Chapter I: Columbus and His Discoveries (1)

BY JUSTIN WINSOR,

_The Editor._

BEYOND his birth, of poor and respectable parents, we know nothing positively about the earliest years of Columbus. His father was probably a wool-comber. The boy had the ordinary schooling of his time, and a touch of university life during a few months passed at Pavia; then at fourteen he chose to become a sailor. A seaman’s career in those days implied adventures more or less of a piratical kind. There are intimations, however, that in the intervals of this exciting life he followed the more humanizing occupation of selling books in Genoa, and perhaps got some employment in the making of charts, for he had a deft hand at design. We know his brother Bartholomew was earning his living in this way when Columbus joined him in Lisbon in 1470. Previous to this there seems to be some degree of certainty in connecting him with voyages made by a celebrated admiral of his time bearing the same family name, Colombo; he is also said to have joined the naval expedition of John of Anjou against Naples in 1459.[48] Again, he may have been the companion of another notorious corsair, a nephew of the one already mentioned, as is sometimes maintained; but this sea-rover’s proper name seems to have been more likely Caseneuve, though he was sometimes called Coulon or Colon.[49]

Columbus spent the years 1470-1484 in Portugal. It was a time when the air was filled with tales of discovery. The captains of Prince Henry of Portugal had been gradually pushing their ships down the African coast and in some of these voyages Columbus was a participant. To one of his navigators Prince Henry had given the governorship of the Island of Porto Santo, of the Madeira group. To the daughter of this man, Perestrello,[50] Columbus was married; and with his widow Columbus lived, and derived what advantage he could from the papers and charts of the old navigator. There was a tie between his own and his wife’s family in the fact that Perestrello was an Italian, and seems to have been of good family, but to have left little or no inheritance for his daughter beyond some property in Porto Santo, which Columbus went to enjoy. On this island Columbus’ son Diego was born in 1474.

It was in this same year (1474) that he had some correspondence with the Italian _savant_, Toscanelli, regarding the discovery of land westward. A belief in such discovery was a natural corollary of the object which Prince Henry had had in view,—by circumnavigating Africa to find a way to the countries of which Marco Polo had given golden accounts. It was to substitute for the tedious indirection of the African route a direct western passage,—a belief in the practicability of which was drawn from a confidence in the sphericity of the earth. Meanwhile, gathering what hope he could by reading the ancients, by conferring with wise men, and by questioning mariners returned from voyages which had borne them more or less westerly on the great ocean, Columbus suffered the thought to germinate as it would in his mind for several years. Even on the voyages which he made hither and thither for gain,—once far north, to Iceland even, or perhaps only to the Faröe Islands, as is inferred,—and in active participation in various warlike and marauding expeditions, like the attack on the Venetian galleys near Cape St. Vincent in 1485,[51] he constantly came in contact with those who could give him hints affecting his theory. Through all these years, however, we know not certainly what were the vicissitudes which fell to his lot.[52]

It seems possible, if not probable, that Columbus went to Genoa and Venice, and in the first instance presented his scheme of western exploration to the authorities of those cities.[53] He may, on the other hand; have tried earlier to get the approval of the King of Portugal. In this case the visit to Italy may have occurred in the year following his departure from Portugal, which is nearly a blank in the record of his life. De Lorgues believes in the anterior Italian visit, when both Genoa and Venice rejected his plans; and then makes him live with his father at Savone, gaining a living by constructing charts, and by selling maps and books in Genoa.

It would appear that in 1484 Columbus had urged his views upon the Portuguese King, but with no further success than to induce the sovereign to despatch, on other pretences, a vessel to undertake the passage westerly in secrecy. Its return without accomplishing any discovery opened the eyes of Columbus to the deceit which that monarch would have put upon him, and he departed from the Portuguese dominions in not a little disgust.[54]

The death of his wife had severed another tie with Portugal; and taking with him his boy Diego, Columbus left, to go we scarcely know whither, so obscure is the record of his life for the next year. Muñoz claims for this period that he went to Italy. Sharon Turner has conjectured that he went to England; but there seems no ground to believe that he had any relations with the English Court except by deputy, for his brother Bartholomew was despatched to lay his schemes before Henry VII.[55] Whatever may have been the result of this application, no answer seems to have reached Columbus until he was committed to the service of Spain.

It was in 1485 or 1486—for authorities differ[56]—that a proposal was laid by Columbus before Ferdinand and Isabella; but the steps were slow by which he made even this progress. We know how, in the popular story, he presented himself at the Franciscan Convent of Santa María de la Rábida, asking for bread for himself and his boy. This convent stood on a steep promontory about half a league from Palos, and was then in charge of the Father Superior Juan Perez de Marchena.[57] The appearance of the stranger first, and his talk next, interested the Prior; and it was under his advice and support after a while—when Martin Alonzo Pinzon, of the neighboring town of Palos, had espoused the new theory—that Columbus was passed on to Cordova, with such claims to recognition as the Prior of Rabidá could bestow upon him.

It was perhaps while success did not seem likely here, in the midst of the preparations for a campaign against the Moorish kings, that his brother Bartholomew made his trip to England.[58] It was also in November, 1486, it would seem, that Columbus formed his connection with Beatrix Enriquez, while he was waiting in Cordova for the attention of the monarch to be disengaged from this Moorish campaign.

This follows a cut in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 245. The armor is in the Collection in the Royal Palace at Madrid.]

