man whom he used to consider a mild maniac was in truth a very wise person. And perhaps the crew did feel it; but also they felt angry at those signs that mocked them day after day by never coming true. They grumbled; and the more the signs increased the more they grumbled; till finally one morning Columbus came on deck and found that his own helmsman had turned the _Santa Maria_ eastward, and all the crew were standing by in menacing att.i.tudes.

The other two ships, as we have seen, were commanded by the Pinzon brothers; and they, being natives of Palos, had secured all the respectable Palos men who were willing to enlist; but Columbus had only the worst element--the jail-birds and loafers from other towns. And here they stood, saying plainly by their manner, "We are going back! What are you going to do about it?"

We don't know exactly what he did do about it; Martin Alonzo Pinzon sent him advice to "hang a few of the rebels; and if you can't manage to hang them, I and my brothers will row to your ship and do it." But Christopher appears to have handled the situation without their help, and without hanging any one; for soon the helmsman swung the _Santa Maria_ around again. On October 10 trouble broke out afresh, and Columbus makes this entry in his diary:--

"The crew, not being able to stand the length of the voyage, complained to me, but I reanimated them."

By October 10 the voyage had lasted some seventy days! No wonder the crew needed to be "reanimated." Yet, there were the birds flying out to them, bringing their message of hope, if only the poor frightened men could have had more faith! The Pinzons meanwhile were having less trouble; for when their sailors wished to turn back because nothing had been found seven hundred and fifty leagues west of the Canaries, Martin Alonzo told them all the absurd tales he had read about c.i.p.ango, and promised them, if only they went ahead, that its wealth would make their fortune. This appears to have hushed their murmuring; but Christopher had no such flowery promises to hold forth.

Martin Pinzon, having observed a few days before that most of the birds flew from the southwest rather than the exact west, suggested to Columbus that land probably lay nearer in that direction; and Columbus, to please him, changed his course. It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened had Pinzon not interfered, for the fleet, by continuing due west, would have shortly entered the Gulf Stream, and this strong current would surely have borne them northward to a landing on the coast of the future United States. But this was not to be. On Pinzon's advice the rudders were set for the southwest, and nothing happened for several days except that same pa.s.sing of birds. On October 11 a fresh green branch floated by; and Columbus, after dark had fallen, declared he saw a light moving at a distance.

Calling two of his sailors, he pointed it out to them. One agreed that there was certainly a light bobbing up and down, but the other insisted that he could see nothing. Columbus did not feel sure enough of his "light" to claim that it meant land, so he called the ships together and reminded the crews that their sovereigns had offered to the one who should first see the sh.o.r.e a pension of ten thousand maravedis (about twenty-five dollars) a year. In addition, he himself would give a further reward of a silk doublet. This caused them all to keep a sharp watch; but land it surely meant, that fitful light which Columbus saw, for that very night--or about two o'clock in the morning of October 12 --Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on the _Pinta_, shouted "_Tierra!

Tierra!_" and sure enough, as the dawn grew brighter, there lay a lovely little green island stretched before their sea-weary eyes!

Who can imagine the tremendous emotions of that famous October morning!

Here were a hundred men who had just demonstrated that the world was round; for by sailing west they had reached the east--if, as many were ready to believe, they had come to Martin Alonzo's c.i.p.ango! The world really _was_ a sphere! and at no point in rounding it had they been in danger of falling off! Here they stood, that marvelous morning of October 12, on c.i.p.ango or some other island off Asia, as they supposed, with the soles of their feet against the feet of those back in Palos, and the fact did not even make them feel dizzy. We who have always known that the earth is a sphere with a marvelous force in its center drawing toward it all objects on the surface; we who have always known that ships by the thousands cross the great oceans from one continent to another; we who have always known that the whole inhabited earth has long since been explored,--we who were born to such an acc.u.mulation of knowledge can never realize what was the amazement, the joy, of that little handful of men who, after three lonely months on the unknown ocean, at last reached unsuspected land.

And the humble Genoese sailor man,--what were his emotions on the great morning that transformed him into Don Cristobal Colon, Admiral and Viceroy under their Highnesses, the king and queen of Spain. Let us hope that he did not think too much about these t.i.tles, for we ourselves don't think about them at all. We are only trying to grasp the joy it must have given him to know that he had been true to his grand purpose; that he had waited and suffered for it; and that now, after declaring he could find lands in the unknown ocean, he had found them. Quite right was he to put on his scarlet cloak for going ash.o.r.e, for he had conquered the terrors of the deep!

