De Orbe Novo Part 10

[Note 1: See Navarrete, tom, ii., 1867; Gomara, _Historia General_, p. 50.]

[Note 2: Also called Nino; he had sailed with Columbus on his first two voyages. Oviedo, _op. cit_., xix., I, also describes this expedition.]

[Note 3: Nunez was poor and only found a.s.sistance from a merchant of Seville called Guerro, on condition that the latter's brother, Christobal, should command the one ship his loan sufficed to provide.

This vessel was only fifty tons burden, and carried a crew of thirty-three persons.]

Upon entering this harbour he found a number of houses scattered along the banks, but when he landed it was discovered to be a group of eight houses; about fifty men, led by their chief, promptly came from a populous village only three miles distant. These men, who were naked, invited Alonzo Nunez to land on their coast, and he consented. He distributed some needles, bracelets, rings, gla.s.s pearls, and other pedlar's trifles amongst them, and in less than an hour he obtained from them in exchange fifteen ounces of the pearls they wore on their necks and arms. The natives embraced Nunez affectionately, insisting more and more that he should come to their village, where they promised to give him any amount of pearls he might desire. The next day at dawn the ship drew near to the village and anch.o.r.ed. The entire population a.s.sembled and begged the men to land, but Nunez, seeing that they were very numerous and considering that he had only thirty men, did not venture to trust himself to them. He made them understand by signs and gestures that they should come to the ship in barques and canoes. These barques, like the others, are dug out of a single tree-trunk, but are less well shaped and less easy to handle than those used by the cannibals and the natives of Hispaniola. They are called _gallitas_. The natives all brought strings of pearls, which are called _tenoras_, and showed themselves desirous of Spanish merchandise.

They are amiable men; simple, innocent, and hospitable, as was made clear after twenty days of intercourse with them. The Spaniards very soon ceased to fear to enter their houses, which are built of wood covered with palm leaves. Their princ.i.p.al food is the meat of the sh.e.l.lfish from which they extract pearls, and their sh.o.r.es abound with such. They likewise eat the flesh of wild animals, for deer, wild-boar, rabbits whose hair and colour resemble our hares, doves, and turtle-doves exist in their country. The women keep ducks and geese about the houses, just as ours do; peac.o.c.ks fly about in the woods, but their colours are not so rich or so varied as ours and the male bird differs little from the female. Amongst the undergrowth in the swamps, pheasants are from time to time seen. The people of Curiana are skilful hunters and generally with one single arrow shot they kill beasts or birds at which they aim. The Spaniards spent several days amongst the abundance of the country. They traded four needles for a peac.o.c.k, only two for a pheasant, and one for a dove or a turtle-dove. The same, or a gla.s.s bead, was given for a goose.

In making their offers and bargaining and disputing, the natives conducted their commercial affairs just about the same as do our women when they are arguing with pedlars. As they wore no clothes, the natives were puzzled to know the use of needles, but when the Spaniards satisfied their naive curiosity by showing them that needles were useful for getting thorns from beneath the skin, and for cleaning the teeth, they conceived a great opinion of them. Another thing which pleased them even more was the colour and sound of hawk-bells, which they were ready to buy at good prices.

From the native houses the roaring of large animals[4] was audible amidst the dense and lofty forest trees, but these animals are not fierce, for, although the natives constantly wander through the woods with no other weapons than their bows and arrows, there is no recollection of any one being killed by these beasts. They brought the Spaniards as many deer and wild-boar, slain with their arrows, as the latter desired. They did not possess cattle or goats or sheep, and they ate bread made of roots and bread made of grain the same as the islanders of Hispaniola. Their hair is black, thick, half curly, and long. They try to spoil the whiteness of their teeth, for almost the entire day they chew a herb which blackens them, and when they spit it out, they wash their mouth. It is the women who labour in the fields rather than the men, the latter spending their time in hunting, fighting, or leading dances and games.

[Note 4: Supposed to have been tapirs, animals unknown in Europe.]