Among those at this time attached to the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella was Alexander Geraldinus, then about thirty years old. He was a traveller, a man of letters, and a mathematician; and it was afterward the boast of his kinsman, who edited his _Itinerarium ad regiones sub æquinoctiali plaga constitutas_[59] (Rome, 1631), that Geraldinus, in one way and another, aided Columbus in pressing his views upon their Majesties. It was through Geraldinus’ influence, or through that of others who had become impressed with his views, that Columbus finally got the ear of Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza, Archbishop of Toledo. The way was now surer. The King heeded the Archbishop’s advice, and a council of learned men was convened, by royal orders, at Salamanca, to judge Columbus and his theories. Here he was met by all that prejudice, content, and ignorance (as now understood, but wisdom then) could bring to bear, in the shape of Scriptural contradictions of his views, and the pseudo-scientific distrust of what were thought mere visionary aims. He met all to his own satisfaction, but not quite so successfully to the comprehension of his judges. He told them that he should find Asia that way; and that if he did not, there must be other lands westerly quite as desirable to discover. No conclusion had been reached when, in the spring of 1487, the Court departed from Cordova, and Columbus found himself left behind without encouragement, save in the support of a few whom he had convinced,—notably Diego de Deza, a friar destined to some ecclesiastical distinction as Archbishop of Seville.

During the next five years Columbus experienced every vexation attendant upon delay, varied by participancy in the wars which the Court urged against the Moors, and in which he sought to propitiate the royal powers by doing them good service in the field. At last, in 1491, wearied with excuses of pre-occupation and the ridicule of the King’s advisers, Columbus turned his back on the Court and left Seville,[60] to try his fortune with some of the Grandees. He still urged in vain, and sought again the Convent of Rabida. Here he made a renewed impression upon Marchena; so that finally, through the Prior’s interposition with Isabella, Columbus was summoned to Court. He arrived in time to witness the surrender of Granada, and to find the monarchs more at liberty to listen to his words. There seemed now a likelihood of reaching an end of his tribulations; when his demand of recognition as viceroy, and his claim to share one tenth of all income from the territories to be discovered, frightened as well as disgusted those appointed to negotiate with him, and all came once more to an end. Columbus mounted his mule and started for France. Two finance ministers of the Crown, Santangel for Arragon and Quintanilla for Castile, had been sufficiently impressed by the new theory to look with regret on what they thought might be a lost opportunity. Isabella was won; and a messenger was despatched to overtake Columbus.

The fugitive returned; and on April 17, 1492, at Santa Fé, an agreement was signed by Ferdinand and Isabella which gave Columbus the office of high-admiral and viceroy in parts to be discovered, and an income of one eighth of the profits, in consideration of his assuming one eighth of the costs. Castile bore the rest of the expense; but Arragon advanced the money,[61] and the Pinzons subscribed the eighth part for Columbus.

The happy man now solemnly vowed to use what profits should accrue in accomplishing the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslems. Palos, owing some duty to the Crown, was ordered to furnish two armed caravels, and Columbus was empowered to fit out a third. On the 30th of April the letters-patent confirming his dignities were issued. His son Diego was made a page of the royal household. On May 12 he left the Court and hastened towards Palos. Here, upon showing his orders for the vessels, he found the town rebellious, with all the passion of a people who felt that some of their number were being simply doomed to destruction beyond that Sea of Darkness whose bounds they knew not. Affairs were in this unsatisfactory condition when the brothers Pinzon threw themselves and their own vessels into the cause; while a third vessel, the “Pinta,” was impressed,—much to the alarm of its owners and crew.

Fac-simile of the engraving in Herrera. It originally appeared in De Bry, part iv.]

This representation of the vessels of the early Spanish navigators is a fac-simile of a cut in Medina’s _Arte de navegar_, Valladolid, 1545, which was re-engraved in the Venice edition of 1555. Cf. _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, vol. i. nos. 137, 204; Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, pp. 240, 241; Jurien de la Gravière’s _Les marins du XV^e et du XVI^e siècle_, vol. i. pp. 38, 151. In the variety of changes in methods of measurement it is not easy to find the equivalent in tonnage of the present day for the ships of Columbus’s time. Those constituting his little fleet seem to have been light and swift vessels of the class called caravels. One had a deck amidships, with high forecastle and poop, and two were without this deck, though high, and covered at the ends. Captain G. V. Fox has given what he supposes were the dimensions of the larger one,—a heavier craft and duller sailer than the others. He calculates for a hundred tons,—makes her sixty-three feet over all, fifty-one feet keel, twenty feet beam, and ten and a half feet draft of water. She carried the kind of gun termed lombards, and a crew of fifty men. _U. S. Coast Survey Report_, 1880, app. 18; _Becher’s Landfall of Columbus_; A. Jal’s _Archéologie navale_ (Paris, 1840); Irving’s _Columbus_, app. xv.; H. H. Bancroft, _Central America_, i. 187; _Das Ausland_, 1867, p. 1. There are other views of the ships of Columbus’ time in the cuts in some of the early editions of his Letters on the discovery. See notes following this chapter.]

And so, out of the harbor of Palos,[62] on the 3d of August, 1492, Columbus sailed with his three little vessels. The “Santa Maria,” which carried his flag, was the only one of the three which had a deck, while the other two, the “Niña” and the “Pinta,” were open caravels. The two Pinzons commanded these smaller ships,—Martin Alonzo the “Pinta”, and Vicente the “Niña.”

This follows a fac-simile, given in Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_ p. 240, of a cut in Bernhardus de Breydenbach’s _Peregrinationes_, Mainz, 1486.]

The voyage was uneventful, except that the expectancy of all quickened the eye, which sometimes saw over-much, and poised the mind, which was alert with hope and fear. It has been pointed out how a westerly course from Palos would have discouraged Columbus with head and variable winds. Running down to the Canaries (for Toscanelli put those islands in the latitude of Cipango), a westerly course thence would bring him within the continuous easterly trade-winds, whose favoring influence would inspirit his men,—as, indeed, was the case. Columbus, however, was very glad on the 22d of September to experience a west wind, just to convince his crew it was possible to have, now and then, the direction of it favorable to their return. He had proceeded, as he thought, some two hundred miles farther than the longitude in which he had conjectured Cipango to be, when the urging of Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and the flight of birds indicating land to be nearer in the southwest, induced him to change his course in that direction.[63]

This follows a map given in _Das Ausland_, 1867, p. 4, in a paper on Columbus’ Journal, “Das Schiffsbuch des Entdeckers von Amerika.” The routes of Columbus’ four voyages are marked on the map accompanying the _Studi biografici e bibliografici_ published by the Società Geografica Italiana in 1882. Cf. also the map in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 155, reproduced on a later page.]

About midnight between the 11th and 12th of October, Columbus on the lookout thought he saw a light moving in the darkness. He called a companion, and the two in counsel agreed that it was so.[64] At about two o’clock, the moon then shining, a mariner on the “Pinta” discerned unmistakably a low sandy shore. In the morning a landing was made, and, with prayer[65] and ceremony, possession was taken of the new-found island in the name of the Spanish sovereigns.

This follows a fac-simile, given in Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 241, of a cut in Bernhardus de Breydenbach’s _Peregrinationes_, Mainz, 1486.]

On the third day (October 14) Columbus lifted anchor, and for ten days sailed among the minor islands of the archipelago; but struck the Cuban coast on the 28th.[66] Here the “Pinta,” without orders from the Admiral, went off to seek some gold-field, of which Martin Alonzo Pinzon, its commander, fancied he had got some intimation from the natives. Pinzon returned bootless; but Columbus was painfully conscious of the mutinous spirit of his lieutenant.[67] The little fleet next found Hayti (Hispaniæ insula,[68] as he called it), and on its northern side the Admiral’s ship was wrecked. Out of her timbers Columbus built a fort on the shore, called it “La Navidad,” and put into it a garrison under Diego de Arana.[69]

Fac-simile of a cut in Oviedo, edition of 1547, fol. lix. There is another engraving in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 124. Cf. also Ramusio, _Nav. et Viaggi_, iii.]

With the rest of his company and in his two smaller vessels, on the 4th of January, 1493, Columbus started on his return to Spain. He ran northerly to the latitude of his destination, and then steered due east. He experienced severe weather, but reached the Azores safely; and then, passing on, entered the Tagus and had an interview with the Portuguese King. Leaving Lisbon on the 13th, he reached Palos on the 15th of March, after an absence of over seven months.

This is Benzoni’s sketch of the way in which the natives cure and tend their sick at Hispaniola. Edition of 1572, p. 56.]

He was received by the people of the little seaport with acclamations and wonder; and, despatching a messenger to the Spanish Court at Barcelona, he proceeded to Seville to await the commands of the monarchs. He was soon bidden to hasten to them; and with the triumph of more than a conqueror, and preceded by the bedizened Indians whom he had brought with him, he entered the city and stood in the presence of the sovereigns. He was commanded to sit before them, and to tell the story of his discovery. This he did with conscious pride; and not forgetting the past, he publicly renewed his previous vow to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel.

This is a reduction of a fac-simile by Pilinski, given in Margry’s _Les Navigations Françaises_, p. 360,—an earlier reproduction having been given by M. Jal in _La France maritime_. It is also figured in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 139. The original sketch, by Columbus himself, was sent by him from Seville in 1502, and is preserved in the city hall at Genoa. M. Jal gives a description of it in his _De Paris à Naples_, 1836, i. 257. The figure sitting beside Columbus is Providence; Envy and Ignorance are hinted at as monsters following in his wake; while Constancy, Tolerance, the Christian Religion, Victory, and Hope attend him. Above all is the floating figure of Fame blowing two trumpets, one marked “Genoa,” the other “Fama Columbi.” Harrisse (_Notes on Columbus_, p. 165) says that good judges assign this picture to Columbus’s own hand, though none of the drawings ascribed to him are authentic beyond doubt; while it is very true that he had the reputation of being a good draughtsman. Feuillet de Conches (_Revue contemporaine_, xxiv. 509) disbelieves in its authenticity. The usual signature of Columbus is in the lower left-hand corner of the above sketch, the initial letters in which have never been satisfactorily interpreted; but perhaps as reasonable a guess as any would make them stand for “SERVUS SUPPLEX ALTISSIMI SALVATORIS—CHRISTUS, MARIA, YOSEPH—_Christo ferens_.” Others read, “SERVIDOR SUS ALTEZAS SACRAS, CHRISTO, MARIA, YSABEL [_or_ YOSEPH].” The “Christo ferens” is sometimes replaced by “_El Almirante_.” The essay on the autograph in the _Cartas de Indias_ is translated in the _Magazine of American History_, Jan., 1883, p. 55. Cf. Irving, app. xxxv. Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 317; _Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings_, xvi. 322, etc.]

The expectation which had sustained Columbus in his voyage, and which he thought his discoveries had confirmed, was that he had reached the western parts of India or Asia; and the new islands were accordingly everywhere spoken of as the West Indies, or the New World.

Fac-simile of engraving in Herrera, who follows DeBry.]

Last page of an autograph letter preserved in the Colombina Library at Seville, following a photograph in Harrisse’s _Notes on Columbus_, p. 218.]

