Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

somehow got together 250,000 more. *06034 On April 17, 1492, the

King signed the requisite papers. Then or later he gave Columbus a

letter to the Khan of Cathay; it was China, not India, that Columbus

hoped to reach, and which to the end of his life he thought he had

found. On August 3 the Santa Maria (his flagship), the Pinta,

and the Nina sailed from Palos with eighty-eight men, and provisions

for a year.

II. AMERICA

-

They headed south to the Canary Islands, seeking winds from the east

before they faced into the west. After a long stay at the islands they

ventured forth (September 6) along the twenty-eighth parallel of

latitude- not quite far enough south to get the full boon of the trade

winds; we know now that a still more southerly crossing would have

shortened the distance and tribulation to America. The weather was

kindly, "like April in Andalusia," Columbus noted in his log; "the

only thing wanting was to hear nightingales." Thirty-three days passed

anxiously. Columbus understated to his men the nautical mileage of

each day; but as he overestimated his speed, his statements were

unwillingly correct. The calms persisting, he changed his course,

whereupon, even more than before, the crew felt lost in the aimless

wastes of the sea. On October 9 the captains of the Pinta and the

Nina boarded the flagship and pleaded for an immediate turnabout

back to Spain. Columbus promised that unless land were sighted in

three days he would do as they wished. On October 10 his own crew

mutinied, but he appeased them with the same pledge. On October 11

they drew from the ocean a green branch bearing flowers; their trust

in the Admiral returned. At two o'clock the next morning, under a

nearly full moon, Rodrigo de Triana, the lookout on the Nina,

shouted Tierra! tierra! It was land at last.

When dawn came they saw naked natives on the beach, "all of good

stature." The three captains were rowed to the shore by armed men;

they knelt, kissed the ground, and thanked God. Columbus christened

the island San Salvador- Holy Saviour- and took possession of it in

the name of Ferdinand, Isabella, and Christ. The savages received

their future enslavers with civilized courtesies. The Admiral wrote:

-

In order that we might win good friendship- because I knew that they

were a people who could better be freed and converted to our Holy

Father by love than by force, I gave to some of them red caps, and

to some glass beads... and many other things of slight value, in which

they took much pleasure. They remained so much our friends that it was

a marvel; and later they came swimming to the ships' boats, and

brought us parrots and cotton thread... and many other things, and

in exchange we gave them little glass beads.... Finally they exchanged

with us everything they had, with good will. `06139

-

The report of the "friendly and flowing savage" which was to bewitch

Rousseau, Chateaubriand, and Whitman may have begun then and there.

But among the first things that Columbus learned on the island was

that these natives were subject to slave raids by other native groups,

and that they themselves, or their ancestors, had conquered earlier

indigenes. Two days after landing, the Admiral struck an ominous

note in his journal: "These people are very unskilled in arms.... With

fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one

wished." `061310

But alas, there was no gold in San Salvador. On October 14 the

little fleet sailed again, seeking Cipango- Japan- and gold. On

October 28 a landing was made on Cuba. There too the natives were well

disposed; they tried to join their visitors in singing the Ave

Maria, and did their best to make the sign of the cross. When Columbus

showed them gold they seemed to indicate that he would find some at

a point in the interior which they called Cubana-cam- i.e.,

mid-Cuba. Mistaking this for El gran can - the Great Khan of China-

he sent two Spaniards, with full diplomatic credentials, to find

that elusive potentate. They returned without locating the Khan, but

with a pleasant account of the courtesies with which they had been

everywhere received. They brought also the first report, by Europeans,

of American tobacco: they had seen male and female natives smoking

tabaco herbs rolled into a cigar, which was inserted into the

nose. Disappointed, Columbus left Cuba (December 4), taking with

him, by force, five native youths to serve as interpreters, and

seven women to comfort them. All died en route to Spain.

