Ten Great Events in History Part 7

"I bless thee, and thou shalt be blest!"

CHAPTER V.

_COLUMBUS AND THE NEW WORLD._

THE TIME.

1. Columbus lived in a stirring age. Everywhere light was breaking in after centuries of darkness, and all Europe was restless with suggestions and beginnings of new life. Great men were plenty; rulers, like the Medici of Florence; artists, like Raphael and Angelo; preachers, like Savonarola, whose fiery prophecies brought him to fiery death; reformers, chief among diem Luther, just beginning to think the thoughts that later set the world agog. Great inventions were spreading; gun-powder, invented before, now becoming terribly effective through the improvement in guns; printing, suddenly opening knowledge to every cla.s.s; the little compa.s.s, with which mariners were just beginning to trust themselves boldly on the seas, in spite of the popular impression that it was a sort of infernal machine presided over by the devil himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHIPS OF COLUMBUS]

2. And to this age had been bequeathed the fascinating stories of Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo, stories to make every boy crazy to be off to seek his fortune. From their travels in Asia these men had brought back the most remarkable accounts of the eastern lands. A country was there, they said, called Cathay, bordering on the sea. It was ruled by an emperor, the Kubla Khan, or Great Khan, who lighted his bedroom with a bright jewel half a foot long, set upon golden pillars, and decorated his walls with wrought gold and hundreds of precious stones. The rivers of the land were crossed by marble bridges, and the houses were roofed and paved with gold. The seas were full of islands where spices grew and countless strange creatures lived: one-eyed men; men with a lip long enough to cover their whole face; men with only one foot, but that so large that they held it over them like an umbrella when they lay down in the sun to rest; two-headed men and men with no heads at all; men whose only food was snakes, and others whose favorite beverage was human blood; dragons and unicorns; woolly hens and sheep that grew on trees; and in one island a valley where only devils dwelt. But there were besides great hills of gold, cities with towers of silver and gold, precious stones of all kinds, and rose-tinted pearls, big and round.

3. There was trade between Europe and certain parts of Asia which they called the Indies, and reached by going east and south by land; but this marvelous country of the Grand Khan lay beyond, and its riches remained a golden dream, known only by the travelers' reports. That was what was known of Asia. Of Africa, even less; for, fifty years before Columbus was born, only a strip across the northern part of it was known, and south of that lay "nothing," said the people. And of America, our wide-stretching America, they never dreamed.

4. Some fifty years before the birth of Columbus, Prince Henry of Portugal, studying the matter, came to the conclusion that the world did not necessarily end at "Cape Nothing," on the African coast, as people said, but perhaps extended a long way farther; and, having an abundance of time and money, he began to send out ships to sail along beyond the cape and see what they could find. And they found a long, long coast. Year after year, until the prince was a gray-haired old man, he sent out vessel after vessel; and, though often storm-driven and wrecked, and unsuccessful, they many times came back with accounts of new discoveries. One by one they brought the numerous islands lying off the northwest coast of Africa to the notice of the people of Europe. And after they once got past that mysterious "Cape Nothing,"

they sailed along the coast, going farther and farther on successive voyages, until, in 1487, long after Prince Henry's death, and just before Columbus's great voyage, the most southern point was rounded, the African continent was known, and the long-sought water-way to the Indies was established.

THE IDEA.

5. As to the date of Columbus's birth, historians can not agree within some ten years. It was doubtless some where between 1435 and 1446.

They also give different accounts as to his birthplace; but it seems most probable that he was born in Genoa, on the Mediterranean, the son of a wool-carder, and that he went to school in Pavia. At fourteen he became a sailor.

6. Up and down the seas, first in the sunny Mediterranean, later along the stormy Atlantic coast, sailed the lad, the young man, in the small sailing vessels of the time, and learned well the ocean which he afterward so boldly trusted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View of Genoa]

7. He was a daring, quick-witted, handsome, bronzed young man when he went to Lisbon, where his brother Bartholomew was established as a cosmographer, making charts for seamen; and with all his enthusiasm for his sea-faring life, he had enough interest in ordinary pursuits to fall in love most romantically. It happened on account of his being so regular at church. Every day he must attend service, and every day to church came Donna Philippa Palestrello, who lived in a convent near by. Across the seats flitted involuntary glances between the cloistered maiden and the handsome brown sailor--with a dimple in his chin, some pictures have him; something besides prayers were read between the lines of the prayer-book, and the marriage which closed this churchly wooing proved the wisdom of both parties.