The ruling Pope, Alexander VI., was a native Valencian; and to him an appeal was now made for a Bull, confirming to Spain and Portugal respective fields for discovery. This was issued May 4, 1493, fixing a line, on the thither side of which Spain was to be master; and on the hither side, Portugal. This was traced at a meridian one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape de Verde Islands, which were assumed to be in the same longitude practically. The thought of future complications from the running of this line to the antipodes does not seem to have alarmed either Pope or sovereigns; but troubles on the Atlantic side were soon to arise, to be promptly compounded by a convention at Tordesillas, which agreed (June 4, ratified June 7, 1494) to move the meridian line to a point three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape de Verde Islands,—still without dream of the destined disputes respecting divisions on the other side of the globe.[70]

As given in Oviedo’s _Coronica_, 1547, fol. x., from the Harvard College copy. There is no wholly satisfactory statement regarding the origin of these arms, or the Admiral’s right to bear them. It is the quartering of the royal lion and castle, for Arragon and Castile, with gold islands in azure waves. Five anchors and the motto,

“A [_or_ POR] CASTILLA Y A [_or_ POR] LEON NUEVO MUNDO DIO [_or_ HALLO] COLON,”

were later given or assumed. The crest varies in the Oviedo (i. cap. vii.) of 1535.]

Thus everything favored Columbus in the preparations for a second voyage, which was to conduct a colony to the newly discovered lands. Twelve hundred souls were embarked on seventeen vessels, and among them persons of consideration and name in subsequent history,—Diego, the Admiral’s brother, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Ojeda, and La Cosa, with the Pope’s own vicar, a Benedictine named Buil, or Boil.

This is Benzoni’s sketch, edition of 1572, p. 60.]

Columbus and the destined colonists sailed from Cadiz on the 25th of September. The ships sighted an island on the 3d of November, and continuing their course among the Caribbee Islands, they finally reached La Navidad, and found it a waste. It was necessary, however, to make a beginning somewhere; and a little to the east of the ruined fort they landed their supplies and began the laying out of a city, which they called Isabella.[71] Expeditions were sent inland to find gold. The explorers reported success. Twelve of the ships were sent home with Indians who had been seized; and these ships were further laden with products of the soil which had been gathered. Columbus himself went with four hundred men to begin work at the interior mines; but the natives, upon whom he had counted for labor, had begun to fear enslavement for this purpose, and kept aloof. So mining did not flourish. Disease, too, was working evil. Columbus himself had been prostrated; but he was able to conduct three caravels westward, when he discovered Jamaica. On this expedition he made up his mind that Cuba was a part of the Asiatic main, and somewhat unadvisedly forced his men to sign a paper declaring their own belief to the same purport.[72]

As given in Oviedo, edition of 1547, fol. lxi.]

Returning to his colony, the Admiral found that all was not going well. He had not himself inspired confidence as a governor, and his fame as an explorer was fast being eclipsed by his misfortunes as a ruler. Some of his colonists, accompanied by the papal vicar, had seized ships and set sail for home. The natives, emboldened by the cruelties practised upon them, were laying siege to his fortified posts. As an offset, however, his brother Bartholomew had arrived from Spain with three store-ships; and later came Antonio de Torres with four other ships, which in due time were sent back to carry some samples of gold and a cargo of natives to be sold as slaves. The vessels had brought tidings of the charges preferred at Court against the Admiral, and his brother Diego was sent back with the ships to answer these charges in the Admiral’s behalf. Unfortunately Diego was not a man of strong character, and his advocacy was not of the best.

As depicted in Oviedo, edition of 1547, fol. lxi. There is another engraving in Charton’s _Voyageurs_, iii. 106, called “Pirogue Indienne.”]

Benzoni gives this drawing of the canoes of the coast of the Gulf of Paria and thereabout. Edition of 1572, p. 5.]

In March (1495) Columbus conducted an expedition into the interior to subdue and hold tributary the native population. It was cruelly done, as the world looks upon such transactions to-day.

Meanwhile in Spain reiteration of charges was beginning to shake the confidence of his sovereigns; and Juan Aguado, a friend of Columbus, was sent to investigate. He reached Isabella in October,—Diego, the Admiral’s brother, accompanying him. Aguado did not find affairs reassuring; and when he returned to Spain with his report in March (1496), Columbus thought it best to go too, and to make his excuses or explanations in person. They reached Cadiz in June, just as Niño was sailing with three caravels to the new colony.

Fac-simile of engraving in Herrera.]

Ferdinand and Isabella received him kindly, gave him new honors, and promised him other outfits. Enthusiasm, however, had died out, and delays took place. The reports of the returning ships did not correspond with the pictures of Marco Polo, and the new-found world was thought to be a very poor India after all. Most people were of this mind; though Columbus was not disheartened, and the public treasury was readily opened for a third voyage.

This is the earliest representation which we have of the natives of the New World, showing such as were found by the Portuguese on the north coast of South America. It has been supposed that it was issued in Augsburg somewhere between 1497 and 1504, for it is not dated. The only copy ever known to bibliographers is not now to be traced. Stevens, _Recoll. of James Lenox_, p. 174. It measures 13½ × 8½ inches, with a German title and inscription, to be translated as follows:—

“This figure represents to us the people and island which have been discovered by the Christian King of Portugal, or his subjects. The people are thus naked, handsome, brown, well-shaped in body; their heads, necks, arms, private parts, feet of men and women, are a little covered with feathers. The men also have many precious stones on their faces and breasts. No one else has anything, but all things are in common. And the men have as wives those who please them, be they mothers, sisters, or friends; therein make they no distinction. They also fight with each other; they also eat each other, even those who are slain, and hang the flesh of them in the smoke. They become a hundred and fifty years of age, and have no government.”