Meanwhile Columbus's senior captain, Martin Alonso Pinzon, had

deserted with his ship to hunt gold on his own. On December 5 Columbus

reached Haiti. There he remained four weeks, welcomed and feasted by

the natives. He found some gold, and felt himself a bit closer to

the Khan; but his flagship grounded on a reef, and was smashed to

pieces by waves and rocks, on the eve of the Christmas that he had

planned to celebrate as the happiest of his life. Luckily the Nina

was near by to rescue the crew, and the kindly natives ventured out in

their canoes to help salvage most of the cargo before the vessel sank.

Their chieftain consoled Columbus with hospitality and gold, and

assurances that there was plenty of the murderous metal in Haiti.

The Admiral thanked God for the gold, forgave Him for the shipwreck,

and wrote in his journal that Ferdinand and Isabella would now have

funds sufficient to conquer the Holy Land. He was so impressed with

the good manners of the natives that he left part of his crew as a

settlement to explore the island while he returned to Spain to

report his discoveries. On January 6, 1493, Pinzon rejoined him with

the Pinta; his apologies were accepted, for Columbus was loath to

sail back with only one ship. On January 16 they began the journey

home.

It was a long and miserable voyage. All through January the winds

were hostile, and on February 12 a violent storm buffeted the tiny

ships, which were not much more than seventy feet long. `061311 As

they approached the Azores, Pinzon deserted again, hoping to be the

first to reach Spain with the great news that Asia had been found. The

Nina anchored off Santa Maria in the Azores (February 17); half

the crew went ashore, partly to make a pilgrimage to a shrine of the

Virgin; they were arrested by the Portuguese authorities and were kept

in jail for four days while Columbus fretted offshore. They were

released, and the Nina sailed again; but another storm drove it from

its course, split its sails, and so depressed the sailors that they

vowed to spend their first day on land fasting on bread and water

and observing the Ten Commandments. On March 3 they sighted

Portugal, and though Columbus knew that he was risking a diplomatic

mess, he decided to debark at Lisbon rather than attempt the remaining

225 miles to Palos with one sail. John II received him with

courtesy; the Nina was repaired; and on March 15 it reached Palos

after "infinite toil and terror" (said Columbus), 193 days after

leaving that port. Martin Pinzon had landed on northwestern Spain

several days before, and had sent a message to Ferdinand and Isabella,

but they refused to see him or his messenger. The Pinta sailed

into Palos a day after the Nina. Pinzon fled in fear and disgrace to

his home, took to his bed, and died.

III. THE WATERS OF BITTERNESS

-

Columbus was welcomed by King and Queen at Barcelona, lived six

months at the court, and received the title Almirante del Mar

Oceano - "Admiral of the Ocean Sea"- by which was meant the Atlantic

west of the Azores. He was made governor of the New World, or, as he

described himself, "Vice-King and General Governor of the Islands

and Terra Firma of Asia and India." `061312 As John II was rumored

to be fitting out a fleet to cross the Atlantic, Ferdinand appealed to

Alexander VI to define the rights of Spain in the "Ocean Sea." The

Spanish Pope, in a series of bulls (1493), allotted to Spain all

non-Christian lands west, and to Portugal all those east, of an

imaginary line drawn north and south 270 miles west of the Azores

and the Cape Verde Islands. The Portuguese refused to accept this line

of demarcation, and war was imminent when the rival governments, by

the Treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494), agreed that the line

should run along a meridian of longitude 250 leagues west of the

Cape Verde Islands for discoveries before that date, but 370 leagues

west for later discoveries. (The eastern corner of Brazil lies east of

this second line.) The papal bulls termed the new terrain "Indies";

scholars like Pietro Martire d' Anghiera accepted Columbus's notion

that he had reached Asia; and this delusion persisted till Magellan

circumnavigated the globe.

Hoping for gold, Ferdinand and Isabella provided Columbus with a new

fleet of seventeen vessels, equipped with 1,200 seamen, animals to

start flocks and herds in the "Indies," and five ecclesiastics to

shrive the Spaniards and convert the "Indians." The second voyage

sailed from Seville on September 25, 1493. Thirty-nine days later

(as against seventy days for the first voyage), the watch sighted an

island which Columbus, because the day was Sunday, named Dominica.