Pitchers, cups with handles, and pots are their earthenware utensils, which they procure from elsewhere, for they frequently hold markets, which all the neighbouring tribes attend, each bringing the products of his country to be exchanged for those of other places. In fact, there is n.o.body who is not delighted to obtain what is not to be had at home, because the love of novelty is an essential sentiment of human nature. They hang little birds and other small animals, artistically worked in base gold,[5] to their pearls. These trinkets they obtain by trade, and the metal resembles the German gold used for coining florins.

[Note 5: A kind of alloyed gold called by the natives _guanin_; the Spaniards were often deceived by its glitter.]

The men either carry their private parts enclosed in a little gourd which has been opened at the back, like our cod-piece, or they use a seash.e.l.l. The gourd hangs from a cord tied round the waist.[6] The presence of the animals above mentioned, and many other indications not found in any of the islands, afford evidence that this land is a continent. The most conclusive proof[7] seems to be that the Spaniards followed the coast of Paria for a distance of about three thousand miles always in a westerly direction, but without discovering any end to it. When asked whence they procured their gold, the people of Curiana answered that it came from a country called Cauchieta situated about six suns distant (which means six days) to the west, and that it was the artisans of that region who worked the gold into the form in which they saw it. The Spaniards sailed towards Cauchieta and anch.o.r.ed there near the sh.o.r.e on the calends of November, 1500. The natives fearlessly approached and brought them gold, which in its rough state is not valued amongst them. The people also wore pearls round their throats; but these came from Curiana, where they had been obtained in exchange for gold, and none of them wanted to part with anything they had obtained by trade. That is to say the people of Curiana kept their gold, and the people of Cauchieta their pearls, so that very little gold was obtained at Cauchieta.[8] The Spaniards brought away some very pretty monkeys and a number of parrots of varied colours, from that country.

[Note 6: The text continues: _alibi in eo tractu intra v.a.g.i.n.am mentularemque nervum reduc.u.n.t, funiculoque praeputium alligant_.]

[Note 7: Navarrete, iii., 14.]

[Note 8: _Auri tamen parum apud Cauchietenses: lectum reperere_ meaning, doubtless, that they traded away most of their gold for pearls.]

The temperature in the month of November was delicious, without a sign of cold. Each evening the stars which mark the north pole disappeared, so near is that region to the equator; but it was not possible to calculate precisely the polar degrees. The natives are sensible and not suspicious, and some of the people of Curiana pa.s.sed the entire night in company with our men, coming out in their barques to join them. Pearls they call _corixas_. They are jealous, and when strangers visit them, they make their women withdraw behind the house, from whence the latter examine the guests as though they were prodigies.

Cotton is plentiful and grows wild in Cauchieta, just as shrubs do in our forests, and of this they make trousers which they wear.

Continuing their course along the same coast, the Spaniards suddenly encountered about two thousand men armed according to the fashion of the country, who prevented them from landing. They were so barbarous and ferocious that it was impossible to establish the smallest relations with them or to effect any trade; so, as our men were satisfied with the pearls they had procured, they returned by the same course to Curiana, where they remained for another twenty days bountifully supplied with provisions.

It seems to me neither out of place nor useless to this history, to here narrate what happened when they arrived within sight of the coasts of Paria. They encountered by chance a squadron of eighteen canoes full of cannibals engaged in a man-hunt: this was near the Boca de la Sierpe and the strait leading to the gulf of Paria, which I have before described. The cannibals unconcernedly approached the ship, surrounding it, and shooting flights of arrows and javelins at our men. The Spaniards replied by a cannon shot, which promptly scattered them. In pursuing them, the ship's boat came up with one of their canoes, but was able to capture only a single cannibal and a bound prisoner, the others having all escaped by swimming. This prisoner burst into tears, and by his gestures and rolling his eyes, gave it to be understood that six of his companions had been cruelly disembowelled, cut into pieces, and devoured by those monsters, and that the same fate awaited him on the morrow. They made him a present of the cannibal, upon whom he immediately threw himself, gnashing his teeth and belabouring him with blows of a stick and his fists and with kicks, for he believed that the death of his companions would not be sufficiently avenged till he beheld the cannibal insensible and beaten black and blue. When questioned as to the customs and usages of the cannibals when they made expeditions to other countries, he said they always carried with them, wherever they went, sticks prepared beforehand which they planted in the ground at the place of their encampment, and beneath whose shelter they pa.s.sed the night.