The present engraving follows the fac-simile given in Stevens’s _American Bibliographer_, pp. 7, 8. Cf. Sabin, vol. i. no. 1,031; vol. v. no. 20,257; Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._, no. 20.]

Coronel sailed early in 1498 with two ships, and Columbus followed with six, embarking at San Lucar on the 30th of May. He now discovered Trinidad (July 31), which he named either from its three peaks, or from the Holy Trinity; struck the northern coast of South America,[73] and skirted what was later known as the Pearl coast, going as far as the Island of Margarita. He wondered at the roaring fresh waters which the Orinoco pours into the Gulf of Pearls, as he called it, and he half believed that its exuberant tide came from the terrestrial paradise.[74] He touched the southern coast of Hayti on the 30th of August. Here already his colonists had established a fortified post, and founded the town of Santo Domingo. His brother Bartholomew had ruled energetically during the Admiral’s absence, but he had not prevented a revolt, which was headed by Roldan. Columbus on his arrival found the insurgents still defiant, but was able after a while to reconcile them, and he even succeeded in attaching Roldan warmly to his interests.

Columbus’ absence from Spain, however, left his good name without sponsors; and to satisfy detractors, a new commissioner was sent over with enlarged powers, even with authority to supersede Columbus in general command, if necessary. This emissary was Francisco de Bobadilla, who arrived at Santo Domingo with two caravels on the 23d of August, 1500, finding Diego in command, his brother the Admiral being absent. An issue was at once made. Diego refused to accede to the commissioner’s orders till Columbus returned to judge the case himself; so Bobadilla assumed charge of the Crown property violently, took possession of the Admiral’s house, and when Columbus returned, he with his brother was arrested and put in irons. In this condition the prisoners were placed on shipboard, and sailed for Spain. The captain of the ship offered to remove the manacles; but Columbus would not permit it, being determined to land in Spain bound as he was; and so he did. The effect of his degradation was to his advantage; sovereigns and people were shocked at the sight; and Ferdinand and Isabella hastened to make amends by receiving him with renewed favor. It was soon apparent that everything reasonable would be granted him by the monarchs, and that he could have all he might wish, short of receiving a new lease of power in the islands, which the sovereigns were determined to see pacified at least before Columbus should again assume government of them. The Admiral had not forgotten his vow to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel; but the monarchs did not accede to his wish to undertake it. Disappointed in this, he proposed a new voyage; and getting the royal countenance for this scheme, he was supplied with four vessels of from fifty to seventy tons each,—the “Capitana,” the “Santiago de Palos,” the “Gallego,” and the “Vizcaino.” He sailed from Cadiz May 9, 1502, accompanied by his brother Bartholomew and his son Fernando. The vessels reached San Domingo June 29.

Bobadilla, whose rule of a year and a half had been an unhappy one, had given place to Nicholás de Ovando; and the fleet which brought the new governor,—with Maldonado, Las Casas, and others,—now lay in the harbor waiting to receive Bobadilla for the return voyage. Columbus had been instructed to avoid Hispaniola; but now that one of his vessels leaked, and he needed to make repairs, he sent a boat ashore, asking permission to enter the harbor. He was refused, though a storm was impending. He sheltered his vessels as best he could, and rode out the gale. The fleet which had on board Bobadilla and Roldan, with their ill-gotten gains, was wrecked, and these enemies of Columbus were drowned. The Admiral found a small harbor where he could make his repairs; and then, July 14, sailed westward to find, as he supposed, the richer portions of India in exchange for the barbarous outlying districts which others had appropriated to themselves. He went on through calm and storm, giving names to islands,—which later explorers re-named, and spread thereby confusion on the early maps. He began to find more intelligence in the natives of these islands than those of Cuba had betrayed, and got intimations of lands still farther west, where copper and gold were in abundance. An old Indian made them a rough map of the main shore. Columbus took him on board, and proceeding onward a landing was made on the coast of Honduras August 14. Three days later the explorers landed again fifteen leagues farther east, and took possession of the country for Spain. Still east they went; and, in gratitude for safety after a long storm, they named a cape which they rounded Gracias á Dios,—a name still preserved at the point where the coast of Honduras begins to trend southward. Columbus was now lying ill on his bed, placed on deck, and was half the time in revery. Still the vessels coasted south. They lost a boat’s crew in getting water at one place; and tarrying near the mouth of the Rio San Juan, they thought they got from the signs of the natives intelligence of a rich and populous country over the mountains inland, where the men wore clothes and bore weapons of steel, and the women were decked with corals and pearls. These stories were reassuring; but the exorcising incantations of the natives were quite otherwise for the superstitious among the Spaniards.

