Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers Part 1

Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers.

by Various.

PREFACE

"Peace hath her victories No less renown'd than war."

The love of adventure, the expectation of the unexpected, have ever prompted men stout of heart, and ready of resource, to brave the perils of wilderness and sea that they might set their feet where man never trod before. The world owes much to the explorers who have faced hostile savages, stood in jeopardy from the cobra and the lion, the foes as deadly which lurk in the brook which quenches thirst. A traveller like Clarke takes his life in his hands. He breaks a path which leads he knows not whither: it may bring him to a sh.o.r.e whence he has no ship to sail from; it may end in an abyss he cannot bridge. The thickets rend and sting him, poison may colour a tempting grain or berry, frost may deaden his energies and lull him to the sleep that knows no waking. He has but little aid from science: beyond food and medicine he carries little more than a watch, a compa.s.s, a rifle, and a cartridge belt.

Beyond all instruments and weapons are his skill, agility, gumption, diplomacy. And these resources in no mean measure are shared by the man for whom he prepares the way, the immigrant, who, in the early days of settlement, requires a constancy even higher than the explorer's own.

It is one thing to traverse a wilderness under the excitement of hourly adventure; it is another thing to stay there for a lifetime and convert it to a home.

The race of American explorers is not extinct. Major Powell is with us to-day, hale and hearty still. Peary, in the prime of his powers, is as capital an example of courage and resource as ever threw themselves upon the riddle of the frozen north. Beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles little remains unknown on earth. When at last every rood of ground and knot of sea is mapped and charted, whither shall the explorer direct his steps? He cannot repeat the conquests of Lewis and Clarke, Pike and Peary, but he need not on that account fold his hands so long as a brave heart and a quick wit are wanted in the world.

GEORGE ILES

EXPLORERS COLUMBUS DISCOVERS AMERICA

Justin Winsor

[Part of Chapter IX., "The Final Agreement and the First Voyage" from "Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery," copyright by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1892.]

So, everything being ready, on the 3rd of August, 1492, a half-hour before sunrise, he unmoored his little fleet in the stream, and, spreading his sails, the vessels pa.s.sed out of the little river roadstead of Palos, gazed after, perhaps, in the increasing light, as the little crafts reached the ocean, by the friar of Rabida, from its distant promontory of rock.

The day was Friday, and the advocates of Columbus's canonization have not failed to see a purpose in its choice as the day of our Redemption, and as that of the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre by Geoffrey de Bouillon, and of the rendition of Granada, with the fall of the Moslem power in Spain. We must resort to the books of such advocates, if we would enliven the picture with a mult.i.tude of rites and devotional feelings that they gather in the meshes of the story of the departure.

They supply to the embarkation a variety of detail that their holy purposes readily imagine, and place Columbus at last on his p.o.o.p, with the standard of the Cross, the image of the Saviour nailed to the holy wood, waving in the early breeze that heralded the day. The embellishments may be pleasing, but they are not of the strictest authenticity.

In order that his performance of an emba.s.sy to the princes of the East might be duly chronicled, Columbus determined, as his journal says, to keep an account of the voyage by the west, "by which course," he says, "unto the present time, we do not know, _for certain_, that any one has pa.s.sed." It was his purpose to write down, as he proceeded, everything he saw and all that he did, and to make a chart of his discoveries, and to show the directions of his track.

Nothing occurred during those early August days to mar his run to the Canaries, except the apprehension which he felt that an accident, happening to the rudder of the _Pinta_,--a steering gear now for some time in use, in place of the old lateral blades,--was a trick of two men, her owners, Gomez Rascon and Christopher Quintero, to impede a voyage in which they had no heart. The Admiral knew the disposition of these men well enough not to be surprised at the mishap, but he tried to feel secure in the prompt energy of Pinzon, who commanded the _Pinta_.

As he pa.s.sed (August 24-25, 1492) the peak of Teneriffe, it was the time of an eruption, of which he makes bare mention in his journal. It is to the corresponding pa.s.sage of the _Historie_, [written by his son, Fernando,] that we owe the somewhat sensational stories of the terrors of the sailors, some of whom certainly must long have been accustomed to like displays in the volcanoes of the Mediterranean.

At the Gran Canarie the _Nina_ was left to have her lateen sails changed to square ones; and the _Pinta_, it being found impossible to find a better vessel to take her place, was also left to be overhauled for her leaks, and to have her rudder again repaired, while Columbus visited Gomera, another of the islands. The fleet was reunited at Gomera on September 2. Here he fell in with some residents of the Ferro, the westermost of the group, who repeated the old stories of land occasionally seen from its heights, lying towards the setting sun.

