Chapter II: Introduction (2)

It is not within the scope of my design to relate, in detail, the subsequent career of Columbus in the path of discovery, nor of those navigators who succeeded him, and share with him the honor of making known our continent to the Old World. He was the bold pioneer who led the way to the New World, and as such, deserves the first and highest reward; yet he was not truly the first discoverer of the _continent_ of North America. Eager in his search for Cathay, he coasted almost every island composing the groups now known as the West Indies, during his several voyages, but he never saw the shores of the Northern August, 1498 Continent. He did, indeed, touch the soil of South America, near the mouth of the Oronoco, but he supposed it to be an island, and died in the belief that the lands he had discovered were portions of Farther India. *

Intelligence of the great discovery of Columbus, though kept concealed as much as possible by the Spanish court, for reasons of state policy, nevertheless went abroad, and aroused the ambition of other maritime powers. The story that Columbus had found vast and populous gold- producing regions in the Western Ocean excited the cupidity of individuals.

* Columbus returned to Europe in March, 1493. Ferdinand and Isabella bestowed upon him every mark of honor and distinction, and the nobles were obsequious in their attentions to the favorite of royalty. On the 25th of September, 1493, he left Cadiz, on a second voyage of discovery. He had three large ships and fourteen caravels under his command. His discoveries were principally among the West India Islands, where he founded settlements. He returned to Spain in June, 1496. Misfortunes had attended him, yet the sovereigns treated him with distinguished favor.

On the 30th of May, 1498, Columbus sailed from San Lucar de Barraraeda, with a squadron of six vessels, on a third voyage of discovery. He found the settlements which had been planted in great confusion, and civil war among the Spaniards and natives was rife in Hispaniola. In the mean while, intrigues against him were having due weight in the Spanish court. It was alleged that Columbus designed to found an empire in the New World, cast off all allegiance to Spain, and assume the title and pomp of king. He had already offended the conscientious Isabella by persisting in making slaves of the natives, and she readily gave her consent to send out a commissioner to investigate the conduct of the navigator. Bobadilla, a tool of Columbus's enemies, was intrusted with that momentous duty; and, as might have been expected, he found Columbus guilty of every charge made against him. Bobadilla seized Columbus, and sent him in chains to Spain. His appearance excited the indignation of the sovereigns, and they declared to the world that Bobadilla had exceeded his instructions; yet justice was withheld, through the influence of Ferdinand, and Columbus was not reinstated as viceroy of Hispaniola.

While these events were occurring, Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese navigator, had reached Calicut, in the East Indies, by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, and traversing the Indian Ocean. But Columbus still persevered in his determination to reach Asia by a western route. He induced Isabella to fit out a fourth expedition for him, and on the 9th of May, 1502, he sailed for Hispaniola. After many troubles and hardships, he returned to Spain in 1504. His patron and best friend, the queen, died that same year. Old age had made its deep furrows, and, in the midst of disappointment and neglect, the great discoverer died on the 20th of May, 1506, at the age of seventy. He never realized his grand idea of reaching India by a western route. The honor of that achievement was reserved for the expedition of Magellan, fourteen years after the death of Columbus. That navigator passed through the straits which bear his name, at the southern extremity of our continent, and launched boldly out upon the broad Pacific. He died on the ocean, but his vessels reached the Philippine Islands, near the coast of India, in safety. Magellan gave the tame of Pacific to the pleasant ocean over which he was sailing. {xxvii}many adventurers offered their services to sovereigns and men of wealth. Almost simultaneously, Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, and Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, sailed for the lands discovered by Columbus; the former under the auspices, of Henry the Seventh of England, and the latter in the employment of Spanish merchants, with the sanction of Ferdinand. Cabot's father was an Italian, and had been long a resident of Bristol, then the chief commercial mart of England. The Northwestern seas were often traversed as far as Iceland by the Bristol mariners, and they had probably extended their voyages westward to Greenland in their fishing enterprises. Cabot seems to have been familiar with those seas, and the English merchants had great confidence in his abilities. He obtained a commission from Henry the Seventh, similar, in its general outline, to that given to Columbus by Ferdinand and Isabella. It empowered him and his three sons, their heirs or deputies, to discover and settle unknown lands in the Eastern, Northern, or Western seas, such lands to be taken possession of in the name of the King of England. He fitted out two vessels at his own expense, which were freighted by merchants of London and Bristol; and it was stipulated that, in lieu of all customs and imposts, Cabot was to pay to the King one fifth part of all the gains.