They were now on the shores of Costa Rica, where the coast trends southeast; and both the rich foliage and the gold plate on the necks of the savages enchanted the explorers. They went on towards the source of this wealth, as they fancied. The natives began to show some signs of repulsion; but a few hawk’s-bells beguiled them, and gold plates were received in exchange for the trinkets. The vessels were now within the southernmost loop of the shore, and a bit of stone wall seemed to the Spaniards a token of civilization. The natives called a town hereabouts Veragua,—whence, years after, the descendants of Columbus borrowed the ducal title of his line. In this region Columbus dallied, not suspecting how thin the strip of country was which separated him from the great ocean whose farther waves washed his desired India. Then, still pursuing the coast, which now turned to the northeast, he reached Porto Bello, as we call it, where he found houses and orchards. Tracking the Gulf side of the Panama isthmus, he encountered storms that forced him into harbors, which continued to disclose the richness of the country.[75]

It became now apparent that they had reached the farthest spot of Bastidas’ exploring, who had, in 1501, sailed westward along the northern coast of South America. Amid something like mutinous cries from the sailors, Columbus was fain to turn back to the neighborhood of Veragua, where the gold was; but on arriving there, the seas, lately so fair, were tumultuous, and the Spaniards were obliged to repeat the gospel of Saint John to keep a water-spout, which they saw, from coming their way,—so Fernando says in his Life of the Admiral. They finally made a harbor at the mouth of the River Belen, and began to traffic with the natives, who proved very cautious and evasive when inquiries were made respecting gold-mines. Bartholomew explored the neighboring Veragua River in armed boats, and met the chief of the region, with retainers, in a fleet of canoes. Gold and trinkets were exchanged, as usual, both here and later on the Admiral’s deck. Again Bartholomew led another expedition, and getting the direction—a purposely false one, as it proved—from the chief in his own village, he went to a mountain, near the abode of an enemy of the chief, and found gold,—scant, however, in quantity compared with that of the crafty chief’s own fields. The inducements were sufficient, however, as Columbus thought, to found a colony; but before he got ready to leave it, he suspected the neighboring chief was planning offensive operations. An expedition was accordingly sent to seize the chief, and he was captured in his own village; and so suddenly that his own people could not protect him. The craft of the savage, however, stood him in good stead; and while one of the Spaniards was conveying him down the river in a boat, he jumped overboard and disappeared, only to reappear, a few days later, in leading an attack on the Spanish camp. In this the Indians were repulsed; but it was the beginning of a kind of lurking warfare that disheartened the Spaniards. Meanwhile Columbus, with the ship, was outside the harbor’s bar buffeting the gales. The rest of the prisoners who had been taken with the chief were confined in his forecastle. By concerted action some of them got out and jumped overboard, while those not so fortunate killed themselves. As soon as the storm was over, Columbus withdrew the colonists and sailed away. He abandoned one worm-eaten caravel at Porto Bello, and, reaching Jamaica, beached two others.

A year of disappointment, grief, and want followed. Columbus clung to his wrecked vessels. His crew alternately mutinied at his side, and roved about the island. Ovando, at Hispaniola, heard of his straits, but only tardily and scantily relieved him. The discontented were finally humbled; and some ships, despatched by the Admiral’s agent in Santo Domingo, at last reached him, and brought him and his companions to that place, where Ovando received him with ostentatious kindness, lodging him in his house till Columbus departed for Spain, Sept. 12, 1504.

On the 7th of November the Admiral reached the harbor of San Lucar. Weakness and disease later kept him in bed in Seville, and to his letters of appeal the King paid little attention. He finally recovered sufficiently to go to the Court at Segovia, in May, 1505; but Ferdinand—Isabella had died Nov. 26, 1504—gave him scant courtesy. With a fatalistic iteration, which had been his error in life, Columbus insisted still on the rights which a better skill in governing might have saved for him; and Ferdinand, with a dread of continued maladministration, as constantly evaded the issue. While still hope was deferred, the infirmities of age and a life of hardships brought Columbus to his end; and on Ascension Day, the 20th of May, 1506, he died, with his son Diego and a few devoted friends by his bedside.

This follows an engraving in Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 313, taken from a photograph. The house is in Valladolid.]

The character of Columbus is not difficult to discern. If his mental and moral equipoise had been as true, and his judgment as clear, as his spirit was lofty and impressive, he could have controlled the actions of men as readily as he subjected their imaginations to his will, and more than one brilliant opportunity for a record befitting a ruler of men would not have been lost. The world always admires constancy and zeal; but when it is fed, not by well-rounded performance, but by self-satisfaction and self-interest, and tarnished by deceit, we lament where we would approve. Columbus’ imagination was eager, and unfortunately ungovernable. It led him to a great discovery, which he was not seeking for; and he was far enough right to make his error more emphatic. He is certainly not alone among the great men of the world’s regard who have some of the attributes of the small and mean.

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

It would appear, from documents printed by Navarrete, that in 1470 Columbus was brooding on the idea of land to the west. It is not at all probable that he would himself have been able to trace from germ to flower the conception which finally possessed his mind.[76] The age was ripened for it; and the finding of Brazil in 1500 by Cabral showed how by an accident the theory might have become a practical result at any time after the sailors of Europe had dared to take long ocean voyages. Columbus grew to imagine that he had been independent of the influences of his time; and in a manuscript in his own hand, preserved in the Colombina Library at Seville, he shows the weak, almost irresponsible, side of his mind, and flouts at the grounds of reasonable progress which many others besides himself had been making to a belief in the feasibility of a western passage. In this unfortunate writing he declares that under inspiration he simply accomplished the prophecy of Isaiah.[77] This assertion has not prevented saner and later writers[78] from surveying the evidences of the growth of the belief in the mind, not of Columbus only, but of others whom he may have impressed, and by whom he may have been influenced. The new intuition was but the result of intellectual reciprocity. It needed a daring exponent, and found one.

