Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia Part 3

HIS PATIENCE AND n.o.bILITY OF MIND UNDER SUFFERING AND IN THE MIDST OF UNDESERVED INDIGNITIES.

The reply of Columbus to Andreas Martin, captain of the caravel conveying him a prisoner to Spain, upon an offer to remove his fetters:

_Since the King has commanded that I should obey his Governor, he shall find me as obedient in this as I have been to all his other orders; nothing but his command shall release me. If twelve years' hardship and fatigue; if continual dangers and frequent famine; if the ocean first opened, and five times pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, to add a new world, abounding with wealth, to the Spanish monarchy; and if an infirm and premature old age, brought on by these services, deserve these chains as a reward, it is very fit I should wear them to Spain, and keep them by me as memorials to the end of my life._

From a letter to the King and Queen:

_This country (the Bahamas) excels all others as far as the day surpa.s.ses the night in splendor; the natives love their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable, and their faces are always smiling. So gentle and so affectionate are they that I swear to your Highness there is no better people in the world._

From the same:

_The fish rival the birds in tropical brilliancy of color, the scales of some of them glancing back the rays of light like precious stones, as they sported about the ships and flashed gleams of gold and silver through the clear water._

Speech of a West Indian chief to Columbus, on his arrival in Cuba:

_Whether you are divinities or mortal men, we know not. You have come into these countries with a force, against which, were we inclined to resist, it would be folly. We are all therefore at your mercy; but if you are men, subject to mortality like ourselves, you can not be unapprised that after this life there is another, wherein a very different portion is allotted to good and bad men. If therefore you expect to die, and believe, with us, that every one is to be rewarded in a future state according to his conduct in the present, you will do no hurt to those who do none to you._

SHIPWRECK AND MARRIAGE.

From the "Life of Columbus," by his son Hernando:

_I say, that whilst the Admiral sailed with the aforesaid "Columbus the Younger," which was a long time, it fell out that, understanding the before-mentioned four great Venetian galleys were coming from Flanders, they went out to seek, and found them beyond Lisbon, about Cape St.

Vincent, which is in Portugal, where, falling to blows, they fought furiously and grappled, beating one another from vessel to vessel with the utmost rage, making use not only of their weapons but artificial fireworks; so that after they had fought from morning until evening, and abundance were killed on both sides, the Admiral's ship took fire, as did a great Venetian galley, which, being fast grappled together with iron hooks and chains used to this purpose by seafaring men, could neither of them be relieved because of the confusion there was among them and the fright of the fire, which in a short time was so increased that there was no other remedy but for all that could to leap into the water, so to die sooner, rather than bear the torture of the fire._

_But the Admiral being an excellent swimmer, and seeing himself two leagues or a little farther from land, laying hold of an oar, which good fortune offered him, and, sometimes resting upon it, sometimes swimming, it pleased G.o.d, who had preserved him for greater ends, to give him strength to get to sh.o.r.e, but so tired and spent with the water that he had much ado to recover himself. And because it was not far from Lisbon, where he knew there were many Genoeses, his countrymen, he went away thither as fast as he could, where, being known by them, he was so courteously received and entertained that he set up house and married a wife in that city. And forasmuch as he behaved himself honorably, and was a man of comely presence, and did nothing but what was just, it happened that a lady whose name was Dona Felipa Moniz, of a good family, and pensioner in the Monastery of All Saints, whither the Admiral used to go to ma.s.s, was so taken with him that she became his wife._

PUT NOT YOUR TRUST IN PRINCES.

From a letter of Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella:

_Such is my fate that twenty years of service, through which I pa.s.sed with so much toil and danger, have profited me nothing; and at this day I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own. If I wish to eat or sleep, I have nowhere to go but to the inn or tavern, and I seldom have wherewith to pay the bill. I have not a hair upon me that is not gray; my body is infirm; and all that was left me, as well as to my brothers, has been taken away and sold, even to the frock that I wore, to my great dishonor. I implore your Highnesses to forgive my complaints. I am indeed in as ruined a condition as I have related.