Cabot's son, Sebastian, a talented young man of only twenty years, with about three hundred men, sailed from harbor of Bristol in May, 1497. He directed his course to the northwest, until he reached the fifty-eighth degree of north latitude, when floating ice and intense cold induced him to steer to the southwest. Fair winds produced a rapid voyage, and he discovered land on the twenty-fourth of June, which he called Prima Vista, because it was his _first view_ of a new region. The exact point of this first discovery is not certainly known; some supposing it to have been on the coast of Labrador, and others the Island of Newfoundland or the peninsula of Nova Scotia.

He touched at other points, but did not attempt a settlement: the climate seemed too rigorous, the people too fierce, and he returned to Bristol.

Cabot made arrangements for a February, 1498 second voyage. He did not go in person, but fitted out vessels for the purpose. His son, Sebastian, was placed at the head of the expedition, and in May, 1498, the month in which De Gama reached Calicut, in the East Indies, byway of the Cape of Good Hope, he sailed for the New World with several ships. He visited the region first discovered by his father and himself, and called it Newfoundland. It was not rich in gold and spices, but its shoals abounded with vast schools of codfish; and within a few years after his return to England a permanent fishery was established there. Cabot sailed along the whole coast of the present United States, beginning at latitude fifty-six degrees, and terminating at about thirty-six degrees, or Albemarle Sound. His provisions ailing, he returned to England. He made another voyage in 1517, as far south as the {xxviii}Brazils; but failing to discover a western passage to the East Indies, he again returned to England. *

In the same month when young Cabot sailed from Bristol, Amerigo Vespucci departed from Cadiz on his first voyage to the New World. In that voyage he appears May, 1497 to have held a subordinate station.

The expedition under Ojeda, which Amerigo calls his _second_ voyage, was not undertaken until 1499. Whether any vessel in that expedition was under his command is questionable. Spanish writers assert to the contrary, and say that he was first a captain when in the service of Emanuel of Portugal; but it is not my province to inquire into this disputed matter. Spanish historians, jealous of the fame of Columbus, charge Vespucci with falsehood and fraud; but early Spanish authors were not always scrupulous in regard to truth when national pride demanded prevarication, or even absolute falsehood. ** It was

* After his second voyage, Sebastian Cabot was invited to Spain, and sailed on a voyage of discovery, in the service of the Spanish monarch, in 1525. He visited Brazil, and, coasting southward to the thirty-fifth degree, he entered a large river, which he called Rio de la Plata. Up this river he sailed one hundred and twenty leagues. After an absence of six years, he returned to Spain, but seems not to have been well received by the sovereign. He made other, but less conspicuous voyages, and in his old age retired to. Bristol, where he died about the year 1557, at the age of eighty years. He received a pension from Edward the Sixth, and was appointed governor of a company of merchants associated for the purpose of making discoveries.

** The name of the Florentine is variously spelled, Amerigo Vespucci, Americus Vespucius, Amerigo Vespuche. The latter orthography is according to the entry in an account-book containing the expenditure of the treasurer of the royal mercantile house of Seville, quoted by Munoz, tome i., page xix of the Introduction. It appears by that account, that on the 24th of February, 1512, was paid to Manuel Catano, executor of the will of Amerigo, "10937 and a half maravedis," which was due to him for services as chief steersman to his majesty. Amerigo was appointed to that office in March, 1508, with a salary of 50,000 maravedis a year.

Whether he ever commanded an expedition in the Spanish service is a disputed question. He made several voyages to the New World between 1497 and 1512, the year of his death. With an expedition under the command of Ojeda, in 1499, he visited the Antilles and the coast of Guiana and Venezuela. On his return, Emanuel, king of Portugal, invited him to his capital, and gave him the command of three ships for a voyage of discovery. He left Lisbon May 10th, 1501, visited Brazil, and traversed the coast of South America as far as Patagonia, but failed to discover the straits through which Magellan passed at a later day. He returned to Lisbon in 1502. He made a fourth voyage, and returned to Portugal in 1504. Soon after this he wrote an account of his voyage. The book was dedicated to Rene II., duke of Lorraine. He again entered the service of the King of Spain, who appointed him to draw sea-charts, and gave him the title and salary of chief steersman or pilot, which commission he held until his death. According to some accounts, he died in the Island of Terceria, one of the Azores, in 1514; others affirm that his death occurred at Seville.