The geographical ideas which bear on this question depend, of course, upon the sphericity of the earth.[79] This was entertained by the leading cosmographical thinkers of that age,—who were far however from being in accord in respect to the size of the globe. Going back to antiquity, Aristotle and Strabo had both taught in their respective times the spherical theory; but they too were widely divergent upon the question of size,—Aristotle’s ball being but mean in comparison with that of Strabo, who was not far wrong when he contended that the world then known was something more than one third of the actual circumference of the whole, or one hundred and twenty-nine degrees, as he put it; while Marinus, the Tyrian, of the opposing school, and the most eminent geographer before Ptolemy, held that the extent of the then known world spanned as much as two hundred and twenty-five degrees, or about one hundred degrees too much.[80] Columbus’ calculations were all on the side of this insufficient size.[81] He wrote to Queen Isabella in 1503 that “the earth is smaller than people suppose.” He thought but one seventh of it was water. In sailing a direct western course his expectation was to reach Cipango after having gone about three thousand miles. This would actually have brought him within a hundred miles or so of Cape Henlopen, or the neighboring coast; while if no land had intervened he would have gone nine thousand eight hundred miles to reach Japan, the modern Cipango.[82] Thus Columbus’ earth was something like two thirds of the actual magnitude.[83] It can readily be understood how the lesser distance was helpful in inducing a crew to accompany Columbus, and in strengthening his own determination.

Whatever the size of the earth, there was far less palpable reason to determine it than to settle the question of its sphericity. The phenomena which convince the ordinary mind to-day, weighed with Columbus as they had weighed in earlier ages. These were the hulling down of ships at sea, and the curved shadow of the earth on the moon in an eclipse. The law of gravity was not yet proclaimed, indeed; but it had been observed that the men on two ships, however far apart, stood perpendicular to their decks at rest.

Columbus was also certainly aware of some of the views and allusions to be found in the ancient writers, indicating a belief in lands lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules.[84] He enumerates some of them in the letter which he wrote about his third voyage, and which is printed in Navarrete. The Colombina Library contains two interesting memorials of his connection with this belief. One is a treatise in his own hand, giving his correspondence with Father Gorricio, who gathered the ancient views and prophecies;[85] and the other is a copy of Gaietanus’ edition of Seneca’s tragedies, published indeed after Columbus’ death, in which the passage of the _Medea_, known to have been much in Columbus’ mind, is scored with the marginal comment of Ferdinand, his son, “Hæc prophetia expleta ē per patrē meus cristoforū colō almirātē anno 1492.”[86] Columbus, further, could not have been unaware of the opposing theories of Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela as to the course in which the further extension of the known world should be pursued. Ptolemy held to the east and west theory, and Mela to the northern and southern view.

Fac-simile of a cut in _Icones sive imagines vivæ literis cl. virorum ... cum elogiis variis per Nicolaum Reusnerum. Basiliæ, CIƆ IƆ XIC_, Sig. A. 4.]

The Angelo Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Greek _Geographia_ had served to disseminate the Alexandrian geographer’s views through almost the whole of the fifteenth century, for that version had been first made in 1409. In 1475 it had been printed, and it had helped strengthen the arguments of those who favored a belief in the position of India as lying over against Spain. Several other editions were yet to be printed in the new typographical centres of Europe, all exerting more or less influence in support of the new views advocated by Columbus.[87] Five of these editions of Ptolemy appeared during the interval from 1475 to 1492. Of Pomponius Mela, advocating the views of which the Portuguese were at this time proving the truth, the earliest printed edition had appeared in 1471. Mela’s treatise, _De situ orbis_, had been produced in the first century, while Ptolemy had made his views known in the second; and the age of Vasco da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan were to prove the complemental relations of their respective theories.

Fac-simile of cut in _Icones sive imagines virorum literis illustrium ... ex secunda recognitione Nicolai Reusneri. Argentorati, CIƆ IƆ XC_, p. 1. The first edition appeared in 1587. Brunet, vol. iv., col. 1255, calls the editions of 1590 and Frankfort, 1620, inferior.]

Fac-simile of cut in Reusner’s _Icones_, Strasburg, 1590, p. 4. There is another cut in Paulus Jovius’s _Elogia virorum litteris illustrium_, Basle, 1575, p. 7 (copy in Harvard College Library).]

This follows an engraving in Ruge’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 53. The original is at Rome. There is a copy of an old print in Jules Verne’s _Découverte de la Terre_.]

It has been said that Macrobius, a Roman of the fifth century, in a commentary on the _Dream of Scipio_, had maintained a division of the globe into four continents, of which two were then unknown. In the twelfth century this idea had been revived by Guillaume de Conches (who died about 1150) in his _Philosophia Minor_, lib. iv. cap. 3. It was again later further promulgated in the writings of Bede and Honoré d’Autun, and in the _Microcosmos_ of Geoffroy de Saint-Victor,—a manuscript of the thirteenth century still preserved.[88] It is not known that this theory was familiar to Columbus. The chief directors of his thoughts among anterior writers appear to have been, directly or indirectly, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Vincenzius of Beauvais;[89] and first among them, for importance, we must place the _Opus Majus_ Of Roger Bacon, completed in 1267. It was from Bacon that Petrus de Aliaco, Or Pierre d’Ailly (b. 1340; d. 1416 or 1425), in his _Ymago mundi_, borrowed the passage which, in this French imitator’s language, so impressed Columbus.[90]

On a copy of Pierre d’Ailly’s _Imago mundi_, preserved in the Colombina Library at Seville, following a photograph in Harrisse’s _Notes on Columbus_, p. 84.]

