TWO men came into the cabin, Don Diego Colon, left in charge of Hispaniola, and with him a tall, powerful, high-featured man, gray of eye and black and silver of hair and short beard. As he stood beside the bed, one saw that he must be kinsman to the man who lay upon it. “O Bartholomew! And is this the end?” cried Don Diego, and I knew that the stranger was that brother, Bartholomew, for whom the Admiral longed.
These three brothers! One lay like a figure upon a tomb save for the breathing that stirred his silver hair. One, Don Diego, tall, too, and strong, but all of a gentle, quiet mien sank on his knees and seemed to pray. One, Don Bartholomew, stood like rock or pine, but he slowly made the sign of the cross, and I saw his gray eyes fill. It seemed to me that the Admiral’s eyelids flickered. “Speak to him again,” I said. “Take his hand.”
Bartholomew Columbus, kneeling in theCordera’scabin, put his arm about his great brother. That is what he called him,—“Christopher, my great brother, it is Bartholomew! Don’t you know me? Don’t you remember? I must go to England, you said, to see King Henry. To tell him what you could do—what you have done, my great brother! Don’t you remember? I went, but I was poor like you who are now Viceroy of the Indies—and I was shipwrecked besides and lost the little that we had scraped—do you remember?—and must live like you by making maps and charts, and it was long before I saw King Henry!—Christopher, my great brother! He lies like death!”
I said, “He is returning, but he is yet a long way off. Keep speaking.”
“But King Henry said at last, ‘Go bring us that brother of yours, and we think it may be done!’ And he gave me gold. So I would come back to Spain for you, and I reached Paris, and it was the summer of 1493. Christopher, my great brother, don’t you hear me? For it was at Paris that I heard, and it came like a flood of glory, fallen in one moment from Heaven! I heard, ‘Christopherus Columbus! He has found the Indies for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!’—Don’t you hear, Christopher? All the world admiring—all the world saying, ‘Nothing will ever go just the same way again!’ You have done the greatest thing, my great brother! Doctor, is he dying?”
“He will not die,” I said. “You are cordial to him, though he hears you yet from leagues and leagues away. Go on!”
“Christopher, from Paris I got slowly, slowly, so slowly I thought it!—to Seville. But I was not poor. They gave me gold, the French King gave it, their nobles, their bishops. I walked in that glory; it flooded me from you! All your people, Christopher, your sons and your brothers and our old father. You build us again, you are our castle and great ship and Admiral! When I came to Barcelona, how they praised you! When I came to Toledo, how they praised you! When I came to Seville, how they praised you! But at Seville I learned that I was too late, and you were gone upon your second voyage. Then I went to Valladolid and the Queen and the King were there, and they said, ‘He has just sailed, Don Bartholomew, from Cadiz with sixteen ships—your great brother who hath crossed Ocean-Sea and bound to us Asia!’—But, sweet Jesu, what entertainment they gave me, all because I had lain in our old wooden cradle at Genoa a couple of years or so after you!—Genoa!—They say Genoaachesbecause she did not send you. Christopher, do you remember the old rock by the sea—and you begged colors from Messer Ludovico and painted upon it a ship and we called it the Great Doge—”
The Admiral’s eyes opened slowly like a gray dawn; he moved ever so slightly in the bed, and his lips parted. “Brother,” he whispered.
We got him from theCorderato Hispaniola shore, and so in a litter to his own house in Isabella. All our town was gathered to see him carried there. He began to improve. The second day he said to Don Bartholomew, “You shall be my lieutenant and deputy. Adelantado—I name you Adelantado.”
Don Bartholomew said bluntly, “Is not that hard upon Diego?”
“No, no, Bartholomew!” answered Don Diego, who was present. “If it were question of a prior of Franciscans, now! But Christopher knows and I know that I took this stormy world but for lack of any other in blood to serve him. Our Lady knows that I never held myself to be the man for the place! Be Adelantado and never think of me!”
The Admiral upon his bed spoke. “We have always worked together, we Colombos. When it is done for the whole there is no jealousy among the parts. I love Diego, and I think he did well, constraining his nature to it, here among the selfish, the dangerous and factious! And others know that he did well. I love him and praise him. But Bartholomew, thou art the man for this!”
Accordingly, the next noontide, trumpets, and a proclamation made before the great cross in the middle of our town. The Viceroy’s new-come brother had every lieutenant power.
I do not know if he ever disappointed or abused it. He became great helper to his great brother.
These three! They were a lesson in what brothers might be, one to the other, making as it were a threefold being. Power was in this family, power of frame and constitution, with vital spirit in abundance; power of will, power of mind, and a good power of heart. Their will was good toward mankind.
They had floods to surmount and many a howling tempest to out-endure. By and large they did well with life,—very well. There was alloy, base metal of course, even in the greatest of the three. They were still men. But they were such men as Nature might put forward among her goodly fruit.
The Viceroy lay still in his bed, for each time he would rise came faintness and old fatigue. The Adelantado acted.