The portrait of the navigator, here given, was copied, by permission, from the original picture by Bronzino, now in possession of C. Edwards Lester, Esq., late United States consul at Genoa. It was committed to his care by the Vespucci family, to be placed in the possession of our government. No arrangement for its purchase has yet been made. I believe.

An Italian woman named Elena Vespucci, bearing proofs of her lineal descent from the famous navigator, came to America a few years ago, and made application to our Congress for a grant of land, on account of her relationship to the Florentine from whom our continent derived its name. Subsequently, her brother and two sisters, Amerigo, Eliza, and Teresa Vespucci, made a similar petition to Congress. They mention the fact that Elena, "possessing a disposition somewhat indocile and unmanageable, absented herself from her father's house, and proceeded to London. Hence she crossed the ocean, and landed upon the shores of Brazil, at Rio Janeiro. From that city she proceeded to Washington, the capital of the United States." Elena Vespucci was treated with respect. Possessed of youth and beauty, she attracted much attention at the metropolis, but the prayer in the petition of both herself and family was denied. She was living at Ogdensburgh, New York, when I visited that place in 1848.

natural that they should be tender of the reputation of Columbus, although he was not a Spaniard, for his discoveries reflected great luster upon the Spanish crown. For this reason they have ever disputed the claims of Vespucci, and denounced him as a liar and a charlatan. These denunciations, however, prove nothing, and the fame of Columbus loses none of its brightness by admitting the claims of the Florentine; claims, it must be acknowledged, that have sound logic and fair inferences as a basis. Amerigo seems to have been the first who published an account of the discoveries in the New World, and for this priority the narrow and selfish policy of the Spanish government is responsible. His first announcement was made in a letter to Lorenzo de Medici, 1504 and soon afterward he published a volume giving an account of his four voyages, which he dedicated to the Duke of Lorraine.1507 In these he claims the merit of discovering the continent, having landed upon the coast of Paria,(1497) in Colombia, South America, and traversed the shores, according to his own account, as far northward as the Gulf of Mexico. If this statement is true, he visited the continent nearly a year previous to the landing of Columbus at the mouth of the Oronoco, in the same district of Paria. From the circumstance of Amerigo making the first publication on the subject, and claiming to be the discoverer of the continent, the New World was called America, and the Florentine bears the honor of the name; but to neither Columbus nor Vespucci does the honor of first discoverer of America properly belong, but to young Cabot, for he and his crew first saw its soil and inhabitants. He alone, of all those voyagers in the fifteenth century, beheld North America. Whether to Columbus, Vespucci, or Cabot, truth should award the palm, Italy bears the imperishable and undisputed honor of giving birth to all three.

The expeditions of the Cabots turned attention to the regions north of the West India Islands. Emanuel of Portugal dispatched some vessels, under the command of Caspar Cortereal, in 1501, to follow in the track of the English. Cortereal sailed between two and three hundred leagues along the North American coast, but his voyage was fruitless of good results, either to science or humanity. He made few discoveries of land, carried on no traffic, planted no settlements, but kidnapped and carried to Portugal several friendly natives, to be sold as slaves! Perfidy and cruelty marked the first intercourse of the whites with the tribes of our continent; is it to be wondered that the bitter fruits of suspicion and hostility should have flourished among them?

Ponce de Leon, one of the companions of Columbus, and first governor of Porto Rico, a small island sixty miles east of Haiti, sailed on a voyage of discovery among the Bahamas, in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth. It was generally believed in Porto Rico, and the story had great credence in Old Spain, that the waters of a clear spring, bubbling up in the midst of a vast forest, upon an island among the Bahamas, possessed the singular property of restoring age and ugliness to youth and beauty, and perpetuating the lives of those who should bathe in its stream. De Leon was an old man, and, impressed with the truth of this legend, he sought that wonderful fountain. After cruising for a while among the Bahamas, he landed upon the peninsula of Florida, in the harbor of St. Augustine. It was on Palm Sunday when he debarked. That day is called by the Spaniards _Pasqua de Flores_, and, partly from that circumstance, and partly on account of the great profusion of flowers which, at that early season of the year, were blooming on every side, 1520 {xxx}Ponce de Leon gave the country (which he supposed to be a large island like Cuba) the name of Florida. He took formal possession in the name of the Spanish monarch; but, feeling unauthorized to proceed to making conquests without a royal commission, he sailed for Spain to obtain one, after failing in his search after the Fountain of Youth.

