Chapter V: The Search for the Indies (3)

[Footnote 476: The source of such a confusion of ideas is
probably the ridiculous map in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanæ_,
upon which North America is represented in all the accuracy of
outline attainable by modern maps, and then the Icelandic names
are put on where Rafn thought they ought to go, i. e. Markland
upon Nova Scotia, Vinland upon New England, etc. Any person
using such a map is liable to forget that it cannot possibly
represent the crude notions of locality to which the reports of
the Norse voyages must have given rise in an ignorant age. (The
reader will find the map reproduced in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit.
Hist._, i. 95.) Rafn's fault was, however, no greater than that
committed by the modern makers of so-called "ancient
atlases"--still current and in use in schools--when, for
example, they take a correct modern map of Europe, with parts
of Africa and Asia, and upon countries so dimly known to the
ancients as Scandinavia and Hindustan, but now drawn with
perfect accuracy, they simply print the ancient names!! Nothing
but confusion can come from using such wretched maps. The only
safe way to study the history of geography is to reproduce the
ancient maps themselves, as I have done in the present work.
Many of the maps given below in the second volume will
illustrate the slow and painful growth of the knowledge of the
North American coast during the two centuries after Columbus.]

[Sidenote: If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive for concealing it.]

We have next to inquire, if Columbus had heard of Vinland and comprehended its relation to his own theory about land at the west, why in the world should he have concealed this valuable knowledge? The notion seems to be that he must have kept it secret through an unworthy desire to claim a priority in discovery to which he knew that he was not entitled.[477] This is projecting our present knowledge into the past with a vengeance. Columbus never professed to have discovered America; he died in the belief that what he had done was to reach the eastern shores of Asia by a shorter route than the Portuguese. If he had reason to suppose that the Northmen had once come down from the Arctic seas to some unknown part of the Asiatic coast, he had no motive for concealing such a fact, but the strongest of motives for proclaiming it, inasmuch as it would have given him the kind of inductive argument which he sorely needed. The chief obstacle for Columbus was that for want of tangible evidence he was obliged to appeal to men's reason with scientific arguments. When you show things to young children they are not content with looking; they crave a more intimate acquaintance than the eyes alone can give, and so they reach out and handle the things. So when ideas are presented to grown-up men, they are apt to be unwilling to trust to the eye of reason until it has been supplemented by the eye of sense; and indeed in most affairs of life such caution is wholesome. The difference between Columbus and many of the "practical" men whom he sought to convince was that he could see with his mind's eye solid land beyond the Sea of Darkness while they could not. To them the ocean, like the sky, had nothing beyond, unless it might be the supernatural world.[478] For while the argument from the earth's rotundity was intelligible enough, there were few to whom, as to Toscanelli, it was a living truth. Even of those who admitted, in theory, that Cathay lay to the west of Europe, most deemed the distance untraversable. Inductive proof of the existence of accessible land to the west was thus what Columbus chiefly needed, and what he sought every opportunity to find and produce; but it was not easy to find anything more substantial than sailors' vague mention of driftwood of foreign aspect or other outlandish jetsam washed up on the Portuguese strand.[479] What a godsend it would have been for Columbus if he could have had the Vinland business to hurl at the heads of his adversaries! If he could have said, "Five hundred years ago some Icelanders coasted westward in the polar regions, and then coasted southward until they reached a country beyond the ocean and about opposite to France or Portugal; therefore that country must be Asia, and I can reach it by striking boldly across the ocean, which will obviously be shorter than going down by Guinea,"--if he could have said this, he would have had precisely the unanswerable argument for lack of which his case was waiting and suffering. In persuading men to furnish hard cash, for his commercial enterprise, as Colonel Higginson so neatly says, "an ounce of Vinland would have been worth a pound of cosmography."[480] We may be sure that the silence of Columbus about the Norse voyages proves that he knew nothing about them or quite failed to see their bearings upon his own undertaking. It seems to me absolutely decisive.

[Footnote 477: "The fault that we find with Columbus is, that
he was not honest and frank enough to tell where and how he had
obtained his previous information about the lands which he
pretended to discover." Anderson, _America not discovered by
Columbus_, p. 90.]

[Footnote 478: See below, p. 398, note.]

[Footnote 479: For example, the pilot Martin Vicenti told
Columbus that 1,200 miles west of Cape St. Vincent he had
picked up from the sea a piece of carved wood evidently not
carved with iron tools. Pedro Correa, who had married
Columbus's wife's sister, had seen upon Porto Santo a similar
piece of carving that had drifted from the west. Huge reeds
sometimes floated ashore upon those islands, and had not
Ptolemy mentioned enormous reeds as growing in eastern Asia?
Pine-trees of strange species were driven by west winds upon
the coast of Fayal, and two corpses of men of an unknown race
had been washed ashore upon the neighbouring island of Flores.
Certain sailors, on a voyage from the Azores to Ireland, had
caught glimpses of land on the west, and believed it to be the
coast of "Tartary;" etc., etc. See _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_,
cap. ix. Since he cited these sailors, why did he not cite the
Northmen also, if he knew what they had done?]

[Footnote 480: _Larger History of the United States_, p. 54.]

[Sidenote: No trace of a thought of Vinland appears in the voyages of Columbus.]