Hanging over the door of one of the chieftains in Curiana, the Spaniards found the head of a cannibal, which was regarded as a sort of standard or helmet captured from the enemy, and const.i.tuted a great honour for this chief.

There is a district on the coast of Paria, called Haraia, which is remarkable for a peculiar kind of salt found there. It is a vast plain over which the waves of the sea are driven in heavy weather and when the waves subside and the sun comes out, the pools of water crystallise into ma.s.ses of the whitest salt, in sufficient quant.i.ty for the natives to load all the ships that sail, did they arrive before it rained. The first rainfall melts the salt, which is then absorbed by the sands and thus returns through fissures in the earth, to the sea which produces it. Others pretend that this plain is not inundated by the sea, but that it possesses saline springs, more bitter than sea water, which send forth their waters when the tempest rages. The natives set great store on these salines, and they not only use the salt in the same way that we do, but they mould it into brick-shaped forms and trade it to foreigners for articles which they do not themselves possess.

The bodies of the chiefs of the country are laid upon biers under which a slow fire is lighted which consumes the flesh, little by little, but leaves the bones and the skin intact. These dried bodies are then piously preserved, as though they were their _penates_. The Spaniards say that in one district they saw a man being thus dried for preservation and in another a woman.

When, on the eighth day of the ides of February, the Spaniards were ready to leave the country of Curiana, they found they had ninety-six pounds of pearls at eight ounces to the pound, which they had obtained at an average price of five cents.

Although their return voyage was shorter than when they came from Hispaniola, it lasted sixty-one days, because continual currents running from east to west not only r.e.t.a.r.ded their speed, but sometimes completely stopped the ship. Finally they arrived, loaded with pearls like other people come loaded with straw. The commander, Pedro Alonzo Nunez, concealed an important quant.i.ty of valuable pearls, and thus cheated the royal revenues, to which a fifth of all merchandise belongs.[9] His fellows denounced him, and Fernando de Vega, a learned statesman, who was Governor of Galicia where they landed, arrested him, and he was held in prison for a long time, but was finally released; and even to this day he still claims they robbed him of his share of the pearls. Many of these stones are as large as nuts, and resemble oriental pearls, but as they are badly pierced, they are less valuable.

[Note 9: Navarrete, iii., 78. The treasure was sold in August, 1501, and the proceeds divided among the sailors.]

One day, when lunching with the ill.u.s.trious Duke of Medina-Sidonia in Seville, I saw one of these pearls which had been presented to him. It weighed more than a hundred ounces, and I was charmed by its beauty and brilliancy. Some people claim that Nunez did not find these pearls at Curiana, which is more than one hundred and twenty leagues distant from Boca de la Sierpe, but in the little districts of c.u.mana and Manacapana near by the Boca and the island of Margarita. They declare that Curiana is not rich in pearls. This question has not been decided; so let us treat of another subject. You now perceive what, in the course of years, may be the value of this newly discovered country and western coasts, since after a superficial exploration they have yielded such evidences of wealth.

BOOK IX

TO THE SAME CARDINAL LUDOVICO D'ARAGON

Vincent Yanez Pinzon and his nephew Arias, who accompanied the Admiral Columbus on his first voyage as captains of two of the smaller vessels which I have above described as caravels, desirous of undertaking new expeditions and making fresh discoveries, built at their own expense four caravels in their native port of Palos, as it is called by the Spaniards.[1] They sought the authorisation of the King and towards the calends of December, 1499, they left port. Now Palos is on the western coast of Spain, situated about seventy-two miles distant from Cadiz and sixty-four miles from Seville in Andalusia, and all the inhabitants without exception are seafaring people, exclusively occupied in navigation.

[Note 1: An interesting account of this expedition may be read in Washington Irving's _Companions of Columbus_; see also Navarrete, _op.

cit_., 82, 102, 113.]

Pinzon coasted along the Fortunate Isles,[2] and first laid his course for the Hesperides, otherwise called the islands of Cape Verde, or still better, the Medusian Gorgons. Sailing directly south on the ides of January, from that island of the Hesperides called by the Portuguese San Juan, they sailed before the south-west wind for about three hundred leagues, after which they lost sight of the north star.

As soon as it disappeared they were caught in winds and currents and continual tempests, though in spite of these great dangers they accomplished by the aid of this wind two hundred and forty leagues.

The north star was no longer to be seen. They are in contradiction with the ancient poets, philosophers, and cosmographers over the question whether that portion of the world on the equinoctial line is or is not an inaccessible desert. The Spaniards affirm that it is inhabited by numerous peoples,[3] while the ancient writers maintain that it is uninhabitable because of the perpendicular rays of the sun.

I must admit, however, that even amongst ancient authorities some have been found who sought to maintain that that part of the world was habitable.[4] When I asked the sailors of the Pinzons if they had seen the polar star to the south, they said that they had seen no star resembling the polar star of our hemisphere, but they did see entirely different stars,[5] and hanging on the higher horizon a thick sort of vapour which shut off the view. They believe that the middle part of the globe rises to a ridge,[6] and that the antarctic star is perceptible after that elevation is pa.s.sed. At all events they have seen constellations entirely different from those of our hemisphere.

Such is their story, which I give you as they told it. _Davi sunt, non Oedipi_.[7]

[Note 2: Meaning the Canaries in which the ancients placed the Garden of the Hesperides. From them Ptolemy began to reckon longitude.

The names Hesperia, Hesperides, Hesperus, etc., were used to indicate the west; thus Italy is spoken of by Macrobius: _illi nam scilicet Graeci a stella Hespero dic.u.n.t Venus et Hesperia Italia quae occasui sit_; Saturnalium, lib. i., cap. iii. Ptolemy likewise says: _Italia Hesperia ab Hespero Stella quod illius occasui subjecta sit_, and again in his _Historia tripart.i.ta_, lib. viii: _Quum Valentinia.n.u.s Imperator as oras Hesperias navigaret, id est ad Italiam, et Hispaniam_. Elsewhere the same author mentions the islands off the west coast of Africa, of which he received some vague information as: _Incognitam terram qui communi vocabulo Hesperi appellantur Ethiopes_.

Pliny, Strabo, in the last chapter _De Situ Orbis_, Diodorus, and others make similar usage of the terms. St. Anselm, _De Imagine Mundi_, lib. i., cap. xx., _Juxta has, scilicet Gorgonas Hesperidum ortus_; Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. cap. ix., x., xi.]

[Note 3: The sub-equatorial regions of Africa had already been visited by numerous navigators since the time of Prince Henry of Portugal, and the fact that they were inhabited was well known to the Spaniards.]

[Note 4: Plato, Cicero, Aristotle, Anaxagoras, Mela, and others were amongst those who believed in the existence of the Antipodes.]

[Note 5: Aristotle, _De Caelo et Terra_, ii., 14. The constellation of the Southern Cross was known from the writings of the Arab geographers.]

[Note 6: First noted by Columbus in a letter written from Hispaniola in October, 1498.]

[Note 7: _Davus sum non Oedipus_, Andria, Act I, Scene II. The quotation, transposed by Martyr from the singular into the plural number, is from Terrence, Davus being a comic character in the comedy of _Andria_.]

On the seventh day of the calends of February, land was finally discovered on the horizon.[8] As the sea was troubled, soundings were taken and the bottom found at sixteen fathoms. Approaching the coast they landed at a place where they remained two entire days without seeing a single inhabitant, though some traces of human beings were found on the banks. After writing their names and the name of the King, with some details of their landing, on the trees and rocks, the Spaniards departed. Guiding themselves by some fires they saw during the night, they encountered not far from their first landing-place a tribe encamped and sleeping in the open air. They decided not to disturb them until daybreak and when the sun rose forty men, carrying arms, marched towards the natives. Upon seeing them, thirty-two savages, armed with bows and javelins, advanced, followed by the rest of the troop armed in like manner. Our men relate that these natives were larger than Germans or Hungarians. With frowning eyes and menacing looks they scanned our compatriots, who thought it unwise to use their arms against them. Whether they acted thus out of fear or to prevent them running away, I am ignorant, but at any rate, they sought to attract the natives by gentle words and by offering them presents; but the natives showed themselves determined to have no relation with the Spaniards, refusing to trade and holding themselves ready to fight. They limited themselves to listening to the Spaniards' speech and watching their gestures, after which both parties separated.

The natives fled the following night at midnight, abandoning their encampment.

[Note 8: The present Cape San Augustin; it was sighted Jan. 28, 1500, and named Santa Maria de la Consolacion.]

The Spaniards describe these people as a vagabond race similar to the Scythians, who had no fixed abode but wandered with their wives and children from one country to another at the harvest seasons. They swear that the footprints left upon the sand show them to have feet twice as large as those of a medium-sized man.[9] Continuing their voyage, the Spaniards arrived at the mouth of another river, which was, however, too shallow for the caravels to enter. Four shallops of soldiers were therefore sent to land and reconnoitre. They observed on a hillock near the bank a group of natives, to whom they sent a messenger to invite them to trade. It is thought the natives wanted to capture one of the Spaniards and take him with them, for, in exchange for a hawk's-bell which he had offered them as an attraction, they threw a golden wedge of a cubit's length towards the messenger, and when the Spaniard stooped to take up the piece of gold, the natives surrounded him in less time than it takes to tell it, and tried to drag him off. He managed to defend himself against his a.s.sailants, using his sword and buckler until such time as his companions in the boats could come to his a.s.sistance. To conclude in a few words, since you spoke to me so urgently of your approaching departure, the natives killed eight of the Spaniards and wounded several others with their arrows and javelins. They attacked the barques with great daring from the river banks, seeking to drag the boats ash.o.r.e; although they were killed like sheep by sword strokes and lance thrusts (for they were naked); they did not on that account yield. They even succeeded in carrying off one of the barques, which was empty, and whose pilot had been struck by an arrow and killed. The other barques succeeded in escaping, and thus the Spaniards left these barbarous natives.

[Note 9: One of the numerous tales of giants in America, which circulated and for a long time obtained credence.]

Much saddened by the loss of their companions, the Spaniards followed the same coast in a north-westerly direction and, after proceeding some forty leagues, they arrived at a sea whose waters are sufficiently fresh to admit of their replenishing their supply of drinking water. Seeking the cause of this phenomenon they discovered that several swift rivers which pour down from the mountains came together at that point, and flowed into the sea.[10] A number of islands dotted this sea, which are described as remarkable for their fertility and numerous population. The natives are gentle and sociable, but these qualities are of little use to them because they do not possess the gold or precious stones which the Spaniards seek.

Thirty-six of them were taken prisoners. The natives call that entire region Mariatambal. The country to the east of this great river is called Canomora, and that on the west Paricora. The natives gave it to be understood by signs that in the interior of the country gold of good quality was found. Continuing their march, directly north, but always following the windings of the coast, the Spaniards again sighted the polar star. All this coast is a part of Paria, that land so rich in pearls which Columbus himself discovered, as we have related; he being the real author of these discoveries. The coast reconnoitred by the Pinzons continues past the Boca de la Sierpe, already described, and the districts of c.u.mana, Manacapana, Curiana, Cauchieta, and Cauchibachoa, and it is thought that it extends to the continent of India.[11] It is evident that this coast is too extended to belong to an island, and yet, if one takes it altogether, the whole universe may be called an island.[12]

[Note 10: Possibly the estuary of the Amazon.]

[Note 11: _Propterea Gangetidis Indiae continentem putans_. The Ruysch map (1516) shows the junction of the American continent with Asia.]

[Note 12: _Licet universum terrae, orbem, large sumptum, insulam dicere fas sit_.]