There was storm in Hispaniola, storm of human passions. I found Luis Torres, and he put me within leg-stride of the present.
Margarite! It seemed to begin with Don Pedro Margarite.
He and his men had early made choice between the rich, the fruitful, easy Vega and the mountains they were to pierce for gold and hunt over for a fierce mountain chief. In the Vega they established themselves. The Indians brought them “tribute”, and they exacted over-tribute, and reviled and slew when it pleased them, and they took the Indian women, and if it pleased them they burned a village. “Sorry tale,” said Luis. “Old, sorry tale!”
Indians came to Isabella and with fierce gesture and eyes that cast lances talked to Don Diego. Don Diego sent a stern letter to Don Pedro Margarite. Don Pedro answered that he was doing soldier’s duty, as the Sovereigns would understand when it came before them. Don Diego sent again, summoning him upon his allegiance to Isabella. He chose for a month no answer to that at all, and the breezes still brought from the Vega cries of anger, wails of sorrow. Then he appeared suddenly in Isabella.
Don Diego would have arrested him and laid him in prison to await the Admiral’s return. But with suddenness, that was of truth no suddenness, Margarite had with him three out of four of our hidalgos, and more than that, our Apostolic Vicar of the Indies! Don Diego must bend aside, speak him fair, remonstrate, not command. The Viceroy of the Indies and Admiral of Ocean-Sea? Dead probably!—and what were these Colombos? Italian wool-combers! But here stood hidalgos of Spain!—“Old story,” said Luis Torres. “Many times, many places, man being one in imperfection.”
A choppy sea had followed Margarite’s return. Up and down, to and fro, and one day it might seem Margarite was in control, and the next, Don Diego, but with Margarite’s wave racing up behind. Then appeared three ships with men and supplies and Don Bartholomew! Margarite saw Don Diego strengthened. He was bold enough, Margarite! on a dark night, at eve, there were so many ships before Isabella but when morn broke they were fewer by two. Margarite and the Apostolic Vicar and a hundred disaffected were departed the Indies! “Have they gotten to Spain? And what do they say? God, He knoweth!—There have been great men and they have been stung to death.”
“Ay, ay, the old story!” I said, and would learn about the pacification of the Indians.
“Why, they are not pacified,” answered Luis. “Worse follows worse. Pedro Margarite left two bands in the Vega, and from all I hear they turned devils. It looked like peace itself, didn’t it, this great, fair, new land, when first we stepped upon it, and raised the banner and then the cross? It’s that no longer. They’re up, the Indians, Caonabo and three main caciques, and all the lesser ones under these. In short, we are at war,” ended Luis. “Alonso de Ojeda at the moment is the Cid. He maneuvers now in the Vega.”
I looked around. We were sitting under palm trees, by the mud wall of our town. Beyond the forest waved in the wind, and soft white clouds sailed over it in a sky of essential sapphire. “There’s an aspect here of peace!”
“That is because Guacanagari, from his new town, holds his people still. For that Indian the scent of godship has not yet departed! He sees the Admiral always as a silver-haired hero bringing warmth and light. He is like a dog for fidelity!—But I saw three Indians from outside his country curse him in the name of all the other tribes, with a kind of magical ceremony. Is he right, or is he wrong, Juan Lepe? Or is he neither the one nor the other, but Something moves him from above?”
“Have you never seen again the butio, Guarin?”
“No.”
We sat and looked at the rich forest, and at that strange, rude, small town called Isabella, and at the blue harbor with the ships, and the blue, blue sea beyond. Over us—what is over us? Something seemed to come from it, stealing down the stair to us!
The fourth day after his return, Don Francisco de Las Casas, Don Juan Ponce de Leon, and others told to the Viceroy, lying upon his bed in his house, much what Luis Torres told Juan Lepe. “Sirs,” he said, when they had done, “here is my brother, Don Bartholomew, who will take order. He is as myself. For Christopherus Columbus, he is ill, and must be ill awhile.”
The sixth day came Guacanagari, and sat in the room and talked sorrowfully. Caonabo, Gwarionex, Behechio, Cotubanama, said, “Were these or were these not gods, yet would they fight!”
The Admiral said, “The Future is the god. But there are burrs on his skirt!”
Guacanagari at last would depart. He stood beside the bed and the silver-haired great cacique from heaven. The Admiral put forth a lean, knotted, powerful hand and laid it on the brown, slim, untoiled hand. “I wish peace,” he said. “My brother Bartholomew and I will do what we can do to gain it. Good peace, true peace!”
Without the room, I asked the cacique about Guarin. He was gone, he said, to the mountains. He would not stay with Guacanagari, and he would not go to Caonabo or Gwarionex. “All old things and ways are broken,” said Guacanagari. “All our life is broken. I do not know what we have done. The women sit and weep. And I, too, sometimes I weep!”
The seventh day came in Alonso de Ojeda from St. Thomas.
The Viceroy and the Adelantado and Ojeda talked alone together in the Viceroy’s house. But next day was held a great council, all our principal men attending. There it was determined to capture, if possible, Caonabo, withdrawing him so from the confederacy. The confederacy might then go to pieces. In the meantime use every effort to detach from it Gwarionex who after Guacanagari was our nearest great cacique. Send a well-guarded, placating embassy to him and to Cotubanama. Try kindness, kindness everywhere, kind words and good deeds!—And build another fort called Fort Concepcion.
Take Caonabo! That was a task for Alonso de Ojeda! He did it. Five days after the council, the Viceroy being now recovered and bringing strength to work that needed strength, the Adelantado vigorously helping, Isabella in a good mood, the immediate forest all a gold and green peacefulness, Don Alonso vanished, and with him fourteen picked men, all mounted.
For six weeks it was as though he had dropped into the sea, or risen into the blue sky above eyesight.
Then on a Sunday he and his fourteen rode into town. We had a great church bell and it was ringing, loudly, sonorously. He rode in and at once there arose a shout, “Don Alonso de Ojeda!” All his horsemen rode with him, and rode also one who was not Castilian. On a gray steed a bare, bronze figure—Caonabo!
The church bell swung, the church bell rang. Riding beneath the squat tower, all our people pouring forth from our poor houses upon the returned and his captive, the latter had eyes, it seemed to me, but for that bell. A curious, sardonic look of recognition, appraisal, relinquishment, sat in the Indian’s face. From wrist to wrist of Caonabo went a bright, short chain. The sun glittered upon the bracelets and the links. I do not know—there was for a moment—something in the sound of the bell, something in the gleam of the manacles, that sent out faint pity and horror and choking laughter.
All to the Viceroy’s house, and Don Alonso sitting with Christopherus Columbus, and Caonabo brought to stand before them. Indians make much of indifferent behavior, taunting calm, when taken. It is a point of honor, meeting death so, even when, as often befalls, their death is a slow and hard one. Among themselves, in their wars, it is either death or quick adoption into the victor’s tribe. They have no gaols nor herds of slaves. Caonabo expected death. He stood, a strong, contemptuous figure. But the Viceroy meant to send him to Spain—trophy and show, and to be made, if it could be, Christian.
IT did not end the war. For a fortnight we thought that it had done so. Then came loud tidings. Caonabo’s wife, Anacaona, had put on the lioness. With her was Caonabo’s brother Manicoatex and her own brother Behechio, cacique of Xaragua. There was a new confederacy, Gwarionex again was with it. Only Guacanagari remained. Don Alonso marched, and the Adelantado marched.
At dawn one morning, four sails. We all poured forth to watch them grow bigger and yet bigger. Four ships from Cadiz, Antonio de Torres commanding, and with him colonists of the right kind, mechanics and husbandmen.
Many proposals, much of order, came with Torres. The Admiral had gracious letters from the Queen, letters somewhat cooler from King Ferdinand, a dry, dry letter from Fonseca. Moreover Torres brought a general letter to all colonists in Hispaniola. The moral of which was, Trust and Obey the Viceroy of the Indies, the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea!
“Excellent good!” said Luis Torres. “Don Pedro Margarite and the Apostolic Vicar had not reached Cadiz when Don Antonio sailed!”
The Admiral talked with me that night. Gout again crippled him. He lay helpless, now and then in much pain. “I should go home with Antonio de Torres, but I cannot!”
“You are not very fit to go.”
“I do not mean my body. My will could drag that on ship. But I cannot leave Hispaniola while goes on formal war. But see you, Doctor, what a great thing their Majesties plan for, and what courtesy and respect they show me! See how the Queen writes!”
I knew that it was balm and wine to him, how she wrote. The matter in question was nothing more or less than an amicable great meeting between the two sovereigns and the King of Portugal, the wisest subjects of both attending. A line was to be drawn from top to bottom of Ocean-Sea, and Portugal might discover to the east of it, and Spain to the west! The Holy Father would confirm, and so the mighty spoil be justly divided. Every great geographer should come into counsel. The greatest of them all, the Discoverer, surely so! The Queen urged the Admiral’s presence.
But he could not go. Sense of duty to his Viceroyship held him as with chains. Then Bartholomew? But Bartholomew was greatly needed for the war. He sent Don Diego, a gentle, able man who longed for a cloister and a few hundred monks, fatherly, admirably, to rule.
Antonio de Torres stayed few weeks in Hispaniola. The Viceroy and Admiral would have his letter in the royal hands. Torres took that and took gold and strange plants, and also six hundred Indian captives to be sold for slaves.
War went on in Hispaniola, but not for long. We had horses and bloodhounds and men in armor, trained in the long Moorish strife. There was a battle in the Vega that ended as it must end.
Behechio and Anacaona fled to the high mountains. Manicoatex and Gwarionex sued for peace. It was granted, but a great tribute was imposed. Now all Hayti must gather gold for Spain.
Now began, a little to-day and a little to-morrow, long woe for Hayti! It was the general way of our Age. But our Age sinned.
The year wheeled to October. Juan Aguado came with four caravels to Isabella, and he brought letters of a different tenor from those that Torres brought. We heard in them the voice of Margarite and the Apostolic Vicar.
But now the Admiral was well again, the Indians defeated, Hispaniola basking in what we blithely called peace. Aguado came to examine and interrogate. He had his letters. “Cavaliers, esquires and others, you are to give Don Juan Aguado faith and credit. He is with you on our part to look into—”
Aguado looked with a hostile eye toward Viceroy and Adelantado. Where was a malcontent he came secretly if might be, if not openly, to Aguado. Whoever had a grudge came; whoever thought he had true injury. Every one who disliked Italians, fire-new nobles, sea captains dubbed Admirals and Viceroys came. Every one who had been restrained from greed, lust and violence came. Those who held an honest doubt as to some one policy, or act, questioned, found their mere doubt become in Aguado’s mind damning certainty. And so many good Spaniards dead in war, and so many of pestilence, and such thinness, melancholy, poverty in Isabella! And where was the gold? And was this rich Asia of the spices, the elephants, the beautiful thin cloths and the jewels? The friends of Christopherus Columbus had their say also, but suddenly there arose all the enemies.
“When he sails home, I will sail with him!” said the Admiral, “My name is hurt, the truth is wounded!”
In the third week of Aguado’s visit, arose out of far ocean and rushed upon us one of those immense tempests that we call here “hurricane”. Not a few had we seen since 1492, but none so great, so terrible as this one. Eight ships rode in the harbor and six were sunk. Aguado’s four caravels and two others. Many seamen drowned; some got ashore half-dead.
“How will I get away? I must to Spain!” cried Aguado. The Admiral said, “There is theNina.”
TheNinamust be made seaworthy, and in the end we built a smaller ship still which we called theSanta Cruz. Aguado waited, fretting. Christopherus Columbus kept toward him a great, calm courtesy.
It was at this moment that Don Bartholomew found, through Miguel Diaz, the mines of Hayna, that was a great river in a very rich country. The Adelantado brought to Isabella ore in baskets. Pablo Belvis, our new essayer, pronounced it true and most rich. Brought in smaller measures were golden grains, knobs as large as filberts, golden collars and arm rings from the Indians of Bonao where flowed the Hayna.
“Ophir!” said the Admiral. “Mayhap it is Ophir! Then have we passed somewhere the Gulf of Persia and Trapoban!”
With that gold he sailed, he and Aguado and two small crowded ships. With him he carried Caonabo. It was early March in 1496.
But Juan Lepe stayed in Hispaniola, greatly commended by the Admiral to the Adelantado. A man might attach himself to the younger as well as the elder of these brothers. Don Bartholomew had great qualities. But he hardly dreamed as did Christopherus Columbus. I loved the latter most for that—for his dreams.
Days and days and days! We sought for gold in the Hayna country and found a fair amount. And all Hayti now, each Indian cacique and his country, must gather for us.Must, not may. We built the fortress of San Cristoval, and at last, to be nearer the gold than was Isabella, the Adelantado founded the city of San Domingo, at the mouth of the Ozema, in the Xaragua country. Spaniards in Hispaniola now lived, so many in Isabella, so many in San Domingo, and garrisons in the forts of St. Thomas, Concepcion, and San Cristoval.
Weeks—months. July, and Pedro Alonzo Nino with three caravels filled with strong new men and with provisions. How always we welcomed these incoming ships and the throng they brought that stood and listened and thought at first, after the sea tossing and crowding, that they were come to heaven! And Pedro Nino had left Cadiz in June, three days after the arrival there of theNinaand theSanta Cruz. “June! They had then a long voyage!”—“Long enough! They looked like skeletons! If the Admiral’s hair could get whiter, it was whiter.”
He had letters for the Adelantado from the great brother, having waited in Cadiz while they were written.
Juan Lepe had likewise a letter. “I was in theNina, Don Juan de Aguado in the Santa Cruz. We met at once head winds that continued. At first I made east, but at last of necessity somewhat to the southward. We saw Marigalante again and Guadaloupe, and making for this last, anchored and went ashore, for the great relief of all, and for water and provision. Here we met Amazons, wearing plumes and handling mightily their bows and arrows. After them came a host of men. Our cannon and arquebuses put them to flight but three of our sailors were wounded. Certain prisoners we took and bound upon the ships. In the village that we entered we found honey and wax. They are Cannibals; they eat men. After four days we set sail, but met again tempest and head winds, checking us so that for weeks we but crept and crawled over ocean. At last we must give small doles of bread and water. There grew famine, sickness and misery. I and all may endure these when great things are about. But they blame me. O God, who wills that the Unknown become the Known, I betake myself to Thy court! Famine increased. There are those, but I will not name them, who cried that we must kill the Indians with us and eat them that we might live. I stood and said, ‘Let the Cannibals stand with the Cannibals!’ But no man budged.—I will not weary thee, best doctor, with our woes! At last St. Vincent rose out of sea, and we presently came to Cadiz. Many died upon the voyage, and among them Caonabo. In the harbor here we find Pedro Alonzo Nino who will bear my letters.
“In Cadiz I discover both friends and not friends. The sovereigns are at Burgos, and thither I travel. My fortunes are at ebb, yet will the flood come again!”
Time passed. Hispaniola heard again from him and again. When ships put forth from Cadiz—and now ships passed with sufficient regularity between Spain in Europe and Spanish Land across Ocean-Sea—he wrote by them. He believed in the letter. God only knows how many he wrote in his lifetime! It was ease to him to tell out, to dream visibly, to argue his case on fair paper. And those who came in the ships had stories about him-El Almirante!
Were his fortunes at ebb, or were they still in flood? There might be more views here than one. Some put in that he was done for, others clamored that he was yet mounting.
But he wrote to the Adelantado and also to Juan Lepe that he sat between good and bad at court. The Queen was ever the great head of the good. We knew from him that Pedro Margarite and Father Buil and Juan Aguado altered nothing there. But elsewhere now there were warm winds, and now biting cold. And warm and cold, he could not get the winds that should fill his sails. He begged for ships—eight he named—that he might now find for the sovereigns main Asia—not touch here and there upon Cuba shore, but find the Deep All. But forever promised, he was forever kept from the ships! True it was that the sovereigns and the world beside were busy folk! There were Royal Marriages and Naples to be reconquered for its king.
We heard of confirmations of all his dignities and his tithes of wealth. He was offered to be made Marquess, but that he would not have. “The Admiral” was better title. But he sued for and obtained entail upon his sons and their sons forever of his nobility and his great Estate in the West. “Thus,” he wrote, “have I made your fortunes, sons and brothers! But truly not without you and your love and strengthening could I have made aught! A brother indeed for my left hand and my right hand, and to beckon me on, two dear sons!”
TWO years! It was March, 1496, when he sailed in theNina. It was the summer of 1498 when Juan Lepe was sent as physician with two ships put forth from San Domingo by the Adelantado upon a rumor that the Portuguese had trespassed, landing from a great carrack upon Guadaloupe. Five days from Hispaniola we met a hurricane that carried us out of all reckoning. When stillness came again we were far south. No islands were in sight; there was only the sea vast and blue. There seemed to breathe from it a strangeness. We were away and away, said our pilots, from the curve, like a bent bow, of the Indian islands. A day and a night we hung in a dead calm. Dawn broke. “Sail, ho! Sail, ho!”
We thought that it might be the Portuguese and made preparation. Three ships lifted over the blue rim. There was now a light wind; it brought them nearer, they being better sailers than theSanta Cruzand theSanta Clara. We saw the banner. “Castile!” and a lesser one. “El Almirante!”
Now we were close together. The masters hailed, “What ships?”—“From Hispaniola!”—“From Cadiz. The Admiral with us! Come aboard, your commander!”
That was Luis Mendez, and in the boat with him went Juan Lepe. The ships were theEsperanza, theSan Sebastianand theSan Martin, the first fairly large and well decked, the others small. They who looked overside and shouted welcome seemed a medley of gentle and simple, mariners, husbandmen, fighting men and hidalgos.
The Admiral! His hair was milk-white, his tall, broad frame gaunt as a January wolf. Two years had written in his face two years’ experience—fully written, for he was sensitive to every wind of experience. “Excellency!”—“Juan Lepe, I am as glad of you as of a brother!—And what do you do, senors, here?”
Luis Mendez related. “I think it false news about the Portuguese,” said the Admiral and gave reasons why. “Then shall we keep with you, sir?”
“No, since you are sent out by my brother and must give him account. Have you water to spare? We will take that from you. I am bound still south. I will find out what is there!”
Further talk disclosed that he had left Spain with six ships, but at the Canaries had parted his fleet in two, sending three under Alonzo de Caravajal upon the straight course to Hispaniola, and himself with three sailing first to the Green Cape islands, and thence southwest into an unknown sea.
So desolate, wide and blue it looked when the next day we parted,—two ships northward, three southward! But Juan Lepe stayed with theEsperanzaand the Admiral. As long since, between theSanta Mariaand thePinta, there had been exchange of physicians, so now again was exchange between theSanta Cruzand theEsperanza.
Days of blue sea. TheEsperanzacarried a somewhat frank and friendly crew of mariners and adventurers. Now he would sail south, he said, until he was under the Equator.
Days of stark blue ocean. Then out of the sea to the south rose a point of land, becoming presently three points, as it were three peaks. The Admiral stared. I saw the enthusiasm rise in his face. “Did I not write and say to the Sovereigns and to Rome that in the Name of the Holy Trinity, I would now again seek out and find? There! Look you! It is a sign! Trinidad—we will name it Trinidad.”