Furthermore, this silence is in harmony with the fact that in none of his four voyages across the Atlantic did Columbus betray any consciousness that there was anything for him to gain by steering toward the northwest. If he could correctly have conceived the position of Vinland he surely would not have conceived it as south of the fortieth parallel. On his first voyage he steered due west in latitude 28° because Toscanelli placed Japan opposite the Canaries. When at length some doubts began to arise and he altered his course, as we shall hereafter see, the change was toward the southwest. His first two voyages did not reveal to him the golden cities for which he was looking, and when on his third and fourth voyages he tried a different course it was farther toward the equator, not farther away from it, that he turned his prows. Not the slightest trace of a thought of Vinland appears in anything that he did.

[Sidenote: Why did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?]

Finally it may be asked, if the memory of Vinland was such a living thing in Iceland in 1477 that a visitor would be likely to be told about it, why was it not sufficiently alive in 1493 to call forth a protest from the North? When the pope, as we shall presently see, was proclaiming to the world that the Spanish crown was entitled to all heathen lands and islands already discovered or to be discovered in the ocean west of the Azores, why did not some zealous Scandinavian at once jump up and cry out, "Look here, old Columbus, _we_ discovered that western route, you know! Stop thief!" Why was it necessary to wait more than a hundred years longer before the affair of Vinland was mentioned in this connection?

[Sidenote: The idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of America until the seventeenth century.]

Simply because it was not until the seventeenth century that the knowledge of North American geography had reached such a stage of completeness as to suggest to anybody the true significance of the old voyages from Greenland. That significance could not have been understood by Leif and Thorfinn themselves, or by the compilers of Hauks-bók and Flateyar-bók, or by any human being, until about the time of Henry Hudson. Not earlier than that time should we expect to find it mentioned, and it is just then, in 1610, that we do find it mentioned by Arngrim Jonsson, who calls Vinland "an island of _America_, in the region of Greenland, perhaps the modern Estotilandia."[481] This is the earliest glimmering of an association of the idea of Vinland with that of America.

[Footnote 481: "Terram veró Landa Rolfoni quæsitam existimarem
esse Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam
nempe Americæ e regione Gronlandiæ, quæ fortè hodie
Estotilandia," etc. _Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, p. 120.

Abraham Ortelius in 1606 speaks of the Northmen coming to
America, but bases his opinion upon the Zeno narrative
(published in 1558) and upon the sound of the name _Norumbega_,
and apparently knows nothing of Vinland:--"Iosephus Acosta in
his book _De Natura noui orbis_ indeuors by many reasons to
proue, that this part of _America_ was originally inhabited by
certaine Indians, forced thither by tempestuous weather ouer
the South sea which now they call Mare del Zur. But to me it
seemes more probable, out of the historie of the two Zeni,
gentlemen of Venice, ... that this New World many ages past was
entred upon by some islanders of _Europe_, as namely of
_Groenland_, Island, and Frisland; being much neerer thereunto
than the Indians, nor disioyned thence ... by an Ocean so huge,
and to the Indians so vnnauigable. Also, what else may we
coniecture to be signified by this _Norumbega_ [the name of a
North region of _America_] but that from _Norway_, signifying a
North land, some Colonie in times past hath hither beene
transplanted?" _Theatre of the Whole World_, London, 1606, p.
5. These passages are quoted and discussed by Reeves, _The
Finding of Wineland the Good_, pp. 95, 96. The supposed
connection of _Norumbega_ with _Norway_ is very doubtful.
Possibly Stephanius, in his map of 1570 (Torfæus, _Gronlandia
antiqua_, 1706), may have had reference to Labrador or the
north of Newfoundland.]

[Sidenote: Résumé of the genesis of Columbus's scheme.]

[Sidenote: Martin Behaim's improved astrolabe.]

[Sidenote: Negotiations of Columbus with John II. of Portugal.]

[Sidenote: A shabby trick.]

[Sidenote: Columbus leaves Portugal,]

[Sidenote: and enters the service of the Spanish sovereigns, 1486.]

[Sidenote: The junto at Salamanca.]

