Christopher Columbus Part 7

Yet a little later, when the water supply ran low, and when there were so many leaks in the vessels that the pumps were working constantly, they began to grumble. But Columbus, who was a magician at reckoning sea distance, laughed at their alarm and said to them, "Drink all the water you like; we shall reach land in forty-eight hours." Next day no land appeared, but still he spoke confidently and ordered them to take in sail and slow down. That was at sunset, on Sat.u.r.day, November 2; Sunday morning, November 3, the sun rose on a beautiful verdant island only a few leagues ahead of them. The magician had fairly scented land from afar!

This little island, Dominica he called it, had no harbor; but what did that matter since another island lay alongside it, to the north. Here they landed and took possession in the name of Spain--not only of the one island but of five or six more which were visible from a little hill. On this spot, which they christened Marigalante, there were no inhabitants; so, after waiting only long enough to feast on new, luscious fruits, they sailed to the next island, which they called Guadaloupe.

And here the Spaniards began to learn what real savagery meant. Only women and children appeared to inhabit the island, and these fled inland at the strangers' approach. This afforded an excellent opportunity for the visitors to look into the native huts and see how these wild people lived. Hammocks of netting, earthenware dishes, and woven cotton cloth were found; but along with these rudiments of civilization something else was found that made the Europeans look at each other in horror-- human bones left from a recent feast!

The next day they landed at a different island, for these Caribbeans all lie close together. Here the deplorable business of kidnapping began again, and quite legitimately, the Spaniards thought, for were not the miserable creatures cannibals? A young boy and three women were captured, and from these Columbus learned that the people of the two islands he first visited, along with a third he had not yet come to, had formed a league among themselves to make war on the remainder of the islands. That was why all the men happened to be absent at the time of the Spanish landing. They had gone off in their canoes to capture women as wives, and men and children to be killed and eaten!

The fact that the warriors of this island were absent emboldened a party of nine Spaniards to penetrate inland in search of gold; secretly, too, without the Admiral's knowledge or consent. Night came and the nine men had not returned. The crew were naturally anxious to leave the island before its man-eating population returned, but the majority were willing to await their lost companions. Next day Alonzo de Ojeda, who said he was not afraid of cannibals, led a search party clear across the island, but without success; not until the third anxious day had pa.s.sed did the gold seekers get back to the ship. They had paid dearly for their adventure, having been utterly lost in a tangled forest, without food, torn and scratched by brambles, and fearing all the time that the fleet would give them up for dead and sail without them.

A week having now been pa.s.sed among the cannibals, Columbus decided to give up gold-hunting and go and greet the colony at La Navidad. His captives told him that the mainland lay south, and had he not grown anxious about the men he had left the year before, he might have sailed south and found South America; but instead he headed north, stopping sometimes at intermediate islands. Once again they tried capturing some natives whom they saw on the sh.o.r.e, but these Carib women were wonderful archers, and a number of them who managed to upset their canoe and swim for liberty shot arrows as they swam. Two of the Spaniards were thus wounded.

Not until the 22d of November did the fleet come in sight of Haiti-- about a month later than if they had come direct from the Canaries. Many islands, including Porto Rico, had been discovered and named before they finally touched Espanola and began sailing along its northern coast to where the _Santa Maria_ had been wrecked. Although no gold had been found, all the men on the boats were confident that quant.i.ties of it would have been collected during the year by the men at La Navidad; and so great content reigned on all the ships.

While the fleet was still some distance away, one of the captured Haiti Indians who had made the voyage to Spain and back was sent ash.o.r.e to tell Chief Guacanagari and the colony of the Admiral's return. This Indian messenger, having been converted to Christianity and having learned to speak Spanish, was expected to be of great use in the present expedition. Before sending him ash.o.r.e they dressed him handsomely and covered him with showy trinkets that would impress his countrymen. But the real impression was to come from his telling his tribe what a powerful people the Spaniards were and how advisable it would be to receive them kindly. This attended to, the converted Indian was to rejoin the ship at La Navidad, where Columbus would richly reward him for his services. Our simple Columbus, who loved Spain's civilization and power, entertained great hopes of the Indian's mission, and never suspected that this savage preferred his native island; and that, once he set foot on it, he would never again risk himself in the presence of white men!