8. Philippa's father had been one of Prince Henry's famous seamen and the governor of Porto Santo, one of the new-found islands; and after his marriage, Columbus lived sometimes at Porto Santo, sometimes at Lisbon, and much of the time on the sea. He sailed south along the African coast to Guinea; north he sailed to England, and farther on to Iceland. Wherever ships could go, there went he, intent on learning all there was to know of the world he lived in. He read eagerly all that was written about the earth's shape and size. The modern science of his time he well understood. He pored over the maps of the ancient geographer Ptolemy, over the maps of Cosmas, a later geographer, over Palestrello's charts, given him by Philippa's mother.

9. Ptolemy said the world is round, but Cosmas, whom good Christians were bound to believe, since he founded his science on the Bible, said it is flat, with a wall around it to hold up the sky--very probable, certainly. But that notion of the ancients that the world is "round like a ball" had been caught up and believed by a handful of men scattered spa.r.s.ely down through the centuries, and of late lead gained, among advanced scientists, more of a following than ever. And Columbus, who, with all his enthusiasm for adventure and his reverence for religion and he church, had a clear, unbiased, scientific head, mentally turned his back upon Cosmas, and clasped hands with the ancients and the wisest scientists of his own day.

10. The north was known, the south was fast becoming so, the east had been penetrated, but the west was unexplored. Stretching along from Thule, the distant Iceland, to the southern part of the great African continent, thousands of miles, lay the "Sea of Darkness," as the people called it. What lay beyond? The question had been asked before, times enough; times enough answered for any reasonable man. "h.e.l.l was there," said one superst.i.tion, "Haven't you seen the flames at sunset-time?" "A sea thick like paste, in which no ships can sail,"

said another. "Darkness," said another, "thick darkness, the blackness of nothing, and the end of all created things!"

11. There _was_ a legend that over there beyond was Paradise, and St.

Brandan, wandering about the seas, had reached it. The ancients told of an island Atlantis over there somewhere in the West, and one of them had said: "In the last days an age will come when ocean shall loose the chains of things; a wonderful country will be discovered, and Tiphis shall make known new worlds, nor shall Thule be the end of the earth."

12. Ah, to be the discoverer of Atlantis or Paradise! "But, if the world is round," said Columbus, "it is not h.e.l.l that lies beyond that stormy sea. Over there _must_ lie the eastern strand of Asia, the Cathay of Marco Polo, the land of the Kubla Khan, and c.i.p.ango, the great island beyond it." "Nonsense!" said the neighbors; "the world isn't round--can't you _see_ it is flat? And Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived hundreds of years before you were born, says it is flat; and he got it from the Bible. You're no good Christian to be taking up with such heathenish notions!" Thought Columbus, "I will write to Paolo Toscanelli, at Florence, and see what be will say."

13. So Columbus wrote, and Toscanelli, the wise scientist, answered that the idea of sailing west was good and feasible; and with the letter came a map, on which Asia and the great island c.i.p.ango were laid down opposite Europe, with the Atlantic between, exactly as Columbus imagined it. Toscanelli said it was easy enough: "You may be certain of meeting with extensive kingdoms, populous cities, and rich provinces, abounding in all sorts of precious stones; and your visit will cause great rejoicing to the king and princes of those distant lands, besides opening a way for communication between them and the Christians, and the instruction of them in the Catholic religion and the arts we possess." It was 1474 when this encouragement came, and from this time all the sailor's thoughts and plans turned toward the west.

14. The life at home between his voyages, whether spent with his brother, the cosmographer, at Lisbon, or with his wife and sailor brother-in-law, on the Porto Santo island, was hardly less nautical than the voyages themselves. Porto Santo was in line with the ship-routes to and from Spain and all the new-found African coast and islands; and the family there, with the men sailors and geographers, and the women, wives and daughters of sailors and geographers, lived in the bracing salt sea-air, full of the tingle of adventure.

15. Wild stories tell the sailors, coming and going, whom one can scarce contradict for lack of certain knowledge; and is it not an age of wonders in real life? And the round earth, the round earth--_is_ it round? And the empire of the Grand Khan just over the western water there--not far! The sailors said that on the sh.o.r.es of one of the islands two dead men of strange appearance had been washed in from the west. The sailors said they had picked up curiously-carved sticks drifting from the west. Pedro Correa himself, Columbus's brother-in-law, and a man to be trusted, had found one floating from the west. And there was a legend of the sight of land lying like a faint cloud along that western horizon.

16. "The world _is_ round," said Columbus. "It is not very large" (he thought it much smaller than it is), "and opposite us across that sea lies Asia; and to Asia by way of that sea I will go. There, in the west, lies my duty to G.o.d and man; I will carry salvation to the heathen, and bring back gold for the Christians. From the 'Occident to the Orient' a path I will find through the waters."

THE WAITING.

17. Such a venture as Columbus proposed could scarcely be carried out at that time except by the help of kings, so to the kings went Columbus.

18. Naturally, Portugal, with her proved interest in discovery, came first in his thought; and before Portugal's king he laid his project.

The king should fit him out with vessels and men, and with them Columbus would sail to the Indies, not by the route around Africa, which the Portuguese had so long been seeking, but by a nearer way--straight across the Atlantic. Think of the untold wealth from the empire of the khan rolling in to Portugal if this connection could be established! And think of converting those heathen to our blessed mother church! It was worth thinking about, and the king called a council of his wise men to consider the startling idea. Not long were the wise men in wisely deciding that the plan was the wild scheme of an adventurer, likely to come to no good whatever; and when the king, hardly satisfied, laid it before another council, they, too, wisely declared it ridiculous.

19. O ye owlish dignitaries! Still, the king was not convinced. "We have discovered much by daring adventure, why not more?" "Stick to the coast, and don't go sailing straight away from all known land into waters unknown and mysterious," said the wise men. "But if the unknown waters bring us to the riches of Cathay?" said the king. "That's the extravagant dream of a visionary; it contains no truth and much danger," said the wise men. "Try it yourself, and see. Unbeknown to this Columbus, just send out a ship of your own to the west, and let them come back and tell us what they find."

20. It was a most underhand piece of business all around; but the king yielded and sent out a ship, which presently came back again with the report that there was no Cathay there, and they hadn't found any c.i.p.ango; it was all nonsense! And what they had met with was a big storm that scared them terribly. So Columbus retired, and left the king of Portugal to his brave sailors and wise councilors.

21. Next will come Spain, and meantime he will send his brother Bartholomew to present the plan at the English court.

22. The Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, were down in Andalusia, that beautiful southern province of Spain, in the midst of a war with the Moors, who occupied certain portions of the land, and whom the Spaniards were trying to drive out. So, his wife being now dead, Columbus took his little boy Diego, and to Andalusia they went.

They stopped at Palos by the sea, and from there set out on foot. The way was long, and Diego could not go far without getting very thirsty; and his father stopping at a great, dark, stone convent, called Maria de la Rabida, to get him a drink, the prior asked them in to rest a bit. As they talked, Columbus soon told of his great project, to sail to the Indies by way of the western sea.

23. The prior, in his long dark robe and shaved head, opened his eyes at this and wanted to hear more. "Novel project this," thought he; "very novel-most astonishing I must have my friend, Dr. Fernandez, hear it." So a messenger was sent to Palos to fetch the doctor, and Columbus went over again the wonderful plan--just to sail west, not so very far, over the round earth, and reach the stately cities of Cathay, and convert the Grand Khan to the faith, and gather of the plentiful gold and jewels of that land. Little Diego stood by and listened with wide-open eyes, and the doctor pondered, while the prior gazed out from the western window upon the Atlantic, and Columbus bent eager eyes and flushed face over his chart.

21. "Why, it may be possible! Send for Martin Alonzo Pinzon. He is a seaman; let us see what he thinks!"

25. To Palos again goes the messenger, to the rich and influential citizen, Alonzo Pinzon, and tells him he is wanted at La Pabida. "Ah, Alonzo Pinzon!" greets him--the prior, "come and hear what a man proposes to do; and a wise and courageous sailor he seems, though poor enough!" And a third time they bend over the charts there in the dark stone convent, and Alonzo Pinzon hears of the western route to India; and Diego gazes from one to the other, and hopes in his heart that his father will take him along--he wants to see the unicorns. Pinzon catches the idea with enthusiasm, promising to help Columbus with money and influence, and to go with him if he goes. The doctor, cogitating upon the statements and arguments, concludes that they make quite a reasonable showing, and advises Columbus to go on.

26. The prior says: "Go at once to the court. Talavera, the queen's confessor, is a good friend of mine, and a letter of introduction to him will gain you access to the king and queen. They will surely help you." Diego clasps his hands. "Will you stay with me, Diego?" says the long-robed prior. "I'd rather go to court," says Diego. "Nay, my son," says Columbus, "if the good prior will keep you, I will leave you here while I go on my uncertain errand." So the little boy stands in the great stone doorway and watches his father out of sight toward Cordova.