The next morning we came to Trinidad, and the palms trooped to the water edge, and we saw sparkling streams, and from the heights above the sea curls of smoke from hidden huts. We coasted, seeking anchorage, and at last came into a clear, small harbor, and landing, filled our water casks. We knew the country was inhabited for we saw the smokes, but no canoes came about us, and though we met with footprints upon the sand the men who made them never returned. We weighed anchor and sailed on along the southern coast, and now to the south of us, across not many leagues of blue water, we made out a low shore. Its ends were lost in haze, but we esteemed it an island, and he named it Holy Island. It was not island, as now we know; but we did not know it then. How dreamlike is all our finding, and how halfway only to great truths! Cuba we thought was the continent, and the shore that was continent, we called “island.”
Now we came to a long southward running tongue of Trinidad. Point Arenal, he named it. A corresponding tongue of that low Holy Island reached out toward it, and between the two flowed an azure strait. Here, off Point Arenal, the three ships rested at anchor, and now there came to us from Holy Island a big canoe, filled with Indians. As they came near theEsperanzawe saw that they were somewhat lighter in hue than those Indians to whom we were used. Moreover they wore bright-colored loin cloths, and twists of white or colored cotton about their heads, like slight turbans, and they carried not only bows and arrows to which we were used, but round bucklers to which we were not used. They looked at us in amazement, but they were ready for war.
We invited them with every gesture of amity, holding out glass beads and hawk bells, but they would not come close to us. As they hung upon the blue water out of the shadow of the ship, the Admiral would have our musicians begin loudly to play. But when the drums began, the fife and the castanets, the canoe started, quivered, the paddlers dipped, it raced back to that shore whence it came, that shore that we thought island.
“Lighter than Haytiens!” exclaimed the Admiral. “I have thought that as we neared the Equator we should find them black!”
Afterwards he expanded upon this. “Jayme Ferrer thinks as I think, that the nearer we come to the Equator the more precious grow all things, the more gold, the more diamonds, rubies and emeralds, the more prodigal and delicious the spices! The people are burnt black, but they grow gentler and more wise, and under the line they are makers of white magic. I have not told you, Juan Lepe, but I hold that now we begin to come to where our Mother Earth herself climbs, and climbs auspiciously!”
“That we come to great mountains?”
“No, not that, though there may be great mountains. But I have thought it out, and now I hold that the earth is not an orb, but is shaped, as it were, like a pear. It would take an hour to give you all the reasons that decide me! But I hold that from hereabouts it mounts fairer and fairer, until under the line, about where would be the stem of the pear, we come to the ancient Earthly Paradise, the old Garden of Eden!”
I looked to the southward. Certainly there is nowhere where there is not something!
He gazed over the truly azure and beauteous sea, and the air blew soft and cool upon our foreheads, and the fragrance which came to us from land seemed new. “Would you not look for the halcyons? Trinidad! Holy Island! We approach, I hold, the Holy Mountain of the World. And hark to me, Juan Lepe, make vow that if it be permitted I will found there an abbey whence shall arise perpetual orison for the souls of our first parents!”
We found that night that the ships swung, caught in a current issuing from the strait before us. In the morning we made sail and prepared to pass through this narrow way between the two lands, seeing open water beyond. We succeeded by great skill and with Providence over us, for we met as it were an under wall of water ridged atop with strong waves. The ships were tossed as by a tempest, yet was the air serene, the sky blue. We came hardly through and afterwards called that strait Mouth of the Serpent. Now we were in a great bay or gulf, and still the sea shook us and drove us. Calm above, around, but underneath an agitation of waters, strong currents and boilings. Among our mariners many took fright. “What is it? Are there witches? We are in a cauldron!”
Christopherus Columbus himself took the helm of theEsperanza. Many a man in these times chose to doubt what kind of Viceroy he made, but no man who ever sailed with him but at last said, “Child of Neptune, and the greatest seaman we have!”
We outrode danger and came under land to a quiet anchorage, theSan Sebastianand theSan Martinfollowing us as the chickens the hen. Still before us we saw that current ridge the sea. The Admiral stood gazing upon the southward shore that hung in a dazzling haze. Now we thought water, now we thought land. He called to a ship boy and the lad presently brought him a pannikin of water dipped from the sea. The Admiral tasted. “Fresh! It is almost fresh!”
He stood with a kindling face. “A river runs into sea from this land! Surely the mightiest that may be, rushing forth like a dragon and fighting all the salt water! So great a river could not come from an island, no, not if it were twice as large as Hispaniola! Such a river comes downward with force hundreds of leagues and gathers children to itself as it comes. It is not an island yonder; it is a great main!”
We called the gulf where we were the Gulf of the Whale. Trinidad stood on the one hand, the unknown continent on the other. After rest in milky water, we set sail to cross the width of the Whale, and found glass-green and shaken water, but never so piled and dangerous as at the Mouth of the Serpent. So we came to that land that must be—we knew not what! It hung low, in gold sunlight. We saw no mountains, but it was covered with the mightiest forest.