The Admiral next stopped at the mouth of a stream where, on his previous voyage, he had heard of gold. The party who went ash.o.r.e to search for it soon came back aghast. They had found, instead, two bodies lashed to a stake in the form of a cross. The men were hardly recognizable, but the sc.r.a.ps of clothing looked Spanish. The ominous news ran from ship to ship and gloom began to settle over the entire expedition.

Columbus, much disturbed, hastened on to La Navidad. On approaching the spot his crew fired a cannon and shouted, but no response came. They landed; but it was to find the fortress a blackened ruin and the whole settlement destroyed. Even the stout-hearted Admiral was now utterly dejected.

After a spell of grieving came a ray of hope. Perhaps Diego de Arana and his other friends were not all dead; perhaps the treacherous natives had merely driven them off. He had told Diego to keep the gold they gathered hidden in a well, so that, in case of attack, it would be safe; and off Columbus started to hunt for the well. No amount of searching revealed it; instead, another painful sight, a few dead Spaniards; that was all.

Inland, far away from his original abode, the king was found who had so kindly helped Columbus when the _Santa Maria_ was wrecked--King Guacanagari. From him came the only account ever obtained of the fate of the colony; a true account apparently, for later investigations confirmed it. The Spaniards, with the exception of their leader, Arana, had behaved very badly toward each other and toward the natives. They wanted wives, and had stolen all the young women from Guacanagari's village and then had fought with each other for the prettiest. Having obtained wives, some deserted the little European colony and went to live as savages among the Indians. Others had gone to find the gold mines, which quest took them to the eastern part of the island where the fierce chief Caonabo ruled. So enraged was this chief at their invasion that he not only killed _them_, but descended upon their compatriots at La Navidad, and attacked them one night when all was still and peaceful. Guacanagari heard the savage war whoops, and out of friendship for the Admiral he tried to drive off the a.s.sailants, but he himself was wounded and his house was burned. The Spanish fort was fired; the inmates rushed out, only to be butchered or driven into the sea and drowned. Not one man escaped.

Thus ended Columbus's second trip westward across the Atlantic. What a landing! Blackened ruins, dead bodies, the enmity of the natives, and-- no gold; all this where he had hoped to be greeted by happy, prosperous men. Here were the first fruits of his great discovery; here the first sample of Spanish ability at colonizing; here the first specimen of what the white man could do in a new and peaceful land; and our great Admiral, thinking of the mixed band he had brought out from Spain to colonize, dropped his head and covered his face with his hands.

All were anxious to leave the scene of this tragedy; but before they left, the native king, Guacanagari, who appeared as friendly as ever, expressed a desire to visit Columbus's ship. While on it he managed to talk with the Caribbean Indians who were aboard. That night the captives, including a woman whom the Spaniards had named Catalina, made their escape and were picked up in waiting canoes. Next day when Columbus sent to Guacanagari to demand their return, the king and his whole village had disappeared. It would appear that this simple savage had grown into a far shrewder person than his European host since that Christmas night when the _Santa Maria_ ran aground.

La Navidad having disappeared, the next concern was to found another settlement. A point some distance east was chosen, where a beautiful green vega, or plain, stretched far back from the sh.o.r.e. The city was to be called Isabella, in honor of the queen who had made possible the discovery of the new lands. Streets were laid out, a fine church and a storehouse were planned to be built of stone, and many private houses, to be built of wood or adobe or any convenient material, were to be constructed. All this was very fine in plan; but when the men were called upon to do the hard manual labor that is required for building a town and planting gardens and fields in an utter wilderness, many of them murmured. They had not come to do hard work, they had come to pick up nuggets of gold. Besides, many were ill after the long diet of salted food and musty bread; even Columbus himself fell ill upon landing, and could not rise from his bed for weeks; and although all this time he continued to direct the work of town building, it progressed but slowly.