The genesis of the grand scheme of Columbus has now been set forth, I believe, with sufficient fulness. The cardinal facts are 1, that the need for some such scheme was suggested in 1471, by the discovery that the Guinea coast extended south of the equator; 2, that by 1474 advice had been sought from Toscanelli by the king of Portugal, and not very long after 1474 by Columbus; 3, that upon Toscanelli's letters and map, amended by the Ptolemaic estimate of the earth's size and by the authority of passages quoted in the book of Alliacus (one of which was a verse from the Apocrypha), Columbus based his firm conviction of the feasibleness of the western route. How or by whom the suggestion of that route was first made--whether by Columbus himself or by Toscanelli or by Fernando Martinez or, as Antonio Gallo declares, by Bartholomew Columbus,[482] or by some person in Portugal whose name we know not--it would be difficult to decide. Neither can we fix the date when Columbus first sought aid for his scheme from the Portuguese government. There seems to be no good reason why he should not have been talking about it before 1474; but the affair did not come to any kind of a climax until after his return from Guinea, some time after 1482 and certainly not later than 1484. It was on some accounts a favourable time. The war with Castile was out of the way, and Martin Behaim had just invented an improved astrolabe which made it ever so much easier to find and keep one's latitude at sea. It was in 1484 that Portuguese discoveries took a fresh start after a ten years' lull, and Diego Cam, with the learned Behaim and his bran-new astrolabe on board, was about to sail a thousand miles farther south than white men had ever gone before. About this time the scheme of Columbus was formally referred by King John II. to the junto of learned cosmographers from whom the crown had been wont to seek advice. The project was condemned as "visionary,"[483] as indeed it was,--the outcome of vision that saw farther than those men could see. But the king, who had some of his uncle Prince Henry's love for bold enterprises, was more hospitably inclined toward the ideas of Columbus, and he summoned a council of the most learned men in the kingdom to discuss the question.[484] In this council the new scheme found some defenders, while others correctly urged that Columbus must be wrong in supposing Asia to extend so far to the east, and it must be a much longer voyage than he supposed to Cipango and Cathay,[485] Others argued that the late war had impoverished the country, and that the enterprises on the African coast were all that the treasury could afford. Here the demands of Columbus were of themselves an obstacle to his success. He never at any time held himself cheap,[486] and the rewards and honours for which he insisted on stipulating were greater than the king of Portugal felt inclined to bestow upon a plain Genoese mariner. It was felt that if the enterprise should prove a failure, as very likely it would, the less heartily the government should have committed itself to it beforehand, the less it would expose itself to ridicule. King John was not in general disposed toward unfair and dishonest dealings, but on this occasion, after much parley, he was persuaded to sanction a proceeding quite unworthy of him. Having obtained Columbus's sailing plans, he sent out a ship secretly, to carry some goods to the Cape Verde islands, and then to try the experiment of the westward voyage. If there should turn out to be anything profitable in the scheme, this would be safer and more frugal than to meet the exorbitant demands of this ambitious foreigner. So it was done; but the pilots, having no grand idea to urge them forward, lost heart before the stupendous expanse of waters that confronted them, and beat an ignominious retreat to Lisbon; whereupon Columbus, having been informed of the trick,[487] departed in high dudgeon, to lay his proposals before the crown of Castile. He seems to have gone rather suddenly, leaving his wife, who died shortly after, and one or two children who must also have died, for he tells us that he never saw them again. But his son Diego, aged perhaps four or five years, he took with him as far as the town of Huelva, near the little port of Palos in Andalusia, where he left him with one of his wife's sisters, who had married a man of that town named Muliar.[488] This arrival in Spain was probably late in the autumn of 1484, and Columbus seems to have entered into the service of Ferdinand and Isabella January 20, 1486. What he was doing in the interval of rather more than a year is not known. There is a very doubtful tradition that he tried to interest the republic of Genoa in his enterprise,[489] and a still more doubtful rumour that he afterwards made proposals to the Venetian senate.[490] If these things ever happened, there was time enough for them in this year, and they can hardly be assigned to any later period. In 1486 we find Columbus at Cordova, where the sovereigns were holding court. He was unable to effect anything until he had gained the ear of Isabella's finance minister Alonso de Quintanilla, who had a mind hospitable to large ideas. The two sovereigns had scarcely time to attend to such things, for there was a third king in Spain, the Moor at Granada, whom there now seemed a fair prospect of driving to Africa, and thus ending the struggle that had lasted with few intermissions for nearly eight centuries. The final war with Granada had been going on since the end of 1481, and considering how it weighed upon the minds of Ferdinand and Isabella it is rather remarkable that cosmography got any hearing at all. The affair was referred to the queen's confessor Fernando de Talavera, whose first impression was that if what Columbus said was true, it was very strange that other geographers should have failed to know all about it long ago. Ideas of evolution had not yet begun to exist in those days, and it was thought that what the ancients did not know was not worth knowing. Toward the end of 1486 the Spanish sovereigns were at Salamanca, and Talavera referred the question to a junto of learned men, including professors of the famous university.[491] There was no lack of taunt and ridicule, and a whole arsenal of texts from Scripture and the Fathers were discharged at Columbus, but it is noticeable that quite a number were inclined to think that his scheme might be worth trying, and that some of his most firmly convinced supporters were priests. No decision had been reached when the sovereigns started on the Malaga campaign in the spring of 1487.

[Footnote 482: Gallo, _De navigatione Columbi_, apud Muratori,
_Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom. xxiii. col. 302.]

[Footnote 483: Lafuente, _Historia de España_, tom. ix, p.
428.]

[Footnote 484: Vasconcellos, _Vida del rey Don Juan II._, lib.
iv.; La Clède, _Histoire de Portugal_, lib. xiii.]

[Footnote 485: The Portuguese have never been able to forgive
Columbus for discovering a new world for Spain, and their
chagrin sometimes vents itself in amusing ways. After all, says
Cordeiro, Columbus was no such great man as some people think,
for he did not discover what he promised to discover; and,
moreover, the Portuguese geographers were right in condemning
his scheme, because it really is not so far by sea from Lisbon
around Africa to Hindustan as from Lisbon by any practicable
route westward to Japan! See Luciano Cordeiro, _De la part
prise par les Portugais dans la découverte d'Amérique_, Lisbon,
1876, pp. 23, 24, 29, 30. Well, I don't know that there is any
answer to be made to this argument. Logic is logic, says the
wise Autocrat:--

"End of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Logic is logic, that's all I say."

Cordeiro's book is elaborately criticised in the learned work
of Prospero Peragallo, _Cristoforo Colombo in Portogallo: studi
critici_, Genoa, 1882.]