Having taken on board wood, water, and provisions, Columbus finally sailed from Gomera on the morning of Thursday, September 6. He seems to have soon spoken a vessel from Ferro, and from this he learned that three Portuguese caravels were lying in wait for him in the neighbourhood of that island, with a purpose, as he thought, of visiting in some way upon him, for having gone over to the interests of Spain, the indignation of the Portuguese king. He escaped encountering them.

Up to Sunday, September 9, they had experienced so much calm weather, that their progress had been slow. This tediousness soon raised an apprehension in the mind of Columbus that the voyage might prove too long for the constancy of his men. He accordingly determined to falsify his reckoning. This deceit was a large confession of his own timidity in dealing with his crew, and it marked the beginning of a long struggle with deceived and mutinous subordinates, which forms so large a part of the record of his subsequent career.

The result of Monday's sail, which he knew to be sixty leagues, he noted as forty-eight, so that the distance from home might appear less than it was. He continued to practise this deceit.

The distances given by Columbus are those of dead reckoning beyond any question. Lieutenant Murdock, of the United States Navy, who has commented on this voyage, makes his league the equivalent of three modern nautical miles, and his mile about three-quarters of our present estimate for that distance. Navarrete says that Columbus reckoned in Italian miles, which are a quarter less than Spanish miles. The Admiral had expected to make land after sailing about seven hundred leagues from Ferro; and in ordering his vessels in case of separation to proceed westward, he warned them when they sailed that distance to come to the wind at night, and only to proceed by day.

The log as at present understood in navigation had not yet been devised.

Columbus depended in judging of his distance on the eye alone, basing his calculations on the pa.s.sage of objects or bubbles past the ship, while the running out of his hour gla.s.ses afforded the multiple for long distances.

On Thursday, the 13th of September, he notes that the ships were encountering adverse currents. He was now three degrees west of Flores, and the needle of the compa.s.s pointed as it had never been observed before, directly to the true north. His observation of this fact marks a significant point in the history of navigation. The polarity of the magnet, an ancient possession of the Chinese, had been known perhaps for three hundred years, when this new spirit of discovery awoke in the fifteenth century. The Indian Ocean and its traditions were to impart, perhaps through the Arabs, perhaps through the returning Crusaders, a knowledge of the magnet to the dwellers on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, and to the hardier mariners who had pushed beyond the pillars of Hercules, so that the new route to that same Indian Ocean was made possible in the fifteenth century. The way was prepared for it gradually. The Catalans from the port of Barcelona pushed out into the great Sea of Darkness under the direction of their needles, as early at least as the twelfth century. The pilots of Genoa and Venice, the hardy Majorcans and the adventurous Moors, were followers of almost equal temerity.

A knowledge of the variation of the needle came more slowly to be known to the mariners of the Mediterranean. It had been observed by Peregrini as early as 1269, but that knowledge of it which rendered it greatly serviceable in voyages does not seem to be plainly indicated in any of the charts of these transition centuries, till we find it laid down on the maps of Andrea Bianco in 1436.

It was no new thing then when Columbus, as he sailed westward, marked the variation, proceeding from the northeast more and more westerly; but it was a revelation when he came to a position where the magnetic north and the north star stood in conjunction, as they did on this 13th of September, 1492. As he still moved westerly the magnetic line was found to move farther and farther away from the pole as it had before the 13th approached it. To an observer of Columbus's quick perceptions, there was a ready guess to possess his mind. This inference was that this line of no variation was a meridian line, and that divergence from it east and west might have a regularity which would be found to furnish a method of ascertaining longitude far easier and surer than tables or water clocks.

We know that four years later he tried to sail his ship on observations of this kind. The same idea seems to have occurred to Sebastian Cabot, when a little afterwards he approached and pa.s.sed in a higher lat.i.tude, what he supposed to be the meridian of no variation. Humboldt is inclined to believe that the possibility of such a method of ascertaining longitude was that uncommunicable secret, which Sebastian Cabot many years later hinted at on his death-bed.

The claim was made near a century later by Livio Sanuto in his _Geographia_, published at Venice, in 1588, that Sebastian Cabot had been the first to observe this variation, and had explained it to Edward VI., and that he had on a chart placed the line of no variation at a point one hundred and ten miles west of the island of Flores in the Azores.

These observations of Columbus and Cabot were not wholly accepted during the sixteenth century. Robert Hues, in 1592, a hundred years later, tells us that Medina, the Spanish grand pilot, was not disinclined to believe that mariners saw more in it than really existed and that they found it a convenient way to excuse their own blunders. Nonius was credited with saying that it simply meant that worn-out magnets were used, which had lost their power to point correctly to the pole. Others had contended that it was through insufficient application of the loadstone to the iron that it was so devious in its work.

What was thought possible by the early navigators possessed the minds of all seamen in varying experiments for two centuries and a half. Though not reaching such satisfactory results as were hoped for, the expectation did not prove so chimerical as was sometimes imagined when it was discovered that the lines of variation were neither parallel, nor straight, nor constant. The line of no variation which Columbus found near the Azores had moved westward with erratic inclinations, until to-day it is not far from a straight line from Carolina to Guinea.

Science, beginning with its crude efforts at the hands of Alonzo de Santa Cruz, in 1530, has so mapped the surface of the globe with observations of its multifarious freaks of variation, and the changes are so slow, that a magnetic chart is not a bad guide to-day for ascertaining the longitude in any lat.i.tude for a few years neighbouring to the date of its records. So science has come around in some measure to the dreams of Columbus and Cabot.

But this was not the only development which came from this ominous day in the mid-Atlantic in that September of 1492. The fancy of Columbus was easily excited, and notions of a change of climate, and even aberration of the stars were easily imagined by him amid the strange phenomena of that untracked waste.

While Columbus was suspecting that the north star was somewhat wilfully shifting from the magnetic pole, now to a distance of 5 and then of 10, the calculations of modern astronomers have gauged the polar distance existing in 1492 at 3 28', as against the 1 20' of to-day.

The confusion of Columbus was very like his confounding an old world with a new, inasmuch as he supposed it was the pole star and not the needle which was shifting.

He argued from what he saw, or what he thought he saw, that the line of no variation marked the beginning of a protuberance of the earth, up which he ascended as he sailed westerly, and that this was the reason of the cooler weather which he experienced. He never got over some notions of this kind, and he believed he found confirmation of them in his later voyages.

Even as early as the reign of Edward III. of England, Nicholas of Lynn, a voyager to the northern seas, is thought to have definitely fixed the magnetic pole in the Arctic regions, transmitting his views to Cnoyen, the master of the later Mercator, in respect to the four circ.u.mpolar islands, which in the sixteenth century made so constant a surrounding of the north pole.

The next day (September 14), after these magnetic observations, a water wagtail was seen from the _Nina_,--a bird which Columbus thought unaccustomed to fly over twenty-five leagues from land, and the ships were now, according to their reckoning, not far from two hundred leagues from the Canaries. On Sat.u.r.day they saw a distant bolt of fire fall into the sea. On Sunday, they had a drizzling rain, followed by pleasant weather, which reminded Columbus of the nightingales, gladdening the climate of Andalusia in April. They found around the ships much green floatage of weeds, which led them to think some islands must be near.

Navarrete thinks there was some truth in this, inasmuch as the charts of the early part of this century represent breakers as having been seen in 1802, near the spot where Columbus can be computed to have been at this time. Columbus was in fact within that extensive _prairie_ of floating seaweed which is known as the Sarga.s.so Sea, whose princ.i.p.al longitudinal axis is found in modern times to lie along the parallel of 41 30', and the best calculations which can be made from the rather uncertain data of Columbus's journal seem to point to about the same position.

There is nothing in all these accounts, as we have them abridged by La Casas, to indicate any great surprise, and certainly nothing of the overwhelming fear which, the _Historie_ tells us, the sailors experienced when they found their ships among these floating ma.s.ses of weeds, raising apprehension of a perpetual entanglement in their swashing folds.

The next day (September 17) the currents became favourable, and the weeds still floated about them. The variation of the needle now became so great that the seamen were dismayed, as the journal says, and the observation being repeated Columbus practised another deceit and made it appear that there had been really no variation, but only a shifting of the polar star! The weeds were now judged to be river weeds, and a live crab was found among them,--a sure sign of near land, as Columbus believed, or affected to believe. They killed a tunny and saw others.

They again observed a water wagtail, "which does not sleep at sea." Each ship pushed on for the advance, for it was thought the goal was near.

The next day the _Pinta_ shot ahead and saw great flocks of birds towards the west. Columbus conceived that the sea was growing, fresher.

Heavy clouds hung on the northern horizon, a sure sign of land, it was supposed.

On the next day two pelicans came on board, and Columbus records that these birds are not accustomed to go twenty leagues from land. So he sounded with a line of two hundred fathoms to be sure he was not approaching land; but no bottom was found. A drizzling rain also betokened land, which they could not stop to find, but would search for on their return, as the journal says. The pilots now compared their reckonings. Columbus said they were 400 leagues, while the _Pinta's_ record showed 420, and the _Nina's_ 440.

On September 20 other pelicans came on board; and the ships were again among the weeds. Columbus was determined to ascertain if these indicated shoal water and sounded, but could not reach bottom. The men caught a bird with feet like a gull; but they were convinced it was a river bird.

Then singing land birds, as was fancied, hovered about as it darkened, but they disappeared before morning. Then a pelican was observed flying to the southwest, and as "these birds sleep on sh.o.r.e, and go to sea in the morning," the men encouraged themselves with the belief that they could not be far from land. The next day a whale could be but another indication of land; and the weeds covered the sea all about. On Sat.u.r.day, they steered west by northwest, and got clear of the weeds.

This change of course so far to the north, which had begun on the previous day, was occasioned by a head wind, and Columbus says he welcomed it, because it had the effect of convincing the sailors that westerly winds to return by were not impossible. On Sunday (September 23), they found the wind still varying; but they made more westering than before,--weeds, crabs, and birds still about them. Now there was smooth water, which again depressed the seamen; then the sea arose, mysteriously, for there was no wind to cause it. They still kept their course westerly and continued it till the night of September 25.

Columbus at this time conferred with Pinzon, as to a chart which they carried, which showed some islands, near where they now supposed the ships to be. That they had not seen land, they believed was either due to currents which had carried them too far north, or else their reckoning was not correct. At sunset Pinzon hailed the Admiral, and said he saw land, claiming the reward. The two crews were confident that such was the case, and under the lead of their commanders they all kneeled and repeated the _Gloria in Excelsis_. The land appeared to lie southwest, and everybody saw the apparition. Columbus changed the fleet's course to reach it; and as the vessels went on, in the smooth sea, the men had the heart, under their expectation, to bathe in its amber glories. On Wednesday, they were undeceived, and found that the clouds had played them a trick. On the 27th their course lay more directly west. So they went on, and still remarked upon all the birds they saw and weed-drift which they pierced. Some of the fowl they thought to be such as were common at the Cape Verde Islands, and were not supposed to go far to sea. On the 30th of September, they still observed the needles of their compa.s.ses to vary, but the journal records that it was the pole star which moved, and not the needle. On October 1, Columbus says they were 707 leagues from Ferro; but he had made his crew believe they were only 584. As they went on, little new for the next few days is recorded in the journal; but on October 3, they thought they saw among the weeds something like fruits. By the 6th, Pinzon began to urge a southwesterly course, in order to find the islands, which the signs seemed to indicate in that direction. Still the Admiral would not swerve from his purpose, and kept his course westerly. On Sunday the _Nina_ fired a bombard and hoisted a flag as a signal that she saw land, but it proved a delusion. Observing towards evening a flock of birds flying to the southwest, the Admiral yielded to Pinzon's belief, and shifted his course to follow the birds. He records as a further reason for it that it was by following the flights of birds that the Portuguese had been so successful in discovering islands in other seas.

Columbus now found himself two hundred miles and more farther than the three thousand miles west of Spain, where he supposed c.i.p.ango to lie, and he was 25-1/2 north of the equator, according to his astrolabe. The true distance of c.i.p.ango or j.a.pan was sixty-eight hundred miles still farther, or beyond both North America and the Pacific. How much beyond that island, in its supposed geographical position, Columbus expected to find the Asiatic main we can only conjecture from the restorations which modern scholars have made of Toscanelli's map, which makes the island about 10 east of Asia, and from Behaim's globe, which makes it 20. It should be borne in mind that the knowledge of its position came from Marco Polo, and he does not distinctly say how far it was from the Asiatic coast. In a general way, as to these distances from Spain to China, Toscanelli and Behaim agreed, and there is no reason to believe that the views of Columbus were in any noteworthy degree different.

In the trial years afterward, when the Fiscal contested the rights of Diego Colon, it was put in evidence by one Vallejo, a seaman, that Pinzon was induced to urge the direction to be changed to the southwest, because he had in the preceding evening observed a flight of parrots in that direction, which could have only been seeking land. It was the main purpose of the evidence in this part of the trial to show that Pinzon had all along forced Columbus forward against his will.

How pregnant this change of course in the vessels of Columbus was has not escaped the observation of Humboldt and many others. A day or two further on his westerly way, and the Gulf Stream would, perhaps, insensibly have borne the little fleet up the Atlantic coast of the future United States, so that the banner of Castile might have been planted at Carolina.

On the 7th of October, Columbus was pretty nearly in lat.i.tude 25 50',--that of one of the Bahama Islands. Just where he was by longitude there is much more doubt, probably between 65 and 66. On the next day the land birds flying along the course of the ships seemed to confirm their hopes. On the 10th the journal records that the men began to lose patience; but the Admiral rea.s.sured them by reminding them of the profits in store for them, and of the folly of seeking to return when they had already gone so far.