He had plunged into every stream, however turbid, with the vain expectation of rising from it young and blooming; but, according to Oviedo, instead of returning to vigorous youth, he arrived at a second childhood within a few years. He was afterward appointed Governor of Florida, and was killed while on an expedition against the natives.

While Ponce de Leon was in Europe, where he remained several years, some wealthy gentlemen of Haiti fitted out two vessels to explore the Bahamas. The squadron was commanded by Lucas Vasquez d'Aillon or Allyon, a Spanish navigator. Their vessels were driven northward by a hurricane, and came near being stranded upon the low coasts. They finally made land in St. Helen's Sound, near the mouth of the Combahee River, in South Carolina, about half way between Charleston and Savannah. D'Aillon called the river Jordan, and the country Chicora. He carried off several natives, whom he enticed on board his ships, with the intention of selling them as slaves in Haiti. A storm destroyed one of the vessels, and the captured Indians in the other voluntarily starved themselves to death, so the avaricious whites were disappointed in their expectations of gain. D'Aillon afterward returned, with three ships, to conquer the whole of Chicora. The natives feigned friendship, decoyed the whites on shore, and then, with poisoned arrows, massacred nearly the whole of them, in revenge for their former perfidy. But few returned with D'Aillon to Haiti. This was the first discovery of the Carolina coast.

While these events were in progress, Cortez, at the head of an expedition fitted out by Velasquez, the governor of Cuba, was destroying the empire of Montezuma, in Mexico, then recently discovered. The success of Cortez excited the jealousy of Velasquez, for he feared a renunciation of his authority by that bold leader. He sent Pamphilo de Narvaez, with a strong force, to arrest and supersede Cortez; but he was defeated, and most of his troops joined his enemy. Narvaez afterward obtained from the Spanish court a commission as _adelantado_ or Governor of Florida, a territory quite indefinite in extent, reaching from the southern capes of the peninsula to the Panuco River in Mexico. With a force of three April 22, 1528 hundred men, eighty of whom were well mounted, Narvaez landed in Florida, where he raised the royal standard, and took possession of the country for the crown of Spain. With the hope of finding some wealthy region like Mexico and Peru, he penetrated the vast swamps and everglades in the interior of the flat country along the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico. His men suffered terribly from the almost daily attacks of the natives and the nightly assaults of the deadly malaria of the fens. They reached the fertile regions of the Appalachians; but the capital of the tribe, instead of being a gorgeous city like Mexico or Cuzco, was a mean village of two hundred huts and wigwams. Disappointed, and one third of his number dead, Narvaez turned southward, reached the Gulf near the present site of St. Mark's, on the Appalachie Bay, constructed five frail barks, and launched upon the waters. Nearly all his men, with himself, perished during a storm. Four of the crew, who were saved, wandered for years through the wild regions of Louisiana and Texas, and finally reached a Spanish settlement in Northern Mexico. These men gave the first intelligence of the fate of the expedition.

Two years after the return of these members of the expedition of Narvaez, Fernando de Soto planned an expedition to explore the interior of Florida, as all North America was then called, in search of a populous and wealthy region supposed to exist there. By permission of the Spanish monarch, he undertook the exploration and conquest of Florida 1538. {xxxi}at his own risk and expense. He was commissioned governor-general of that country and of Cuba for life. Leaving his wife to govern Cuba during his absence, he sailed in June, 1539, and landed at Tampa Bay with a force of six hundred men in complete June 25, 1539 armor.

There he established a small garrison, and then sent most of the vessels of his fleet back to Cuba. He found a Spaniard, one of Narvaez's men, who had learned the native language. Taking him with him as interpreter, De Soto marched with his force into the interior. For five months they wandered among the swamps and everglades, fighting their way against the natives, when they reached the fertile region of the Flint River, in the western part of Georgia. There they passed the winter, within a few leagues of the Gulf, making, through exploring parties, some new discoveries, among which was the harbor of Pensacola. Early in May they broke up their encampment, and, marching northeasterly, readied the head-waters of the Savannah River. After a brief tarry there, they turned their faces westward, and, on the twenty-eighth of October, came upon a fortified town, near the junction of the Alabama and Tombeckbee Rivers. A severe battle of nine hours' duration ensued. Several thousands of the half-naked Indians were slain, and their village reduced to ashes. Several of the mailed Spaniards were killed, and the victory availed De Soto nothing. All his baggage was consumed, and much provision was destroyed.