So there lay the great Christopher Columbus, bedridden and empty-handed, at the moment when he hoped to be sending back to Spain the gold and other precious substances collected by the men of his first settlement.

What should he write to the sovereigns waiting for news? He could not bear to write the sad truth and tell them how all his hopes, and theirs, had come to naught. If only he could have known, or surmised, that his islands fringed a magnificent new continent that had never even been dreamed of by civilized man, his worry might have ceased; for surely a man who had found a new world for Spain need not have found gold besides; but he knew nothing of the continent as yet; and remembering the extravagant promises made in Barcelona, he decided to postpone writing the letter home to Spain until he should make another attempt to find gold.

Accordingly, he sent two expeditions to different parts of the island to find the mines which, according to his understanding of the natives'

sign language, must exist. Alonzo de Ojeda and the other captain he sent out returned each with a little gold; and this slight find was sufficient to set Columbus's fervid imagination at work again. He sent a rosy account of the island to the monarchs, and repeated his former promise to soon send home shiploads of gold and other treasures. And no wonder that he and so many others wished for gold; for it is written in his journal, "Gold is the most precious of all substances; gold const.i.tutes treasure; he who possesses it has all the needs of this world as well as the price for rescuing souls from Purgatory and introducing them into Paradise." If gold could do all that, who would not try to possess it?

But so far as his letter to the monarchs went, Columbus knew, even while writing it, that real gold and the promise of gold were two very different things. His promises could never fill up the empty hold of the ship that was going back to Spain; and so, failing the rich cargo which the men of La Navidad were to have gathered, Columbus bethought himself of some other way in which his discoveries might bring money to the Spanish Crown. The plan he hit upon was the plan of a sick, disappointed, desperate man, as will be seen from a portion of his letter. The letter, intended for the sovereigns, was addressed, as was the custom, to their secretary.

"Considering what need we have for cattle and beasts of burden ... their Highnesses might authorize a suitable number of caravels to come here every year to bring over said cattle and provisions. These cattle might be paid for with _slaves_ taken from among the Caribbeans, who are a wild people fit for any work, well built and very intelligent; and who, when they have got rid of the cruel habits to which they have been accustomed, will be better than any other kind of slaves."

Horrible, all this, we say, but it was the fifteenth century. Slavery had existed for ages, and many still believed in it, for men like the good Las Casas were few. Moreover, Columbus was tormented by a feeling of not having "made good." He had promised his sovereigns all sorts of wealth, and instead he had been able to collect only an insignificant amount of gold trinkets on Haiti. Desperate for some other source of wealth, in an evil moment he advised slave-catching.

Besides considering himself to have fallen short in the royal eyes, he was hounded by the complaints and taunts of the men who had accompanied him. They hated work, so he tried to appease them by giving them authority to enslave the natives; and, as our good Las Casas wisely remarks, "Since men never fall into a single error ... without a greater one by and by following," so it fell out that the Spaniards were cruel masters and the natives revolted; to subdue them harsher and harsher measures were used; not till most of them had been killed did the remaining ones yield submissively.

CHAPTER XV

ON A SEA OF TROUBLES

In the new colony of Isabella things went badly from the very start. Its governor comforted himself by thinking that he could still put himself right with everybody by pushing farther west and discovering whether the Asiatic mainland--which Martin Alonzo Pinzon had always insisted lay back of the islands--was really there. Accordingly, Columbus took a crew of men and departed April 24, 1494, leaving his brother Diego in command of the colony. Never had Columbus done a more unwise thing than to leave Isabella at that moment. Not one single lesson of self-help and cooperation had his men yet learned; and of course they reproached him with their troubles. The root of it all was disappointment. They had come for wealth and ease, and had found poverty and hardship. They even threatened to seize the ships in the harbor and sail off, leaving the two brothers alone on the island; yet, knowing all this, Columbus decided to go off and continue his discoveries!

Again he just escaped finding the mainland. On sailing west from Isabella and reaching Cuba at the nearest point to Haiti, he decided to coast along its southern sh.o.r.e. He had gone along its northern sh.o.r.e on his first voyage, and had turned back instead of continuing toward the continent. This time he took the southern coast, pushing west for about a month and a half, and again turning back when he was not more than two hundred miles from Central America. The natives whom he questioned told him, as on his first visit to Cuba, that their land was surrounded by water; but Alonzo de Ojeda, who was with Columbus, said, "These are a stupid race who think that all the world is an island, and do not know what a continent is!" Columbus too did not wish to believe the savages; he preferred to believe that Cuba was the continent. Yet as a navigator Columbus was honest, and no doubt would have gone farther and proved the natives right had he not been pestered by a grumbling crew. His men were dissatisfied at the long tropic voyage which never appeared to bring them one inch nearer wealth, and they clamored to return to Isabella. So mutinous did they become that he decided to turn back, but it was with a heavy heart. Again he must write to the sovereigns and report that he had not yet found a land of wealth. The very thought of this next letter made him miserable.

In fact, our enterprising Admiral was in a very bad way by this time. We recall how he was ill when the new settlement of Isabella was started, and how he nevertheless personally superintended the work. Always a tremendous worker on sea or land, always at his post, meeting his heavy responsibilities as best he knew how, it was nothing but work and worry for the hara.s.sed Christopher Columbus; and now when he, a sick man, had undertaken this voyage to the mainland, the natives had declared that Cuba was only a big island!

Columbus lay down in his bunk, broken-hearted. A fever seized him and he raved for several days; and in his ravings he hit upon a plan which was so childish that one would laugh were it not also so pitiful. He decided to write that he had discovered the mainland of Asia, but not yet Cathay, as Cathay lay far inland. To prove that Cuba was really Asia, he called together his crew of eighty men and made them swear before a notary that not only had they cruised along the mainland, but they had learned that it was possible to return from Cuba to Spain by land. This statement being duly sworn to and sealed, the crew were informed that if any one of them should ever deny this, his tongue would be torn out to prevent his repeating the lie.

This time they did not keep so close to the sh.o.r.e. By going farther out they discovered the Isle of Pines, also the pretty little group known as "The Queen's Gardens," and Jamaica, later to be the scene of much woe.

Always islands, islands, islands! Among some of them navigation was very dangerous, and the Admiral, still ill, never left the deck for several days and nights. At last he broke down and could not move from his bed.

The minute this happened the crew, who had not the slightest interest in discovering beautiful islands, hurried direct to their countrymen in Isabella.

Poor Admiral! Poor men! If only they could have forgotten all about the riches of Cathay, and could have realized the wonder and the honor of being the first white men to gaze on all these lovely spots, these bits of earth straight from the hand of G.o.d, how their hearts might have welled with joy and thanksgiving! But no, it was a dissatisfied, heavy- hearted body of men who came back empty-handed to Isabella on September 29, and reported that in all their five months' absence they had seen nothing but savage islands.

Now let us see what mischief had been brewing in the colony during their absence. Columbus, before leaving, had commanded the military governor to place himself at the head of four hundred men and scour the island for provisions. Instead of following these orders, the military governor, without Diego Columbus's leave, went aboard the first ship sailing for Spain. In other words, he deserted. The remainder, on learning this, made a raid on the nearest natives and stole their food and their wives; and the natives naturally took revenge.

It was while the outraged Indians were gathering in large numbers to destroy Isabella that Columbus returned. A sad state of affairs to greet a sick man, and especially when the trouble was all of Spanish making.

But there was no time to spend in asking whose fault it was. Their lives were at stake. Isabella might soon share the horrible fate of La Navidad. Columbus hurriedly mustered his men--less than two hundred--and divided them into two companies. One of these he himself commanded, and the other was under his older brother, Bartholomew, who had arrived from Spain during the expedition to Cuba. The Spaniards were clad in armor.

The natives were naked and had no guns, and though they were far more numerous than the Europeans, they were soon overcome.