[Footnote 486: "Perciocchè essendo l' Ammiraglio di generosi ed
alti pensieri, volle capitolare con suo grande onore e
vantaggio, per lasciar la memoria sua, e la grandezza della sua
casa, conforme alla grandezza delle sue opere e de' suoi
meriti." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi. The jealous
Portuguese historian speaks in a somewhat different tone from
the affectionate son:--"Veó requerer á el rey Dom João que le
desse algums navios pera ir á descobrir a ilha de Gypango
[_sic_] per esta mar occidental.... El rey, porque via ser este
Christovão Colom homem falador e glorioso em mostrar suas
habilidades, e mas fantastico et de imaginacão com sua ilha de
Cypango, que certo no que dezia: davalhe pouco credito."
Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, liv. iii. cap.
xi. fol. 56.]

[Footnote 487: It has been urged in the king's defence that
"such a proceeding was not an instance of bad faith or perfidy
(!) but rather of the policy customary at that time, which
consisted in distrusting everything that was foreign, and in
promoting by whatever means the national glory." Yes, indeed,
whether the means were fair or foul. Of course it was a common
enough policy, but it was lying and cheating all the same. "Não
foi sem duvida por mà fè ou perfidia que tacitamente se mandon
armar hum navio à cujo capitão se confiou o plano que Colombo
havia proposto, e cuja execuçao se lhe encarregou; mas sim por
seguir a politica naquelle tempo usada, que toda consistia em
olhar com desconfiança para tudo o que era estrangeiro, e en
promover por todos os modos a gloria nacional. O capitão
nomeado para a empreza, como não tivesse nem o espirito, nem a
convicção de Colombo, depois de huma curta viagem nos mares do
Oeste, fez-se na volta da terra: e arribou à Lisboa descontente
e desanimado." Campe, _Historia do descobrimento da America_,
Paris, 1836, tom. i. p. 13. The frightened sailors protested
that YOU MIGHT AS WELL EXPECT TO FIND LAND IN THE SKY AS IN
THAT WASTE OF WATERS! See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_,
tom. i. p. 221. Las Casas calls the king's conduct by its right
name, _dobladura_, "trickery."]

[Footnote 488: It has generally been supposed, on the authority
of _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., that his wife had lately
died; but an autograph letter of Columbus, in the possession of
his lineal descendant and representative the present Duke of
Veraguas, proves that this is a mistake. In this letter
Columbus says expressly that when he left Portugal he left wife
and children, and never saw them again. (Navarrete,
_Coleccion_, tom. ii. doc. cxxxvii. p. 255.) As Las Casas, who
knew Diego so well, also supposed his mother to have died
before his father left Portugal, it is most likely that she
died soon afterwards. Ferdinand Columbus says that Diego was
left in charge of some friars at the convent of La Rábida near
Palos (_loc. cit._); Las Casas is not quite so sure; he thinks
Diego was left with some friend of his father at Palos, or
perhaps (_por ventura_) at La Rábida. (_Historia_, tom. i. p.
227.) These mistakes were easy to make, for both La Rábida and
Huelva were close by Palos, and we know that Diego's aunt
Muliar was living at Huelva. (Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. i. p.
241; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 279, 356, 391; tom. ii. p. 229.) It
is pretty clear that Columbus never visited La Rábida before
the autumn of 1491 (see below, p. 412). My own notion is that
Columbus may have left his wife with an infant and perhaps one
older child, relieving her of the care of Diego by taking him
to his aunt, and intending as soon as practicable to reunite
the family. He clearly did not know at the outset whether he
should stay in Spain or not.]

[Footnote 489: It rests upon an improbable statement of
Ramusio, who places the event as early as 1470. The first
Genoese writer to allude to it is Casoni, _Annali della
Republica di Genova_, Genoa, 1708, pp. 26-31. Such testimony is
of small value.]

[Footnote 490: First mentioned in 1800 by Marin, _Storia del
commercio de Veneziani_, Venice, 1798-1808, tom. vii. p. 236.]

[Footnote 491: The description usually given of this conference
rests upon the authority of Remesal, _Historia de la prouincia
de Chyapa_, Madrid, 1619, lib. ii. cap. vii. p. 52. Las Casas
merely says that the question was referred to certain persons
at the court, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 228. It is
probably not true that the project of Columbus was officially
condemned by the university of Salamanca as a corporate body.
See Camara, _Religion y Ciencia_, Valladolid, 1880, p. 261.]

[Sidenote: Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, Aug. 15, 1488.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope, Dec, 1487.]

[Sidenote: Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. Sept., 1488;]

[Sidenote: and sends him to England.]

[Sidenote: Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. Feb., 1490;]

[Sidenote: and goes thence to France before 1492.]