The wild tribes, for many leagues around, were aroused by this event. De Soto went into winter quarters in a deserted Indian village on the Yazoo. There he was attacked by the swarming natives, bent on revenge. The town was burned, all the clothing of the Spaniards, together with many horses and nearly all the swine which they brought from Cuba, were destroyed or carried away, and several of the whites were killed. Early in the spring the shorn invaders pushed westward, and discovered the Mississippi. They crossed it at the Chickasaw Bluffs, and traversed the country on its western shore up to the thirty-seventh degree, nearly opposite the mouth of the Ohio. They penetrated the wilderness almost three hundred miles west of the Mississippi during the summer, and wintered upon the Washita, in Arkansas. They passed down the Red River to the Mississippi in the spring, where De Soto sickened and died. (May 31, 1542) He had appointed a successor, who now attempted to lead the remnant of the expedition to Spanish settlements in Mexico.

For several months they wandered in the wilderness, but returned in December,(1543) to winter upon the Mississippi, a short distance above the mouth of the Red River.

There they constructed seven large boats, and in July following embarked in them. On reaching the Gulf of Mexico, they crawled cautiously along its sinuous coast, until the twentieth of September, when, half naked and almost famished, they reached a white settlement near the mouth of the Panueo River, about thirty miles north of Tampico.

While the Spaniards were making these useless discoveries of the southern regions of our Republic along the Gulf of Mexico, the French fitted out several expeditions to explore the coast between the peninsula of Florida and the banks of Newfoundland. John Verrazzani, a celebrated Florentine navigator, proceeded to America with a squadron of four ships, under {xxxii}the auspices of Francis the First of France, in 1523. Three of his vessels were so damaged by a storm that they were sent hack; in the fourth, he proceeded on his voyage.

Weathering a terrible tempest, he reached our coast near the mouth of Cape Fear River, in North Carolina. He explored the whole coast, from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia, and taking formal possession of the country in the name of the French king, he called it New France, the title held by Canada while it remained in possession of the French. Verrazzani was followed, the next year, by Cartier (also in the service of the French king), who discovered the Gulf and River St. Lawrence; and soon afterward by the Lord of Roberval, a wealthy nobleman, who proposed to plant a colony in the New World. Roberval failed in his undertaking, and returned to France. He sailed on another voyage, and was never heard of afterward. Other efforts at settlement along the southern coasts were made by the French, but were unsuccessful. A Protestant French colony, planted in Florida, was destroyed by the Spaniards in 1564, and over the dead bodies of the Huguenots the murderers placed the inscription, "We do this not as unto Frenchmen, but as unto Heretics." In 1567, De Gourgues, a Gascon soldier, fitted out an expedition at his own expense, to avenge this out rage. He surprised the Spanish forts erected near St. Augustine, and hung the soldiers of the garrison upon the trees. Over them he placed the inscription, "I do this not as unto Spaniards or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, and murderers." Thus white people were exterminated by white people, and Indians again possessed the land.

The history of the early discoveries in North America forms a wonderful chapter in the great chronicle of human progress and achievements, and in its details there are narratives of adventure, prowess, love, and all the elements of romance, more startling and attractive than the most brilliant conceptions of the imagination ever evolved. The story of the progress of settlements which followed is equally marvelous and attractive. These tempt the pen on every side, but as they are connected only incidentally with my subject, I pass them by with brevity of notice. In the preceding pages I have taken a very brief survey of events in the _progress of discovery_ which opened the way to settlements in the New World; a brief survey of the _progress of settlements_ will be found interwoven with the records upon the pages which follow. They are all united by the often invisible threads of God's providence; and each apparently insignificant event in the wondrous history of our continent is a link as important in the great chain of human deeds, directed by divine intelligence, as those which arrest the attention and command the admiration of the world. Never was this truth oftener and more strikingly illustrated than in our history of the war for independence; and the student of that history, desirous of understanding its true philosophy, should make himself familiar with the antecedents which have a visible relation thereto.

** See page 178, vol. i.

PICTORIAL FIELD-BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION.