Chapter XIII: Section VIII: The Admiral returns to Spain, from his Second Voyage

Having reduced the island to peace and order, and having completed the town of Isabella, and built three forts in different places to protect the Christians, the admiral resolved to return into Spain to acquaint their Catholic majesties with several matters which he considered to be important: but especially because he had learnt that many malicious and envious persons had given false information at court respecting the affairs of the Indies, to the great prejudice and dishonour of him and his brothers. For these reasons he embarked on Thursday the tenth of March 1496, with 225 Spaniards and thirty Indians in two caravels, the Santa Cruz and the Nina, and sailed from Isabella about day-break. Holding his course eastwards along the coast, he lost sight of the eastern point of Hispaniola on Tuesday the twenty-second of March, keeping an easterly direction as far as the wind would permit; but the wind for the most part continuing from the east, and provisions falling short, by which the men were much discouraged, he deviated southwards towards the Caribbee islands, and anchored at Marigalante on Saturday the ninth of April. Although it was not his custom to set sail from any port of a Sunday, yet as his men muttered, saying that when in want of food it was not necessary to keep so strictly to the observation of particular days, he therefore set sail next day.

He next anchored at the island of Guadaloupe and sent the boats on shore well armed. These were opposed by a great number of women, who came out of a wood armed with bows and arrows and decorated with feathers; seeing whom the people in the boats kept aloof, and sent two women of Hispaniola on shore by swimming to parley with the natives; who, understanding that the Christians only desired to have provisions in exchange for such commodities as they had to barter, desired them to go with their ships to the north side of the island where their husbands then were, who would furnish them with what they wanted. The ships did accordingly, and sailing close to the shore saw abundance of people, who came down to the sea-side and discharged their arrows in vain against our people, setting up loud cries, but their weapons all fell short. When our boats well armed and full of men drew near the shore, the Indians retired into an ambush, whence they sallied forth to hinder our people from landing; but terrified by some discharges of cannon from the ships, they fled into the woods, abandoning their houses and goods, when the Christians took and destroyed all they found. Being acquainted with the Indian method of making bread, they fell to work and made enough to supply their want, as they found abundance of materials[5].

Among other things which they found in the Indian houses on this island, were parrots, honey, wax, and iron, of which last they had hatchets[6]: and they likewise found looms like those used in Europe for weaving tapestry[7], in which the natives weave their tents. Their houses, instead of the ordinary round forms which had been hitherto met with in the West Indies, were square; and in one of them the Spaniards found the arm of a man roasting at a fire upon a spit. While the bread was making, the admiral dispatched forty men into the country to examine into its nature and productions, who returned next day with ten women and three boys all the rest of the natives having fled into the woods. One of these women was the wife of a cacique, who was exceedingly nimble and had been taken with very great difficulty by a man of the Canaries: She might even have got from him, but observing him to be alone she thought to have taken him, and closed with him for that purpose, and even got him down and had almost stifled him, had not some others of the Christians come to his aid. The less of these women are swathed with cotton cloth from the ancle to the knee, which gives them a very thick appearance; and they gird these ornaments, which they call _Coiro_, and consider as very genteel, so tightly that the leg appears very thin when they happen to slip off[8]. The same swaths are used both by men and women in Jamaica upon the smaller parts of their arms up to the armpits, similar to the old-fashioned sleeves in Spain.

The women of this island were excessively fat, insomuch that some were thicker than a man could grasp round; they all wear their hair long and loose upon their shoulders, nor do they cover any part of their bodies except as before mentioned. As soon as their children can use their limbs, they give them bows and arrows that they may learn to shoot. The woman who made so much resistance said that the island was only inhabited by women, and that those who made demonstrations of hindering the landing of our men were all women, except four men who had come there accidentally from another island; for at certain times of the year the men come from the other islands to sport and cohabit with the women of this. The same customs were followed by the women in another island, called Matrimonio or the Island of Matrimony, and this woman gave an account of these islanders similar to what we read concerning the Amazons; and the admiral believed it because of the strength and courage of these women[9]. It is also said that these women seemed to have clearer understandings than those of the other islands; for in the other islands they only reckon the day by the sun and the nights by the moon, whereas these women reckoned by other stars, saying that it is time to do such and such things when the great bear or certain other stars, as it may be, are due north.

When they had made provision of bread for twenty days besides what they had on board, the admiral resolved to continue his voyage into Spain. But, considering that the island of Guadaloupe was an inlet to others, he thought fit to send all the women on shore, having first made them some gifts in compensation of the loss they had sustained; except the chief lady, who chose to go into Spain with her daughter along with the other Indians from Hispaniola. One of these was Cannabo, the chief cacique of that island in the late disturbances, who was himself a Carib and not a native of that island. Having furnished all the vessels with bread, wood, and water, the admiral set sail on Wednesday the twentieth of April from Guadaloupe, with the wind very scant, keeping near the latitude of twenty-two degrees north: as at this time they had not found out the method of running away north to meet the S.W. winds.