27. At Cordova is nothing but excitement and confusion. The army is just starting upon a campaign against the Moors. Talavera is preoccupied, has his hands full of business, and can scarcely give Columbus time enough to state his errand. "Dear me, a new route to the Indies! But don't you see how busy we are with this war? It is probably all nonsense--sounds like it. The court in war-time can not waste precious hours over the consideration of such wild visions as this." So Columbus takes lodgings in Cordova, supports himself by chart-making, talks to everybody about the new route to Asia, and waits. Such a man with such a story is likely to gain some attention, and by and by he begins to have friends. Several of the important politicians come to know him, some are converts to his theory, and finally the grand cardinal himself procures him an audience with the king and queen.

28. Enthusiastically the "one-idea'd man" unfolds his theories to royalty. The land of the Grand Khan, with its untold treasure, the salvation of millions of souls in the Indies, are the vivid points.

The earth is a sphere, and a ship may sail straight from Spain to c.i.p.ango, urges this man of imagination and faith. The king was not slow to perceive the great advantages which success in such an enterprise would bring to the government that undertook it; but he must consult the wise men. Talavera should head a commission composed of the great men in the church, great men of science, and professors in the universities. Surely no man could ask for more. So to Salamanca, seat of the greatest Spanish university, Columbus went to convince the commission.

29. In the hall of the convent there was a.s.sembled the imposing company--shaved monks in gowns of black and gray, fashionably dressed men from the court in jaunty bats, cardinals in scarlet robes--all the dignity and learning of Spain, gathered and waiting for the man and his idea.

30. He stands before them with his charts, and explains his belief that the world is round, and that Asia stretches from the eastern boundary of Europe to a point something like four thousand miles from Spain. Hence Asia could be reached by sailing due west across the Atlantic. They had heard something of this before at Cordova, and here at Salamanca, before the commission was formally a.s.sembled, and they had their arguments ready.

31. You think the earth is round, and inhabited on the other side? Are you not aware that the holy fathers of the church have condemned this belief? Say the fathers, the Scriptures tell us all men are descended from Adam; but certainly no men descended from Adam live in such a region as this you speak of--the antipodes. Will you contradict the fathers? The Holy Scriptures, too, tell us expressly that the heavens are spread out like a tent, and how can that be true if the earth is not flat like the ground the tent stands on? This theory of yours looks heretical.

32. Columbus might well quake in his boots at the mention of heresy; for there was that new Inquisition just in fine running order, with its elaborate bone-breaking, flesh-pinching, thumb-s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, banging, burning, mangling system for heretics. What would become of the Idea if he should get pa.s.sed over to that energetic inst.i.tution?

33. "I am a true and loyal Catholic," he cries; "I wish to convert the Grand Khan's people to our blessed faith. I believe the Bible, and G.o.d himself sends me on this mission. But these words of the Scriptures are to be taken as a figure, not as literal facts of science." "Will this sailor teach us how to read the Scriptures!" growl the monks.

34 "Well, for argument, suppose this world is round, and you could sail west to the Indies. The voyage would take years, and you could not carry food enough to keep you from starving."

35. "But I believe it is only a voyage of four thousand miles, and can, with favoring winds, be accomplished in a short time," says Columbus, stating his scientific reasons for this belief. "Will this sailor teach us science!" growl the professors. "Well, all this _may_ be true; but really, can you expect us to believe that there is a land beneath us where people walk with their feet _up_, and trees grow _down_?"

Oh, foolish Columbus! What an absurd idea! "And, besides, if the signor should succeed in sailing down around the earth to this peculiar region, how does he propose to get back again? Will his ship sail up-hill?"

36. Oh, the nudgings and winks among the monks at this poser! And the professors smile triumphantly. "And, anyway, who are you, Signor Colombo, to set yourself up to know more than all the world beside?

Haven't men been sailing in all the seas ever since the time of Noah, and, if such a thing as this were possible, would not somebody have found it out long ago?" With sound science, reverent religion, enthusiastic imagination and faith, he answered them, this unknown sailor, and left them bewildered by his views and impressed by his personality. "Perhaps there is truth in the matter," said the monks of St. Stephen. They said they would think about it, and they did think about it, and it took them four years to think about it. Meantime they adjourned and went about their own affairs, and Columbus went back to court.