Anchoring in smooth water, we took out boats and went ashore, and we raised a cross. “As in Adam we all die, so in Christ we be alive!” said the Admiral, and then, “What grandeur is in this forest!”
In truth we found trees that we had not found in our islands, and of an unbelievable height and girth. Upon the boughs sat parrots, and we were used to them, but we were not used to monkeys which now appeared, to our mariners’ delight. We met footprints of some great animal, and presently, being beside a stream, we made out upon a mud bank those crocodiles that the Indians call “cayman.” And never have I seen so many and such splendid butterflies. All this forest seemed to us of a vastness, as the rivers were vast. There rang in our ears “New! New!”
And at last came an Indian canoe—two—three, filled with light-hued, hardly more than tawny, folk, with cloth of cotton about their middles and twisted around their heads, with bows and arrows and those new bucklers. But seeing that we did not wish to fight, they did not wish to fight either; and there was all the old amaze.
Gods—gods—gods! We sought the Earthly Paradise, and they thought we came therefrom.
Paria. We made out that they called their country Paria.
They had in their canoes a bread like cassava, but more delicate, we thought, and in calabashes almost a true wine. We gave them toys, and as they always pointed westward and seemed to signify that there wastheland, we returned after two hours to the ships and set ourselves to follow the coast. Two or three of this people would go with the gods.
We came to that river mouth that troubled all this sea. What shall I say but that it was itself a sea, a green sea, a fresh sea? We crossed it with long labor. The men of Paria made us understand that their season of rain was lately over, and that ever after that was more river. Whence did it come? They spoke at length and, Christopherus Columbus was certain, of some heavenly country.
The dawn came up sweet and red. The country before us had hills and we made out clearings in the monster forest, and now the blue water was thronged with canoes. We anchored; they shot out to us fearlessly. The Jamaica canoe is larger and better than the Haytien, but those of this land surpass the Jamaican. They are long and wide and have in the middle a light cabin. The rowers chant as they lift and dip their broad oars. If we were gods to them, yet they seemed gay and fearless of the gods. I thought with the Admiral that they must have tradition or rumor, of folk higher upon the mount of enlightenment than themselves. Perhaps now and again there was contact. At any rate, we did not meet here the stupefaction and the prostrations of our first islands. We had again no common tongue, but they proved masters of gesture. Gold was upon them, and that in some amount, and what was extraordinary, often enough in well-wrought shapes of ornament. A seaman brought to the Admiral a golden frog, well-made, pierced for a red cotton string, worn so about a copper-colored neck. He had traded for it three hawk bells. The Admiral’s face glowed. “It has been wrought by those who know how to work in metals! Tubal-cain!”
Moreover, now we found pearls. There came to us singing a great canoe and in it a plumed cacique with his wife and daughters. All wore twists of pearls around throat and arms. They gave them freely for red, blue and green beads, which to them were indeed rubies, sapphires and emeralds.—Whence came the pearls? It seemed from the coast beyond and without this gulf. Whence the gold? It seemed from high mountains far behind the country of Paria. It was dangerous in the extreme to go there! “Because of the light which repels all darkness!” said the Admiral. “When we go there, it must be gently and humbly like shriven men.”
It was August. He knew that Don Bartholomew in Hispaniola craved his return. The three ships, too, were weatherworn, with seams that threatened gaping. And as for our adventurers and the husbandmen and craftsmen, they were most weary of the sea. The mariners were used to it, the Admiral had lover’s passion for it, but not they! Here before us, truly, loomed a promising great land, but it was not our port; our port was San Domingo! There, there in Hispaniola, were old Castilians in plenty to greet and show. There were the mines that were actually working, gold to pick up, and Indians trained to bring it to you! There, for the enterprising and the lucky, were gifts of land, to each hisrepartimentio! There was companionship, there was fortune, there was ease! Others were getting, while we rode before a land we were too few to occupy. They went in company to the Admiral. We had discovered. Now let us go onto Hispaniola! The ships—our health.
When it came to health it was he who had most to endure.
The gout possessed him often. His brow knotted with pain; his voice, by nature measured and deep, a rolling music, became sharp and dry. He moved with difficulty, now and then must stay in bed, or if on deck in a great chair which we lashed to the mast. But now a trouble seized his eyes. They gave him great pain; at times he could barely see. Bathe them with a soothing medicine, rest them. But when had he rested them, straining over the ocean since he was a boy? He was a man greatly patient under adversity, whether of the body or of the body’s circumstance, but this trouble with the eyes shook him. “If I become blind—and all that’s yet to do and find! Blessed Mother of God, let not that happen to me!”
I thought that he should go to Hispaniola, where in the Adelantado’s house in San Domingo he might submit to bandaging, light and sea shut out.
At last, “Well, well, we will turn! But first we must leave this gulf and try it out for some distance westward!”