Having made but little way and the ships being full of people, they began by the twentieth of May to be much afflicted with scarcity of provisions, insomuch that they were reduced to an allowance of six ounces of bread and less than a pint of water for each person daily, and had no other article of provision besides. Though there were eight or nine pilots in the two ships, yet none of them knew whereabout they were, but the admiral was confident that they were then only a little west of the Azores, whereof he gives the following account in his journal.

"This morning the Dutch compasses varied as they used to do a whole point, while those of Genoa, which used to agree with them, varied but a very little, though afterwards sailing farther east they varied more, which is a sign that we were 100 leagues west of the Azores or somewhat more; for when we were just 100 leagues there were only a few scattered weeds to be seen, the Dutch needles varying a point while those of Genoa pointed due north; and when we got somewhat farther E.N.E. they altered again." This idea was verified on the twenty-second of May, when by exact reckoning the admiral found that he was 100 leagues to the west of the Azores. He was much astonished at this singular difference between the two kinds of compasses, which he was disposed to attribute to their having been made by different kinds of loadstones; for until they had arrived at that longitude they all varied a point from the true north, and some of them continued to do so even there, while those constructed at Genoa, now pointed due north, and the same remarkable discrepancy continued upon the twenty-fourth of May.

They thus continued their course, all the pilots going on with blind confidence, till on Wednseday the 8th of June they came in sight of Odemira, between Lisbon and Cape St Vincent; but the admiral, confident that they were near that cape, slackened sail the night before, though laughed at by many, some affirming that they were in the English channel, while those who erred least believed themselves on the coast of Galicia. The scarcity was now become so great that many objected to shortening sail, alleging that it were better to run the risk of perishing at once by running on shore than to starve miserably on the sea; and many, like the canibals, were for eating the Indians who where on board, or at least were for throwing them overboard, on purpose to make some small saving of the provisions which remained; and this would certainly have been done if the admiral had not exerted his whole authority to save them, as human creatures who ought not to be worse used than the rest. At length it pleased God to reward him with the sight of land in the morning, according to his promise the preceding evening; for which he was ever afterwards considered by the seamen as most expert and almost prophetical in maritime affairs.

Having landed in Spain the admiral went to Burgos, where he was very favourably received by their Catholic majesties, who were then at that place celebrating the marriage of their son Prince John with Margaret of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian. That princess was conducted into Spain with great splendour, and received by most of the nobility and by the greatest concourse of persons of quality that ever had been seen together in Spain. But though I was present on the occasion as page to prince John, I shall not enter into the particulars of this solemnity, since it does not belong to the history I have undertaken to write, and because the royal historiographers will have doubtless taken care to record this event.

On his arrival at Burgos, the admiral presented their majesties, with many curious specimens of the productions of the Indies, as birds, beasts, trees, plants, instruments, and other things used by the Indians in their employments and amusements; also girdles, and masks, having ears and eyes made of gold plates; likewise with much gold dust, small and gross as produced by nature, some of the grains as big as vetches, some like beans, and others as large as pigeons eggs. These latter, then so much admired, were not afterwards so much valued, as in progress of time lumps of gold have been found which weighed above thirty pounds; but they were then held in high estimation in prospect of great future hopes, and were received in good part by their majesties. When the admiral had given them an account of all that seemed to him necessary for improving and peopling the Indies, he was very desirous to return thither with all speed, lest some disaster might happen during his absence, considering that he had left the colony in great want of necessaries; and though he strongly solicited and pressed the necessity of speedy succours, such was the tediousness and delay of business in that court, that ten or twelve months elapsed before he could procure the equipment of two ships, which were sent out in February 1498, under the command of Pedro Fernandez Coronel.

The admiral remained at court to solicit the appointment of such a fleet as he considered to be necessary for his return to the Indies. But he was forced to remain above a year at Burgos and Medina del Campo, where in the year 1497 their majesties granted him many favours, and gave the necessary orders for expediting his affairs, and for the settlement and government of the Indies. These I here mention to shew that their Catholic majesties were, still ready to acknowledge and reward his services and merit; though they afterwards altered greatly in this respect, through the false information and scandalous insinuations of malicious and envious persons, so as to permit gross wrongs to be done him, as will afterwards appear.

Having at length procured the necessary orders, he proceeded to Seville, and there the fitting out of his fleet was retarded very unprofitably through the negligence and ill management of the public officers, especially Juan de Fonseca, the archdeacon of Seville, who was afterwards bishop of Burgos, and always was a bitter enemy to the admiral and his affairs, and became the chief leader among those who afterwards brought him into disgrace with their Catholic majesties. While engaged at Seville in superintending the equipment, that my brother and I might not suffer by the delays, we having both served as pages to Prince John, who was now dead, he sent us back to court in November 1497 to serve as pages to her majesty Queen Isabella of glorious memory.