No landing was made there; the Admiral scented bigger prey. He

passed through the westernmost group of the Lesser Antilles, and was

so impressed by their number that he named them Once Mil Virgenes-

"Eleven Thousand Virgins"; they are still the Virgin Islands.

Sailing on, he discovered Puerto Rico; he dallied there briefly,

then hurried on to see what had happened to the Spanish settlement

that he had left in Haiti ten months before. Hardly a man remained

of it. The Europeans had roamed the island robbing the natives of gold

and women; they had established a tropical paradise with five women to

each man; they had quarreled and murdered one another, and nearly

all the rest had been killed by the outraged Indians.

The fleet sailed eastward along the Haitian coast. On January 2,

1494, the Admiral landed men and cargo to found a new settlement,

which he called Isabella. After supervising the construction of a town

and the repair of his ships, he left to explore Cuba. Unable to

circumnavigate it, he concluded that it was the mainland of Asia,

perhaps the Malay Peninsula. He thought of rounding it and circling

the globe, but his ships were not equipped for it. He turned back

toward Haiti (October 29, 1494), wondering how his new settlement

had fared. He was shocked to find that it had behaved like its

predecessor; that the Spaniards had raped native women, stolen

native stores of food, and kidnaped native boys to serve as slaves;

and that the natives had killed many Spaniards in revenge. The

missionaries had made little attempt to Christianize the Indians.

One friar had joined a group of malcontents who had sailed back to

Spain to give the sovereigns a discouraging report of Haiti's

reputed resources. Columbus himself now became a slave dealer. He sent

out expeditions to capture 1,500 natives; 400 of these he gave to

the settlers, 500 he dispatched to Spain. Two hundred of these died on

the voyage; the survivors were sold at Seville, but died in a few

years, unable to adjust themselves to the colder climate, or perhaps

to the savagery of civilization.

Leaving orders with his brother Bartolome to transfer the settlement

from Isabella to a better site at Santo Domingo (now Ciudad Trujillo),

Columbus sailed for Spain (March 10, 1496), and reached Cadiz after an

unhappy voyage of ninety-three days. He presented his sovereigns

with Indians and gold nuggets; it was not much, but it modified the

doubts that had formed at court about the wisdom of pouring more money

into the Atlantic. The Admiral was uncomfortable on land; the salt

of the sea was in his blood; he begged for at least eight ships for

another trial of fortune. The sovereigns consented; and in May 1498,

Columbus sailed again.

This third voyage moved southwest to the tenth meridian of latitude,

then followed this due west. On July 31 the crew sighted the great

island which the pious commander named Trinidad; and on August 31 he

saw the mainland of South America, perhaps a year before, perhaps a

year after, Vespucci. After exploring the Gulf of Paria he sailed

northwest, and reached Santo Domingo August 31. This third

settlement had survived, but one of every four of the five hundred

Spaniards that he had left there in 1496 was suffering from

syphilis, and the settlers had divided into two hostile groups that

were now on the verge of war. To appease the discontent, Columbus

allowed each man to appropriate a large tract of land, and to

enslave the natives dwelling on it; this became the rule in the

Spanish settlements. Worn now with hardships, disappointments,

arthritis, and a disease of the eyes, Columbus almost broke down under

these problems. His mind clouded occasionally, he became irritable,

querulous, dictatorial, avaricious, and ruthless in his punishments;

so at least many of the Spaniards claimed, and they fretted under an

Italian's rule. He recognized that the problems of managing the

settlement were alien to his training and temperament. In October

1499, he sent two caravels to Spain with a request that Ferdinand

and Isabella should appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern

the island.