After the surrender of Malaga in August, 1487, Columbus visited the court in that city. For a year or more after that time silken chains seem to have bound him to Cordova. He had formed a connection with a lady of noble family, Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, who gave birth to his son Ferdinand on the 15th of August, 1488.[492] Shortly after this event, Columbus made a visit to Lisbon, in all probability for the purpose of meeting his brother Bartholomew, who had returned in the last week of December, 1487, in the Dias expedition, with the proud news of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope,[493] which was rightly believed to be the extremity of Africa; and we can well understand how Christopher, on seeing the success of Prince Henry's method of reaching the Indies so nearly vindicated, must have become more impatient than ever to prove the superiority of his own method. It was probably not long after Bartholomew's return that Christopher determined to go and see him, for he applied to King John II. for a kind of safe-conduct, which was duly granted March 20, 1488. This document[494] guarantees Christopher against arrest or arraignment or detention on any charge civil or criminal whatever, during his stay in Portugal, and commands all magistrates in that kingdom to respect it. From this it would seem probable that in the eagerness of his geographical speculations he had neglected his business affairs and left debts behind him in Portugal for which he was liable to be arrested. The king's readiness to grant the desired privilege seems to indicate that he may have cherished a hope of regaining the services of this accomplished chart-maker and mariner. Christopher did not avail himself of the privilege until late in the summer,[495] and it is only fair to suppose that he waited for the birth of his child and some assurance of its mother's safety. On meeting Bartholomew he evidently set him to work forthwith in making overtures to the courts of England and France. It was natural enough that Bartholomew should first set out for Bristol, where old shipmates and acquaintances were sure to be found. It appears that on the way he was captured by pirates, and thus some delay was occasioned before he arrived in London and showed the king a map, probably similar to Toscanelli's and embellished with quaint Latin verses. An entry on this map informs us that it was made by Bartholomew Columbus in London, February 10, 1488, which I think should be read 1489 or even 1490, so we may suppose it to have been about that time or perhaps later that he approached the throne.[496] Henry VII. was intelligent enough to see the bearings of Bartholomew's arguments, and at the same time, as a good man of business, he was likely to be cautious about investing money in remote or doubtful enterprises. What arguments were used we do not know, but the spring of 1492 had arrived before any decisive answer had been given. Meanwhile Bartholomew had made his way to France, and found a powerful protector in a certain Madame de Bourbon,[497] while he made maps for people at the court and waited to see if there were any chances of getting help from Charles VIII.

[Footnote 492: Some historians, unwilling to admit any
blemishes in the character of Columbus, have supposed that this
union was sanctioned by marriage, but this is not probable. He
seems to have been tenderly attached to Beatriz, who survived
him many years. See Harrisse, tom. ii. pp. 353-357.]

[Footnote 493: The authority for Bartholomew Columbus having
sailed to the Cape of Good Hope with Dias is a manuscript note
of his own in Christopher's copy of the _Imago Mundi_: "Nota
quod hoc anno de 88 [it should be 87] in mense decembri appulit
in Ulixbona Bartholomeus Didacus capitaneus trium carabelarum
quem miserat serenissimus rex Portugalie in Guineam ad
tentandum terrain. Et renunciavit ipse serenissimo regi prout
navigaverat ultra jam navigata leuchas 600, videlicet 450 ad
austrum et 150 ad aquilonem usque montem per ipsum nominatum
_Cabo de boa esperança_ quem in Agesimba estimamus. Qui quidem
in eo loco invenit se distare per astrolabium ultra lineam
equinoctialem gradus 35. Quem viagium pictavit et scripsit de
leucha in leucham in una carta navigationis ut oculi visum
ostenderet ipso serenissimo regi. In quibus omnibus interfui."
M. Varnhagen has examined this note and thinks it is in the
handwriting of Christopher Columbus (_Bulletin de Géographie_,
janvier, 1858, tom. xv. p. 71); and M. d'Avezac (_Canevas
chronologique_, p. 58), accepting this opinion, thinks that the
words _in quibus omnibus interfui_, "in all of which I took
part," only mean that Christopher was present in Lisbon when
the expedition returned, and heard the whole story! With all
possible respect for such great scholars as MM. d'Avezac and
Varnhagen, I submit that the opinion of Las Casas, who first
called attention to this note, must be much better than theirs
on such a point as the handwriting of the two brothers. When
Las Casas found the note he wondered whether it was meant for
Bartholomew or Christopher, i. e. wondered which of the two was
meant to be described as having "taken part;" but at all
events, says Las Casas, the handwriting is
Bartholomew's:--"Estas son palabras escritas de la mano de
Bartolomé Colon, no sé si las escribió de sí ó de su letra por
su hermano Cristóbal Colon." Under these circumstances it seems
idle to suppose that Las Casas could have been mistaken about
the handwriting; he evidently put his mind on that point, and
in the next breath he goes on to say, "la letra yo conozco ser
de Bartolomé Colon, porque tuve muchas suyas," i. e. "I know it
is Bartholomew's writing, for I have had many letters of his;"
and again "estas palabras ... de la misma letra y mano de
Bartolomé Colon, la cual muy bien conocí y agora tengo hartas
cartas y letras suyas, tratando deste viaje," i. e. "these
words ... from the very writing and hand of Bartholomew
Columbus, which I knew very well, and I have to-day many charts
and letters of his, treating of this voyage." (_Hist. de las
Indias_, tom. i. pp. 213, 214.) This last sentence makes Las
Casas an independent witness to Bartholomew's presence in the
expedition, a matter about which he was not likely to be
mistaken. What puzzled him was the question, not whether
Bartholomew went, but whether Christopher could have gone also,
"pudo ser tambien que se hallase Cristóbal Colon." Now
Christopher certainly did not go on that voyage. The expedition
started in August, 1486, and returned to Lisbon in December,
1487, after an absence of sixteen months and seventeen days,
"anendo dezaseis meses et dezasete dias que erão partidos
delle." (Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, tom.
i. fol. 42, 44.) The account-book of the treasury of Castile
shows that sums of money were paid to Christopher at Seville,
May 5, July 3, August 27, and October 15, 1487; so that he
could not have gone with Dias (see Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 191).
Neither could Christopher have been in Lisbon in December,
1487, when the little fleet returned, for his safe-conduct from
King John is dated March 20, 1488. It was not until the autumn
of 1488 that Columbus made this visit to Portugal, and M.
d'Avezac has got the return of the fleet a year too late.
Bartholomew's note followed a custom which made 1488 begin at
Christmas, 1487.