How eagerly they all clambered into the small boats and rowed toward the sh.o.r.e, Columbus and the Pinzon brothers and the notary in the first boat load. The new Admiral carried the royal standard, and when they leaped ash.o.r.e, he planted it in the ground and took possession of the island for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Then on a little hill they put up a wooden cross and all knelt before it and poured out their grat.i.tude to G.o.d.

CHAPTER X

NATIVES OF THE NEW LAND

Columbus christened his little coral island San Salvador. The natives called it Guanahani; but should you look for it on your map you may not find it under either its native or its Spanish name, for there was no way, at that early date, of making an accurate map of the whole Bahama group, and the name San Salvador somehow became shifted in time to another island. Thus was the original landfall long lost sight of, and no two writers could agree on the subject. Recently, however, the most careful students have decided upon the reef now called Watling's Island, to-day an English possession, as Columbus's first landing-place.

When you see that it is but a tiny dot in the ocean, you may think it an insignificant spot to have been the scene of the most momentous event of the Renaissance; you may feel inclined to scold at that well-meaning Martin Pinzon for asking to have the rudders changed in order to find his c.i.p.ango. But it must be remembered that to have found anything at all was an unparalleled feat; and furthermore, that wee San Salvador was not the end of Columbus's expedition; it was merely the beginning, merely the lighting of that great torch of enterprise and investigation which was not to be extinguished till the whole American continent and the whole Pacific Ocean had been explored and mapped out. Columbus that day started an electric current through the brain of every European mariner. To discover something across the Atlantic was henceforth in the very air, and the results were tremendous.

But to return to those happy Spanish sailors who on that October morn of 1492 at last planted their feet on _terra firma_. To explore the little island did not take long. They found it to be full of green trees and strange luscious fruits. There were no beasts, large or small, only gay parrots. The natives, guiltless of clothing, were gentle creatures who supposed their strange visitors had come from Heaven and reverenced them accordingly. As the two groups stood looking at each other for the first time, the natives must have been by far the more astonished.

Spanish eyes were used to races other than the white; they all knew the brownish Moor; and alas, many of them knew the black Ethiopian too; for, once the Portuguese started slave-s.n.a.t.c.hing down the African coast, the Spaniards became their customers, so that by this time, 1492, there were a good many African slaves in Spain. But the Bahama natives knew of no race but their own; so what could these undreamed-of visitors be but divine? Here is Columbus's own description of what happened when the white man and the red man had sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with each other:--

"As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted and became greatly attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, b.a.l.l.s of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for gla.s.s beads and hawks' bells, which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole a very poor people. They all were completely naked. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made and with fine shapes and faces; their hair short and coa.r.s.e like that of a horse's tail, combed towards the forehead except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind and never cut. Some paint themselves with black, others with white, others with red, others with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, some the whole body. Others only the eyes, others only the nose. Weapons they have none; nor are they acquainted with them. For I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and no thing more than sticks with fishbones or other thing at the ends. I saw some men with scars of wounds upon their bodies and inquired by signs the cause of these. They answered me by signs that other people came from islands in the neighborhood and tried to make prisoners of them and they defended themselves. ....It appears to me that these people are ingenious and would make very good servants, and I am of the opinion that they would readily become Christians as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses that they may learn our language."

In this brief entry in the Admiral's diary there is a whole volume to those who can read between the lines, and a painful volume too, as much history is. Gla.s.s beads and little tinkling bells, you see, were all ready to be distributed from the caravels; a proof that Columbus had not expected to reach the Asiatic Indies, for those Indians were known to be sharp and experienced traders. How did Columbus happen to know that it would be wise to carry rubbish along with him? Ah, that was something found out when he left Porto Santo to accompany the Portuguese expedition to Guinea; had he not seen the Portuguese commander exchange ounces of bright beads for pounds of ivory and gold?