The sovereigns took him at his word, and appointed Francisco de

Bobadilla; but, going beyond the Admiral's request, they gave their

commissioner full authority, even over Columbus. Bobadilla reached

Santo Domingo while Columbus was away, and heard many complaints of

the manner in which Cristoforo and his brothers Bartolome and Diego

had ruled what was now called Hispaniola. When Columbus returned,

Bobadilla had him cast into jail, with manacles on his arms and

fetters on his feet. After a further inquest the commissioner sent the

three brothers, in chains, to Spain (October 1, 1500). Arriving at

Cadiz, Columbus wrote a pitiful letter to friends at court:

-

It is now seventeen years since I came to serve these princes with

the Enterprise of the Indies. They made me pass eight of them in

discussion, and at the end rejected it as a thing of jest. Nonetheless

I persisted therein.... Over there I have placed under their

sovereignty more land than there is in Africa and Europe, and more

than 1,700 islands.... In seven years I, by the divine will, made that

conquest. At a time when I was entitled to expect rewards and

retirement, I was incontinently arrested and sent home loaded with

chains.... The accusation was brought out of malice on the basis of

charges made by civilians who had revolted and wished to take

possession of the land....

I beg your graces, with the zeal of faithful Christians in whom

their Highnesses have confidence, to read all my papers, and to

consider how I, who came from so far to serve these princes... now

at the end of my days have been despoiled of my honor and my

property without cause, wherein is neither justice nor mercy. `061313

-

Ferdinand was busy dividing the Kingdom of Naples with Louis XII;

six weeks went by before he ordered Columbus and his brothers

released, and summoned them to court. King and Queen received them

in the Alhambra, consoled them, and restored them to affluence, but

not to their former authority in the New World. By the Capitulations

or agreement that they had signed in 1492, the sovereigns were bound

to leave Columbus full authority in the lands he had discovered, but

they felt that he was no longer fit to exercise it. They named Don

Nicolas de Ovando as new governor of the Indies; however, they allowed

the Admiral to collect all his property rights at Santo Domingo, and

all that was hitherto due him of the gold diggings and trade. Columbus

lived the rest of his life a rich man.

But he was not content. He importuned the King and Queen for one

more fleet; and though they were not yet clear that the "Enterprise of

the Indies" would bring them a net gain, they felt that they owed

him another trial. On May 9, 1502, from Cadiz, Columbus began his

fourth voyage, with four ships and 140 men, including his brother

Bartolome and his son Fernando. On June 15 he sighted Martinique. On

June 29, feeling a storm in the air and in his joints, he anchored off

a sheltered spot of the Haitian shore near Santo Domingo. A fleet of

thirty ships was in the main harbor, about to sail for Spain. Columbus

sent word to the governor that a hurricane was brewing, and advised

him to detain the vessels for a while. Ovando rejected the warnings

and dispatched the fleet. The hurricane arrived; the Admiral's ships

survived it with minor damage; of the governor's fleet all vessels but

one were wrecked; 500 lives were lost, including Bobadilla's; and a

rich cargo of gold was surrendered to the sea.

Columbus now began, unsuspectingly, the most arduous and tragic

months in his troubled career. Continuing westward, he reached

Honduras, and explored the coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the

hope of finding a strait that would let him circumnavigate the

earth. On December 5, 1502, a tempest of wind and rain arose, whose

mad force is vividly described in Columbus's journal:

-

For nine days I was as one lost, without any hope of life. Eyes

never beheld the sea so high, angry, and covered with foam. The wind

not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run

behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in

this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. Never did the

sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like a

furnace, and the lightning broke forth with such violence that each

time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the

flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought that

the ships would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to

fall from the sky; I do not say it rained, for it was like another

deluge. The men were so worn out that they longed for death to end

their dreadful suffering. `061314

-

To add to the terror of wind, water, lightning, and rocky reefs near

by, a waterspout- a spray-spreading "twister" in the sea- appeared,

perilously close to the ships, and shooting water "up to the

clouds." Columbus took out his Bible, and read from it how Christ

had stilled the storm at Capernaum; then he exorcized the waterspout

by tracing with his sword a cross in the sky, whereupon, we are

told, the tower of water collapsed. After twelve awful days the fury

passed, and the fleet rested in a harbor near the present eastern

end of the Panama Canal. There Columbus and his men celebrated sadly

the Christmas of 1502 and the New Year's Day of 1503, not knowing that

the Pacific was only forty miles away.

Further misfortunes came. Thirteen sailors, rowing the flagship's

boat up a river to find fresh water, were attacked by Indians; all but

one of the Spaniards were killed, and the boat was lost. Two vessels

had to be abandoned as too worm-eaten to be seaworthy; the other two

leaked so badly that the pumps had to be worked night and day. Finally

the worms proved stronger than the men, and these surviving ships

had to be beached on a shore of Jamaica (June 25, 1503). There the

hapless crew remained a year and five days, depending for food on

the precarious friendship of the natives, who themselves had little to

spare. Diego Mendez, whose calm courage in all this adversity kept

Columbus from complete despair, volunteered to lead six Christians and

ten Indians in a dugout canoe 455 miles- eighty of them out of sight

of land- to Santo Domingo to solicit aid. On that venture their

water ran out, and several Indians died. Mendez reached his goal,

but Ovando would not or could not spare a vessel till May 1504, to

go to the Admiral's relief. By February the Jamaica Indians had

reduced their gifts of food to the stranded crew to the point where

the Spaniards began to starve. Columbus had with him Regiomontanus's

Ephemerides, which calculated a lunar eclipse for February 29. He

called in the native chiefs, and warned them that God, in His anger at

their letting his men starve, was about to blot out the moon. They

scoffed, but when the eclipse began they hurriedly brought food to the

ships. Columbus reassured them, saying that he had prayed to God to

restore the moon, and had promised Him that the Indians would properly

feed the Christians thereafter. The moon reappeared.

Four more months passed before help came; even then the ship that

Ovando sent leaked so badly that it was barely able to return to Santo

Domingo. Columbus, with his brother and son, sailed in a stouter

vessel to Spain, arriving November 7 after a long and stormy voyage.

The King and Queen were disappointed that he had not found more

gold, or a strait to the Indian Ocean; and neither Ferdinand nor

Isabella, who was dying, had time to receive the white-haired sailor

finally home from the sea. His "tenths" from Haiti were still paid

to him; he suffered from arthritis, but not from poverty. When at last

Ferdinand consented to see him Columbus, older than his fifty-eight

years, could hardly bear the long journey to the court at Segovia.

He demanded all the titles, rights, and revenues promised him in 1492.

The King demurred, and offered him a rich estate in Castile;

Columbus refused. He followed the court to Salamanca and Valladolid;

and there, broken in body and heart, he died, May 20, 1506. No man had

ever so remade the map of the earth.

IV. THE NEW PERSPECTIVE

-

Now that he had shown the way, a hundred other mariners rushed to

the New World. That name was apparently first used by a Florentine

merchant whose own name now describes the Americas. Amerigo Vespucci

was sent to Spain by the Medici to straighten out the affairs of a

Florentine banker. In 1495 he won a contract to fit out twelve vessels

for Ferdinand. He caught the exploration fever, and in letters later

(1503-04) written to friends in Florence, he claimed that he had

made four voyages to what he termed novo mondo, and that on one of

these, on June 16, 1497, he had touched the mainland of South America.

As John Cabot reached Cape Breton Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,

on June 24, 1497, and Columbus sighted Venezuela in 1498, Vespucci's

account would give him the credit of being the first European to reach

the mainland of the Western Hemisphere since Leif Ericsson (c.

1000). Confusion and inaccuracies in Vespucci's reports have cast

doubt on his claims; but it is noteworthy that in 1505 Columbus, who

by that time should have been able to judge Vespucci's reliability,

entrusted him with a letter to the Admiral's son Diego. `061315 In

1508 Vespucci was made piloto mayor - chief of all the pilots- of

Spain, and held that position till his death.

A Latin version of one of his letters was printed at Saint-Die

(Lorraine) in April 1507. Martin Waldseemuller, professor of

cosmography in the University of Saint-Die, quoted the letter in his

Cosmographiae introductio, which he published there in that year; he

accepted Vespucci's account as trustworthy, and suggested that the

name Amerige or America should be given to what we now term

South America. In 1538 Gerhardus Mercator applied America, on one of

his famous maps, to all the Western Hemisphere. It is agreed that in

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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