In reading a later chapter of Las Casas for another purpose
(tom. i. p. 227), I come again upon this point. He rightly
concludes that Christopher could not have gone with Dias, and
again declares most positively that the handwriting of the note
was Bartholomew's and not Christopher's.

This footnote affords a good illustration of the kind of
difficulties that surround such a subject as the life of
Columbus, and the ease with which an excess of ingenuity may
discover mare's nests.]

[Footnote 494: It may be found in Navarrete, _Coleccion de
viages_, tom. ii. pp. 5, 6.]

[Footnote 495: The account-book of the treasury shows that on
June 16 he was still in Spain. See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 355.]

[Footnote 496: The entry, as given by Las Casas, is "Pro
authore, seu pictore, || Gennua cui patria est, nomen cui
Bartolomeus || Columbus de terra rubea, opus edidit istud ||
Londonije: anno domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno
|| Atque insuper anno octavo: decimaque die mensis Februarii.
|| Laudes Christo cantentur abunde." _Historia_, tom. i. p.
225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly educated man,
writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of the
king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which
made the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas,
so that his February, 1488, means the next month but one after
December, 1488, i. e. what in our new style becomes February,
1489. Bartholomew returned to Lisbon from Africa in the last
week of December, 1487, and it is not likely that his plans
could have been matured and himself settled down in London in
less than seven weeks. The logical relation of the events, too,
shows plainly that Christopher's visit to Lisbon was for the
purpose of consulting his brother and getting first-hand
information about the greatest voyage the world had ever seen.
In the early weeks of 1488 Christopher sends his request for a
safe-conduct, gets it March 20, waits till his child is born,
August 15, and then presently goes. Bartholomew may have sailed
by the first of October for England, where (according to this
reading of his date) we actually find him four months later.
What happened to him in this interval? Here we come to the
story of the pirates. M. Harrisse, who never loses an
opportunity for throwing discredit upon the _Vita dell'
Ammiraglio_, has failed to make the correction of date which I
have here suggested. He puts Bartholomew in London in February,
1488, and is thus unable to assign any reason for Christopher's
visit to Lisbon. He also finds that in the forty-six days
between Christmas, 1487, and February, 10, 1488, there is
hardly room enough for any delay due to so grave a cause as
capture by pirates. (_Christophe Colomb_, vol. ii. p. 192.) He
therefore concludes that the statement in the _Vita dell'
Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., is unworthy of credit, and it is upon an
accumulation of small difficulties like this that he bases his
opinion that Ferdinand Columbus cannot have written that book.
But Las Casas also gives the story of the pirates, and adds the
information that they were "Easterlings," though he cannot say
of what nation, i. e. whether Dutch, German, or perhaps Danes.
He says that Bartholomew was stripped of his money and fell
sick, and after his recovery was obliged to earn money by
map-making before he could get to England. (_Historia_, tom. i.
p. 225.) Could all this have happened within the four months
which I have allowed between October, 1488, and February, 1489?
Voyages before the invention of steamboats were of very
uncertain duration. John Adams in 1784 was fifty-four days in
getting from London to Amsterdam (see my _Critical Period of
American History_, p. 156). But with favourable weather a
Portuguese caravel in 1488 ought to have run from Lisbon to
Bristol in fourteen days or less, so that in four months there
would be time enough for quite a chapter of accidents. Las
Casas, however, says it was _a long time_ before Bartholomew
was able to reach England:--"Esto fué causa que enfermase y
viniese á mucha pobreza, y estuviese mucho tempo sin poder
llegar á Inglaterra, hasta tanto que quiso Dies sanarle; y
reformado algo, por su industria y trabajos de sus manos,
haciendo cartas de marear, llegó á Inglaterra, y, pasados un
dia y otros, hobo de alcanzar que le oyese Enrique VII." It is
impossible, I think, to read this passage without feeling that
at least a year must have been consumed; and I do not think we
are entitled to disregard the words of Las Casas in such a
matter. But how shall we get the time?

Is it possible that Las Casas made a slight mistake in
deciphering the date on Bartholomew's map? Either that mariner
did not give the map to Henry VII., or the king gave it back,
or more likely it was made in duplicate. At any rate Las Casas
had it, along with his many other Columbus documents, and for
aught we know it may still be tumbling about somewhere in the
Spanish archives. It was so badly written (_de muy mala é
corrupta letra_), apparently in abbreviations (_sin
ortografía_), that Las Casas says he found extreme difficulty
in making it out. Now let us observe that date, which is given
in fantastic style, apparently because the inscription is in a
rude doggerel, and the writer seems to have wished to keep his
"verses" tolerably even. (They don't scan much better than Walt
Whitman's.) As it stands, the date reads _anno domini millesimo
quatercentessimo octiesque uno atque insuper anno octavo_, i.
e. "in the year of our Lord the thousandth, four hundredth, AND
EIGHT-TIMES-ONE, and thereafter the eighth year." What business
has this cardinal number _octiesque uno_ in a row of ordinals?
If it were translatable, which it is not, it would give us
1,000 + 400 + 8 + 8 = 1416, an absurd date. The most obvious
way to make the passage readable is to insert the ordinal
_octogesimo primo_ instead of the incongruous _octiesque uno_;
then it will read "in the year of our Lord the
one-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-first, and thereafter the
eighth year," that is to say 1489. Now translate old style into
new style, and February, 1489, becomes February, 1490, which I
believe to be the correct date. This allows sixteen months for
Bartholomew's mishaps; it justifies the statement in which Las
Casas confirms Ferdinand Columbus; and it harmonizes with the
statement of Lord Bacon: "For Christopherus Columbus, refused
by the king of Portugal (who would not embrace at once both
east and west), employed his brother Bartholomew Columbus unto
King Henry to negotiate for his discovery. And it so fortuned
that he was taken by pirates at sea; by which accidental
impediment he was long ere he came to the king; so long that
before he had obtained a capitulation with the king for his
brother the enterprise was achieved, and so the West Indies by
Providence were then reserved for the crown of Castilia."
_Historie of the Raygne of K. Henry the Seventh_, Bacon's
_Works_, Boston, 1860, vol. xi. p. 296. Lord Bacon may have
taken the statement from Ferdinand's biography; but it probably
agreed with English traditions, and ought not to be slighted in
this connection.]