An important element in the problem was the statements of Marco Polo regarding a large island, which he called Cipango, and which he represented as lying in the ocean off the eastern coast of Asia. This carried the eastern verge of the Asiatic world farther than the ancients had known; and, on the spherical theory, brought land nearer westward from Europe than could earlier have been supposed. It is a question, however, if Columbus had any knowledge of the Latin or Italian manuscripts of Marco Polo,—the only form in which anybody could have studied his narrative before the printing of it at Nuremberg in 1477, in German, a language which Columbus is not likely to have known. Humboldt has pointed out that neither Columbus nor his son Ferdinand mentions Marco Polo; still we know that he had read his book. Columbus further knew, it would seem, what Æneas Sylvius had written on Asia. Toscanelli had also imparted to him what he knew. A second German edition of Marco Polo appeared at Augsburg in 1481. In 1485, with the _Itinerarius_ of Mandeville,[91] published at Zwolle, the account—“De regionibus orientalibus”—of Marco Polo first appeared in Latin, translated from the original French, in which it had been dictated. It was probably in this form that Columbus first saw it.[92] There was a separate Latin edition in 1490.[93]

The most definite confirmation and encouragement which Columbus received in his views would seem to have come from Toscanelli, in 1474. This eminent Italian astronomer, who was now about seventy-eight years old, and was to die, in 1482, before Columbus and Da Gama had consummated their discoveries, had reached a conclusion in his own mind that only about fifty-two degrees of longitude separated Europe westerly from Asia, making the earth much smaller even than Columbus’ inadequate views had fashioned it; for Columbus had satisfied himself that one hundred and twenty degrees of the entire three hundred and sixty was only as yet unknown.[94] With such views of the inferiority of the earth, Toscanelli had addressed a letter to Martinez, a prebendary of Lisbon, accompanied by a map professedly based on information derived from the book of Marco Polo.[95] When Toscanelli received a letter of inquiry from Columbus, he replied by sending a copy of this letter and the map. As the testimony to a western passage from a man of Toscanelli’s eminence, it was of marked importance in the conversion of others to similar views.[96]

It has always been a question how far the practical evidence of chance phenomena, and the absolute knowledge, derived from other explorers, bearing upon the views advocated by Columbus, may have instigated or confirmed him in his belief. There is just enough plausibility in some of the stories which are cited to make them fall easily into the pleas of detraction to which Columbus has been subjected.

On a copy of the _Historia rerum ubique gestarum_ of Æneas Sylvius, preserved in the Colombina Library at Seville, following a photograph in Harrisse’s _Notes on Columbus_, appendix.]

A story was repeated by Oviedo in 1535 as an idle rumor, adopted by Gomara in 1552 without comment, and given considerable currency in 1609 by Garcilasso de la Vega, of a Spanish pilot,—Sanches, as the name is sometimes given,—who had sailed from Madeira, and had been driven west and had seen land (Hispaniola, it is inferred), and who being shipwrecked had been harbored by Columbus in his house. Under this roof the pilot is said to have died in 1484, leaving his host the possessor of his secret. La Vega claimed to have received the tale from his father, who had been at the Court of Spain in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. Oviedo repeated it, but incredulously;[97] and it was later told by Gomara, Acosta, Eden, and others. Robertson,[98] Irving,[99] and most later writers find enough in the indecision and variety of its shapes to discard it altogether. Peter Martyr, Bernaldez, and Herrera make no mention of it. It is singular, however, that Ferdinand de Galardi, in dedicating his _Traité politique des abassadeurs_, published at Cologne in 1666, to a descendant of Columbus, the Duke of Veraguas, mentions the story as an indisputable fact;[100] and it has not escaped the notice of querulous writers even of our day.[101]

Others have thought that Columbus, in his voyage to Thule or Iceland,[102] in February, 1477, could have derived knowledge of the Sagas of the westerly voyages of Eric the Red and his countrymen.[103] It seems to be true that commercial relations were maintained between Iceland and Greenland for some years later than 1400; but if Columbus knew of them, he probably shared the belief of the geographers of his time that Greenland was a peninsula of Scandinavia.[104]

The extremely probable and almost necessary pre-Columbian knowledge of the northeastern parts of America follows from the venturesome spirit of the mariners to those seas for fish and traffic, and from the easy transitions from coast to coast by which they would have been lured to meet the more southerly climes. The chances from such natural causes are quite as strong an argument in favor of the early Northmen venturings as the somewhat questionable representations of the Sagas.[105] There is the same ground for representing, and similar lack of evidence in believing, the alleged voyage of Joāo Vas Costa Cortereal to the Newfoundland banks in 1463-1464. Barrow finds authority for it in Cordeyro, who gives, however, no date in his _Historia Insulana das Ilhas a Portugal_, Lisbon, 1717; but Biddle, in his _Cabot_, fails to be satisfied with Barrow’s uncertain references, as enforced in his _Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions_, London, 1818.[106]

Another of these alleged northern voyagers was a Polish navigator, John Szkolny,—a name which we get in various Latinized or other forms, as Scolve, Skolnus, Scolvus, Sciolvus, Kolno, etc.,—who is said to have been on the Labrador coast in 1476, while in the service of Denmark. It is so stated by Wytfliet,[107] Pontanus,[108] and Horn.[109] De Costa cites what is known as the Rouen globe, preserved in Paris, and supposed to belong to about 1540, as showing a legend of Skolnus reaching the northwest coast of Greenland in 1476.[110] Hakluyt quotes Gemma Frisius and Girava. Gomara, in 1553, and Herrera, in 1601, barely refer to it.[111]

There is also a claim for a Dieppe navigator, Cousin, who, bound for Africa, is said to have been driven west, and reached South America in 1488-1489. The story is told by Desmarquets in his _Mémoires chronologiques pour servir à l’histoire de Dieppe_, i. 92, published at Paris, 1785. Major, giving the story an examination, fully discredits it.[112]