Hitherto I have wept over others; may Heaven now have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep for me._

THE SELF-SACRIFICE AND DEVOTION OF COLUMBUS.

From Columbus' own account of his discovery:

_Such is my plan; if it be dangerous to execute, I am no mere theorist who would leave to another the prospect of perishing in carrying it out, but am ready to sacrifice my life as an example to the world in doing so. If I do not reach the sh.o.r.es of Asia by sea, it will be because the Atlantic has other boundaries in the west, and these boundaries I will discover._

THE TRUST OF COLUMBUS.

From a letter of Columbus to a friend:

_For me to contend for the contrary, would be to contend with the wind.

I have done all that I could do. I leave the rest to G.o.d, whom I have ever found propitious to me in my necessities._

SIGNATURE OF COLUMBUS.

_S. i. e. Servidor_ _S. A. S. Sus Altezas Sacras_ _X. M. Y. Jesus Maria Ysabel_ _Xpo. FERENS Christo-pher_ _El Almirante El Almirante._

In English: Servant--of their Sacred Highnesses--Jesus, Mary, and Isabella--Christopher--The Admiral.

--BECHER.

THE LAST WORDS OF COLUMBUS.

_Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: This letter received no answer.]

[Footnote 15: Columbus left the Canary Isles September 8th, made the land October 11th--thirty-three days.]

[Footnote 16: Watling's Island.]

[Footnote 17: These canes are probably the flowering stems of large gra.s.ses, similar to the bamboo or to the _arundinaria_ used by the natives of Guiana for blowing arrows.]

[Footnote 18: An old Spanish coin, equal to the fiftieth part of a mark of gold.]

[Footnote 19: Small copper coins, equal to about the quarter of a farthing.]

[Footnote 20: One arroba weighs twenty-five pounds.]

[Footnote 21: There appears to be a doubt as to the exact number of men left by Columbus at Espanola, different accounts variously giving it as thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and forty. There is, however, a list of their names included in one of the diplomatic doc.u.ments printed on Navarrete's work, which makes the number amount to forty, independent of the Governor Diego de Arana and his two lieutenants, Pedro Gutierrez and Rodrigo de Escobedo. All these men were Spaniards, with the exception of two; one an Irishman named William Ires, a native of Galway, and one an Englishman, whose name was given as Tallarte de Lajes, but whose native designation it is difficult to guess at. The doc.u.ment in question was a proclamation to the effect that the heirs of those men should, on presenting at the office of public business at Seville sufficient proof of their being the next of kin, receive payment in conformity with the royal order to that purpose, issued at Burgos on December 20, 1507.]

[Footnote 22: Dominica.]

[Footnote 23: Martinique.]

[Footnote 24: Of Genoa. The Island of Chios belonged to the Genoese Republic from 1346 to 1566.]

[Footnote 25: This prayer of Columbus, which is printed by Padre Claudio Clementi in the "Tablas Chronologicas de los Descubridores" (Valencia, 1689), was afterward repeated, by order of the Sovereigns of Castille, in subsequent discoveries. Hernando Cortez, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Pizarro, and others, had to use it officially.]

[Footnote 26: It is very much to be regretted that Christopher Columbus'

intentions in this respect were not carried out because the Protectors would have certainly decreed that a marble statue should be erected to commemorate so great a gift, and we would then possess an authentic portrait of the discoverer of America, which does not exist anywhere.

Nor do I believe that the portrait of Columbus ever was drawn, carved, or painted from the life.

There were doubtless painters already in Spain at the close of the fifteenth century, such, for instance, as Juan Sanchez de Castro, Pedro Berruguette, Juan de Borgona, Antonio del Rincon, and the five artists whom Cardinal Ximenes intrusted with the task of adorning the paranymph of the University of Alcala, but they painted only religious subjects.

It is at a later period that portrait painting commenced in Spain. One of those artists may have thought of painting a portrait of Columbus, but there is no trace of any such intention in the writings of the time, nor of the existence of an authentic effigy of the great navigator in Spain or any other country.