We left this water by a way as narrow as the entering strait, as narrow and presenting the like rough confusion of waters, wall against wall. We called it the Mouth of the Dragon. Mouth of the Dragon, Mouth of the Serpent, and between them the Gulf of the Whale or of Paria. Now was open sea, and south of us ran still that coast that he would have mount to the Equator and to that old, first Garden Land where all things yet were fair and precious! “I can not stay now, but I will come again! I will find the mighty last things!” His eyes gave him great pain. He covered them, then dropped his hands and looked, then must again cover.
A strange thing! We were borne westward ever upon a vast current of the sea, taking us day and night, so that though the winds were light we went as though every sail was wholly filled.
Christopherus Columbus talked of these rivers in ocean. “A day will come when they will be correctly marked. Aye, in the maps of our descendants! Then ships will say, ‘Now here is the river so and so,’ as to-day the horseman says, ‘Here is the Tagus, or the Guadalquiver!’”
Another thing he said was that to his mind all the islands that we had found in six years, from San Salvador to Cubagua, had once been joined together. Land from this shore to Cuba and beyond. So the peoples were scattered.
He talked to us much upon this voyage of the great earth and the shape of it, and its destinies; of the stars, the needle, the Great Circle and the lesser ones, and the Ocean. He had our time’s learning, gained through God knows how many nights of book by candle! And he had a mind that took eagle flights with spread of eagle wings, and in many ways he had the eagle’s eye.
It was not Cipango and Cathay that now he talked of, but of this great land-mass before us which he would have rise to Equator and all Wonder. And he talked also of some water passage, some strait lying to the westward, by which we might sail between lands and islands to the further Indian Ocean, and so across to the Sea of Araby, and then around Africa by Good Hope and then northward, northward, to Spain, coming into Cadiz with banners, having sailed around the world!
He talked, and all the time his pain ate him, and he must cover eyes to keep the sword-light out.
In middle August we turned northward from our New Land, and a fortnight later we came to San Domingo, that Christopherus Columbus had never seen, though to us in Hispaniola it was an old town, having been builded above two years.
The Viceroy and the Adelantado clasped hands, embraced; tears ran down their bronzed cheeks.
Not later than a day after our anchoring, the ships being unladed, all San Domingo coming and going, trumpets blew and gathered all to our open place before the Viceroy’s house. Proclamation—Viceregal Proclamation! First, thanks to God for safe return, and second, hearty approval of the Adelantado, all his Acts and Measures.
There were two parties in San Domingo, and one now echoed in a shout approval of the Adelantado, and the other made here a dead silence, and here a counter-murmur. I heard a man say, “Fool praises fool! Villain brother upholding villain brother!”
Now I do not think the Adelantado’s every act was wise, nor the Viceroy’s either, for that matter. But they were far, far, those brothers, from fool and villain!
The Proclamation arrived at long thunders against Francisco Roldan his sedition. Here again the place divided as before. Roldan, I had it from Luis Torres, was in Xaragua, safe and arrogant, harking on Indian war, undermining everywhere. Our line of forts held for the Adelantado, but the two or three hundred Spaniards left in Isabella were openly Roldan’s men. The Viceroy, through the voice of Miguel the Herald, recited, denounced and warned, then left Francisco Roldan and with suddenness made statement that within a few days five ships would sail for Spain, and that all Spaniards whomsoever, who for reasons whatsoever desired Home, had his consent to go! Consent, Free Passage, and No Questioning!
Whereat the place buzzed loudly, and one saw that many would go.
Many did go upon the ships that sailed not in a few days but a few weeks. Some went for good reasons, but many for ill. Juan Lepe heard afar and ahead of time the great tide of talk when they should arrive in Spain! And though many went who wished the Admiral ill, many stayed, and forever Roldan made for him more enemies, open or secret.
He sent, it is true, upon those ships friends to plead his cause. Don Francisco de Las Casas went to Spain and others went. And he sent letters. Juan Lepe, much in his house, tending him who needed the physician Long-Rest and Ease-of-Mind, heard these letters read. There was one to the Sovereigns in which he related with simple eloquence that discovery to the South, and his assurance that he had touched the foot of the Mount of all the World. With this letter he sent a hundred pearls, the golden frog and other gold. Again he took paper and wrote of the attitude of all things in Hispaniola, of Roldan and evil men, of the Adelantado’s vigilance, justice and mercy, of natural difficulties and the need to wait on time, of the Indians. He begged that there be sent him ample supplies and good men, and withal friars for the Indian salvation, and some learned, wise and able lawyer and judge, much needed to give the law upon a thousand complaints brought by childish and factious men. And if the Sovereigns saw fit to send out some just and lofty mind to take evidence from all as to their servant Christopherus Columbus’s deeds and public acts and care of their Majesties’ New Lands and all the souls therein, such an one would be welcomed by their Graces’ true servant.
So he himself asked for a commissioner—but he never thought of such an one as Francisco de Bobadilla!
So the ships sailed. Time passed.