One of the powerful chiefs, however, still remained unsubdued at the head of his forces in the interior of the island. This was the chief Caonabo, already mentioned as the one who had avenged his wrongs on the offenders at La Navidad. Soon he too was captured by Alonzo de Ojeda through the clever ruse of sending him a present. Then came a little more fighting, and the men who had come to convert the savages to Christianity obtained absolute control of the island of Haiti. The enslaved natives, we are told, wove their sorrows into mournful ballads which they droned out desolately as they tilled the fields of their harsh masters.

But even with the natives subjugated there was still much discontent among Columbus's men. There being no gold to pick up and sell, by tilling the land only could they live; and even to farm profitably takes years of experience. For everything that went wrong, they blamed the man who had brought them to the New World, and similarly his brothers who had come to help him govern.

Whenever a ship returned to Spain the miserable colonists sent back letters full of bitter upbraidings against the man who had led them into poverty and hardship. Also one of the priests had gone home, and straight to court, to make a thousand complaints. The military governor who had deserted the colony did the same thing, adding, "There is no gold in the Indies of Antilla, and all the Admiral said about his discoveries was mere sham and banter."

We have already mentioned that, from the moment Columbus started on this second voyage, enemies at home began to do him harm. When, therefore, all these tales reached Spain, they fell on ready ears. Even Queen Isabella, who had always championed Columbus, had grown to see that his discretion and general common sense fell very far short of his courage and his navigating ability. The royal pair, therefore, decided that the whole matter must be investigated.

A man who had accompanied Columbus on his first voyage was appointed by the monarchs to go as Royal Commissioner to Haiti and question Columbus about the condition of the colony. This man was selected because of his supposed kindly feelings to the Admiral, the latter having recommended him to the queen for excellent conduct on that trying first voyage. The queen, we see, thus endeavored to make the inquiry as easy and friendly as possible for the great navigator. But the Royal Commissioner, Don Juan Agnado, acted like many another man suddenly vested with authority; he carried it with a higher hand than kings themselves! Arriving at Isabella at the moment when the Admiral was trying to capture the chief Caonabo in the interior of the island, Agnado snubbed Bartholomew Columbus, threw several officials into prison, put himself at the head of the garrison, and announced that he was going inland after the Admiral!

On his making this show of insolent power, every one believed that he was to be the new governor, and that he had been authorized even to put Columbus to death. At once they gave way to all the meanness of their natures and, in order to gain favor with the new viceroy, they began bitterly denouncing the old.

Columbus, who had received word of Agnado's advent into Isabella, hurried to meet him there. Seeing himself in a sorry plight, he told Agnado that he would immediately go back to Spain and answer his sovereigns' inquiries in person. This was in October, 1495. But all sorts of ill luck prevented his going. A frightful hurricane tore over the island and sank the four vessels which Agnado had brought; then a wanderer came in with tales of a real gold mine in the south of the island and the report had to be investigated. Next, the several forts which had been built had to be strengthened and stocked with provisions; so that it was not till March, 1496, that the Admiral was ready to sail.

Only two caravels now remained in Isabella harbor. One of these was the faithful little _Nina_; and on her the weary Admiral returned to Spain.

CHAPTER XVI

THE THIRD VOYAGE

Columbus's second voyage home from his western lands was even more stormy and threatening than his first had been, but the little _Nina_ remained stanch as ever. Besides frightful weather to try his soul, Columbus was taking home two hundred broken-down, disheartened colonists who could no longer endure the hardships of the New World.

Even the prospect of going home did not improve their tempers. When the food ran low, colonists and crew threatened to kill and eat the captive natives in the hold. Columbus managed to pacify them all, however, but it must have used up every bit of energy in his worn body.

When, after this tempestuous voyage, the _Nina_ and the other little caravel put into Cadiz harbor on June 11, 1496, there was more humiliation. Crowds collected to greet the gold gatherers; but the unhappy men who crawled off the vessels were paupers--wrecks--mere living skeletons. The very sight of them brought down curses on Christopher Columbus. The man who had dreamed of coming back with a ship full of gold, and being acclaimed by the cheers of the populace, came back instead with the royal displeasure hanging over his head and curses ringing in his ears!