And so he, Christopher Columbus, came prepared for similar trade in his western lands; the world, we see, was hunting for bargains, trying to get much for little in the fifteenth century, just as it still is in the twentieth! Then again, look at the Admiral's innocent remark, "I think they would make excellent servants." That is still the rule to-day; the trained man sees in the untrained only a servant. It was perfectly natural that the Spanish eye should instantly see that little island converted into a Spanish plantation with those simple, gentle creatures who "learn easily" working it. And lastly, let us look into this sentence: "I intend taking some of them home to show your Majesties." It never occurred to the Admiral to add, "if they are willing to come with me." Indeed, it seldom occurred to any Christian of Christopher Columbus's day that a non-Christian, and especially a savage one, had the same human instincts as a Christian, and that he would have preferred staying in his own land and with his own family. Out of that horrible but common mistake grew up the whole miserable business of kidnapping, buying, and selling human beings. Let us not be too greatly shocked at our fifteenth-century hero for talking so unfeelingly.

Remember, it was only about fifty years ago that we saw the last of slavery in these United States, and even then it died hard. Christopher was, on most moral questions, merely a man of his time, a fact to be kept in mind as we read of his later voyages.

"They answered me by signs," wrote Columbus. In other words, the linguist of the expedition, the man learned in Asiatic tongues, had not been able to make himself understood on San Salvador; and neither was he when they sailed on among the other islands. Clearly, these little specks of land in the ocean were not the large and extravagantly rich island of j.a.pan which Martin Alonzo Pinzon had hoped to find. When Columbus asked these friendly people for "c.i.p.ango," they looked blank and shook their heads; so did all the other islanders he met during his three months' cruise among the West Indies. All of the new-found people were of the same race, spoke the same language, and were equally ignorant of c.i.p.ango and Cathay and India,--lands of rich cities and temples and marble bridges, and pearls and gold. Columbus had found only "a poor people," with no clothes and hardly a sign of a golden ornament.

True, when he "inquired by signs" where their few golden trinkets came from, they pointed vaguely to the south as if some richer land lay there. And so the Admiral, as we must now call him, never gave up hope.

If, as Pinzon still believed, they had discovered Asiatic islands, somewhere on the mainland he must surely come upon those treasures which the Moors had been bringing overland by caravan for centuries past. He could not go for the treasure this trip; this was nothing more than a simple voyage of discovery; but he would come and find the wealth that would enable the Spanish monarchs to undertake a new crusade to the Holy Land.

October ran into November and November into December, and the Admiral was still finding islands. He had come, on October 21, to such a far- reaching coast that he agreed with Martin Pinzon that it must be the mainland, or Cathay, and started eagerly to follow it west. But the natives near the sh.o.r.e were timid and fled at the approach of the strangers. No splendid cities of marble palaces, nor even any mean little villages of huts, were in sight; so two of the sailors were sent inland to explore and find the capital of the country. After three days the explorers returned and reported that all they had seen were many, many naked savages who dwelt in tiny huts of wood and straw, and who had the curious custom of rolling up a large dry leaf called tobago, lighting it at one end, and drawing the smoke up through their nostrils.

Obviously, another "poor people" like those of San Salvador; they were not the rich and civilized Chinese that Marco Polo had written about.

Neither capital nor king had they, and their land, they told the explorers, was surrounded by water. They called it Colba. It was, in fact, the modern Cuba which Columbus had discovered.

Instead of continuing west along Cuba's northern sh.o.r.e till he came to the end of it, the Admiral preferred to turn east and see what lay in that direction. It was one of the few times when Columbus's good judgment in navigation deserted him; for had he kept west he might have learned from the natives that what we call Florida lay beyond, and Florida was the continent; or, even if the natives had nothing to communicate, west would have been the logical direction for him to take after leaving the extremity of Cuba, had he fully shared Pinzon's belief that Asia lay beyond the islands. But no, without waiting to get to the extremity of Cuba, Columbus retraced his course east, as if expecting to find there the one, definite thing which, according to his friend, Las Casas, he had come to find.

On November 12 he writes: "A canoe came out to the ship with sixteen young men; five of them climbed aboard, whom I ordered to be kept so as to have them with us; I then sent ash.o.r.e to one of the houses and took seven women and three children; this I did in order that the five men might tolerate their captivity better with company." No doubt he treated the natives kindly, but one can readily understand that their families and friends back on the island must have felt outraged at this conduct on the white man's part.

The strange thing is that Columbus, so wise in many ways, did not understand it too, in spite of the miserably mean ideas which prevailed in his day regarding the heathen. But the very fact that he notes so frankly how he captured the natives shows that neither he, nor those who were to read his journal, had any scruples on the subject. All moral considerations aside, it was tactless indeed to treat the natives thus in islands where he hoped to have his own men kindly received.