[Footnote 497: One of the sisters of Charles VIII. See
Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 194.]

[Sidenote: The Duke of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for Columbus,]

[Sidenote: but Isabella withholds her consent.]

[Sidenote: Columbus makes up his mind to get his family together and go to France, Oct., 1491.]

As for Christopher Columbus, we find him back in Spain again, in May, 1489, attending court at Cordova. In the following autumn there was much suffering in Spain from floods and famine,[498] and the sovereigns were too busy with the Moorish war to give ear to Columbus. It was no time for new undertakings, and the weary suitor began to think seriously of going in person to the French court. First, however, he thought it worth while to make an attempt to get private capital enlisted in his enterprise, and in the Spain of that day such private capital meant a largess from some wealthy grandee. Accordingly about Christmas of 1489, after the Beza campaign in which Columbus is said to have fought with distinguished valour,[499] he seems to have applied to the most powerful nobleman in Spain, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, but without success. But at the hands of Luis de la Cerda, Duke of Medina-Celi, he met with more encouragement than he had as yet found in any quarter. That nobleman entertained Columbus most hospitably at his castle at Puerto de Santa Maria for nearly two years, until the autumn of 1491. He became convinced that the scheme of Columbus was feasible, and decided to fit up two or three caravels at his own expense, if necessary, but first he thought it proper to ask the queen's consent, and to offer her another chance to take part in the enterprise.[500] Isabella was probably unwilling to have the duke come in for a large share of the profits in case the venture should prove successful. She refused the royal license, saying that she had not quite made up her mind whether to take up the affair or not, but if she should decide to do so she would be glad to have the duke take part in it.[501] Meanwhile she referred the question to Alonso de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of Castile. This was in the spring of 1491, when the whole country was in a buzz of excitement with the preparations for the siege of Granada. The baffled Columbus visited the sovereigns in camp, but could not get them to attend to him, and early in the autumn, thoroughly disgusted and sick at heart, he made up his mind to shake the dust of Castile from his feet and see what could be done in France. In October or November he went to Huelva, apparently to get his son Diego, who had been left there, in charge of his aunt. It was probably his intention to take all the family he had--Beatriz and her infant son Ferdinand, of whom he was extremely fond, as well as Diego--and find a new home in either France or England, besides ascertaining what had become of his brother Bartholomew, from whom he had not heard a word since the latter left Portugal for England.[502]

[Footnote 498: Bernaldez, _Reyes Católicos_, cap. xci.]

[Footnote 499: Zuñiga, _Anales de Sevilla_, lib. xii. p. 404.]

[Footnote 500: See the letter of March 19, 1493, from the Duke
of Medina-Celi to the Grand Cardinal of Spain (from the
archives of Simancas) in Navarrete _Coleccion de viages_, tom.
ii. p. 20.]

[Footnote 501: This promise was never fulfilled. When Columbus
returned in triumph, arriving March 6, 1493, at Lisbon, and
March 15 at Palos, the Duke of Medina-Celi wrote the letter
just cited, recalling the queen's promise and asking to be
allowed to send to the Indies once each year an expedition on
his own account; for, he says, if he had not kept Columbus with
him in 1490 and 1491 he would have gone to France, and Castile
would have lost the prize. There was some force in this, but
Isabella does not appear to have heeded the request.]

[Footnote 502: This theory of the situation is fully sustained
by Las Casas, tom. i. p. 241.]

[Sidenote: He stops at La Rábida, and meets the prior Juan Perez.]

[Sidenote: Perez writes to the queen,]

[Sidenote: and Columbus is summoned back to court.]

But now at length events took a favourable turn. Fate had grown tired of fighting against such indomitable perseverance. For some years now the stately figure of Columbus had been a familiar sight in the streets of Seville and Cordova, and as he passed along, with his white hair streaming in the breeze, and countenance aglow with intensity of purpose or haggard with disappointment at some fresh rebuff, the ragged urchins of the pavement tapped their foreheads and smiled with mingled wonder and amusement at this madman. Seventeen years had elapsed since the letter from Toscanelli to Martinez, and all that was mortal of the Florentine astronomer had long since been laid in the grave. For Columbus himself old age was not far away, yet he seemed no nearer the fulfilment of his grand purpose than when he had first set it forth to the king of Portugal. We can well imagine that when he started from Huelva, with his little son Diego, now some eleven or twelve years old, again to begin renewing his suit in a strange country, his thoughts must have been sombre enough. For some reason or other--tradition says to ask for some bread and water for his boy--he stopped at the Franciscan monastery of La Rábida, about half a league from Palos. The prior, Juan Perez, who had never seen Columbus before, became greatly interested in him and listened with earnest attention to his story. This worthy monk, who before 1478 had been Isabella's father-confessor, had a mind hospitable to new ideas. He sent for Garcia Fernandez, a physician of Palos, who was somewhat versed in cosmography, and for Martin Alonso Pinzon, a well-to-do ship-owner and trained mariner of that town, and in the quiet of the monastery a conference was held in which Columbus carried conviction to the minds of these new friends. Pinzon declared himself ready to embark in the enterprise in person. The venerable prior forthwith sent a letter to the queen, and received a very prompt reply summoning him to attend her in the camp before Granada. The result of the interview was that within a few days Perez returned to the convent with a purse of 20,000 maravedis (equivalent to about 1,180 dollars of the present day), out of which Columbus bought a new suit of clothes and a mule; and about the first of December he set out for the camp in company with Juan Perez, leaving the boy Diego in charge of the priest Martin Sanchez and a certain Rodriguez Cabejudo, upon whose sworn testimony, together with that of the physician Garcia Fernandez, some years afterward, several of these facts are related.[503]

[Footnote 503: My account of these proceedings at La Rábida
differs in some particulars from any heretofore given, and I
think gets the events into an order of sequence that is at once
more logical and more in harmony with the sources of
information than any other. The error of Ferdinand Columbus--a
very easy one to commit, and not in the least damaging to his
general character as biographer--lay in confusing his father's
two real visits (in 1484 and 1491) to Huelva with two visits
(one imaginary in 1484 and one real in 1491) to La Rábida,
which was close by, between Huelva and Palos. The visits were
all the more likely to get mixed up in recollection because in
each case their object was little Diego and in each case he was
left in charge of somebody in that neighbourhood. The confusion
has been helped by another for which Ferdinand is not
responsible, viz.: the friar Juan Perez has been confounded
with another friar Antonio de Marchena, who Columbus says was
the only person who from the time of his first arrival in Spain
had always befriended him and never mocked at him. These worthy
friars twain have been made into one (e. g. "the prior of the
convent, Juan Perez de Marchena," Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i.
p. 128), and it has often been supposed that Marchena's
acquaintance began with Columbus at La Rábida in 1484, and that
Diego was left at the convent at that time. But some modern
sources of information have served at first to bemuddle, and
then when more carefully sifted, to clear up the story. In 1508
Diego Columbus brought suit against the Spanish crown to
vindicate his claim to certain territories discovered by his
father, and there was a long investigation in which many
witnesses were summoned and past events were busily raked over
the coals. Among these witnesses were Rodriguez Cabejudo and
the physician Garcia Fernandez, who gave from personal
recollection a very lucid account of the affairs at La Rábida.
These proceedings are printed in Navarrete, _Coleccion de
viages_, tom. iii. pp. 238-591. More recently the publication
of the great book of Las Casas has furnished some very
significant clues, and the elaborate researches of M. Harrisse
have furnished others. (See Las Casas, lib. i. cap. xxix.,
xxxi.; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 341-372; tom. ii. pp. 237-231; cf.
Peragallo, _L' autenticità_, etc., pp. 117-134.)--It now seems
clear that Marchena, whom Columbus knew from his first arrival
in Spain, was not associated with La Rábida. At that time
Columbus left Diego, a mere infant, with his wife's sister at
Huelva. Seven years later, intending to leave Spain forever, he
went to Huelva and took Diego, then a small boy. On his way
from Huelva to the Seville road, and thence to Cordova (where
he would have been joined by Beatriz and Ferdinand), he
happened to pass by La Rábida, where up to that time he was
evidently unknown, and to attract the attention of the prior
Juan Perez, and the wheel of fortune suddenly and unexpectedly
turned. As Columbus's next start was not for France, but for
Granada, his boy was left in charge of two trustworthy persons.
On May 8, 1492, the little Diego was appointed page to Don
John, heir-apparent to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, with
a stipend of 9,400 maravedis. On February 19, 1498, after the
death of that young prince, Diego became page to Queen
Isabella.]

[Sidenote: The junto before Granada, Dec, 1491.]

At once upon the arrival of Columbus in the camp before Granada, his case was argued then and there before an assembly of learned men and was received more hospitably than formerly, at Salamanca. Several eminent prelates had come to think favourably of his project or to deem it at least worth a trial. Among these were the royal confessors, Deza and Talavera, the latter having changed his mind, and especially Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo, who now threw his vast influence decisively in favour of Columbus.[504] The treasurers of the two kingdoms, moreover, Quintanilla for Castile and Luis de Santangel for Aragon, were among his most enthusiastic supporters; and the result of the conference was the queen's promise to take up the matter in earnest as soon as the Moor should have surrendered Granada.

[Footnote 504: In popular allusions to Columbus it is quite
common to assume or imply that he encountered nothing but
opposition from the clergy. For example the account in Draper's
_Conflict between Science and Religion_, p. 161, can hardly be
otherwise understood by the reader. But observe that Marchena
who never mocked at Columbus, Juan Perez who gave the
favourable turn to his affairs, the great prelates Deza and
Mendoza, and the two treasurers Santangel and Quintanilla, were
every one of them priests! Without cordial support from the
clergy no such enterprise as that of Columbus could have been
undertaken, in Spain at least. It is quite right that we should
be free-thinkers; and it is also desirable that we should have
some respect for facts.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Granada, Jan. 2, 1492.]

[Sidenote: Columbus negotiates with the queen.]

[Sidenote: His terms are considered exorbitant.]