What a discouraging state of affairs to greet the returning "Governor- General and Viceroy of all the Lands Discovered in the Western Seas!" What comfort were all these titles that Columbus stood out for so obstinately, when half his colonists had joined a rebel leader and the other half were sick and hungry!
By this time Roldan's army was so large that Christopher and his brother had to admit to each other that there was no chance of subduing the insurrection by force. In truth, there was no "force"; for those who were not ill, even the newcomers, were all grumbling against the government. So there was nothing to do but make a treaty with the rebel leader, as if he had been the lawful ruler of a state; and in this treaty he had everything his own way. Columbus had humbly to agree to give two vessels to carry the discontented ones back to Spain; to fill these vessels with ample provisions, and to agree to write a letter to the monarchs stating that Roldan and his men were in no way to blame for the trouble. Here was humiliation indeed! Fancy a high official of the Crown being forced to such an undignified treaty with one who had rebelled against his authority!
But even this did not end the trouble. Columbus could not get the vessels ready in time, and so the malefactors became more vexatious than ever. Later another treaty was made, still more humiliating to the Admiral, for he had to promise, first, that those of Roldan's men who were most anxious to return should be sent to Spain immediately; second, that those who chose to remain should receive gifts of land and houses; third, that he, Columbus, would issue a public proclamation stating that all that had happened had been caused by the false reports of bad men; and fourth, that Roldan the leader should remain chief-justice for the rest of his life! Roldan now condescended to return to San Domingo and sit in the judge's seat.
No sooner was this turbulent leader appeased than another rebel arose. This time, sad to say, it was the brave Alonzo de Ojeda. Because he had succeeded in taking the chief Caonabo prisoner, Columbus had rewarded and honored him by making him captain of a voyage of discovery among the islands. All this time, no doubt, Ojeda was loyal to his Admiral; but he had recently made a trip home to Spain, where, from his friend Bishop Fonseca, he had learned many things, false as well as true, that poisoned his mind against his great leader. So he in turn gathered the discontented into a threatening band.
"I have word from Spain," he told them, "that our good queen lies dying. She is the only friend Cristobal Colon has; and you may be sure that the minute she is dead I can easily arrange to have her favorite removed if you will all rally around me." Many, of course, lent ear to his treacherous talk, and these had many a skirmish with the few who were faithful to Columbus.
Ojeda, besides sneering at and opposing the Admiral's authority, wrote letters back to Fonseca telling him all sorts of unfavorable things concerning Columbus and his brothers. All the rebels, in truth, were sending back complaints, for the old and the new world sent little packet ships monthly. What they did not write was told in Spain by those of Roldan's men whom Columbus had sent home. Some indeed went straight to the king himself with their stories, with the result that the queen had to agree with her husband, who had never been much interested in Columbus and his savages, that the whole matter must be thoroughly investigated.
Yet, even after consenting to court-martial Columbus, as it were, the queen delayed the proceeding as long as possible, as if trying to give her viceroy time to straighten out his situation. But sad tales of misrule still kept coming from Espanola, and finally, after more than a year of waiting, the monarchs sent out Don Francisco de Bobadilla (Boba- deel'ya) with a letter that began:—
* * * * *
Don Cristobal Colon, our Admiral of the Ocean:
We have ordered the Comendador Francisco de Bobadilla, the bearer of this, that he speak to you on our part certain things which he will tell you. We pray you give him faith and credence, and act accordingly.
* * * * *
Christopher, however, was not permitted to give the royal commissioner faith and credence, for the simple reason that Bobadilla did not show him the letter. We have already read of the high-handed manner in which Juan de Agnado acted some years before when sent out to investigate; but, by comparison with Bobadilla, Agnado had been gentleness itself. Bobadilla was a stern and rigorous churchman, comendador, or commander, of one of the famous religious-military orders in Spain. He could tolerate nothing short of the strictest and most unquestioning obedience to authority. He also had a great respect for high birth, and he, like Bishop Fonseca, could never forget that Christopher Columbus was of humble origin. Both Fonseca and Bobadilla would have been astounded had they dreamed that their principal claim to remembrance by coming ages would be from their reluctant association with a certain illustrious man "of humble origin."
It was on August 23, 1499, that Bobadilla's ship entered the mouth of the little river on which San Domingo was situated; and on seeing on either side of the settlement a gallows, and on either gallows the body of a high-born Spaniard lately executed for rebellion, the sight did not incline him to feel kindly toward the low-born governor who had executed them. Columbus and his brother Bartholomew were in the interior at the time, and Bobadilla had no intention of awaiting their return, so eager was he to show his power.
Next morning, when all the colony had gathered in church for mass, he read them the royal letter authorizing him to inquire into the administration of the Viceroy. The letter stated that their Majesties empowered Bobadilla to seize evil-doers and their property, and that the Admiral and all others in authority must aid him in doing so.
Columbus had left his brother Diego in charge of the colony; and Diego, though weak as a ruler, was strong in words when Bobadilla ordered him to hand over the remainder of the rebels for trial, together with evidence against them. Diego replied that the prisoners were held by order of the viceroy, and that the viceroy's authority was higher than the comendador's. Such an answer was not likely to mollify the royal commissioner.
The next morning after mass he opened a second letter and read it to the colonists, a letter which the monarchs told him to open only in case Columbus refused to submit to him. This document proclaimed the bearer, Don Francisco Bobadilla, governor of all the islands. He immediately took the oath of office, and then opened and read to the astonished populace a third royal letter in which Christopher Columbus was commanded to hand over all papers and property belonging to the Crown.
The discontented colonists saw that the day of reckoning had come for their unpopular governor. They exulted in it; and Bobadilla, who realized the satisfactory impression he was making, then and there opened a fourth letter which commanded that he, Bobadilla, should straightway pay all arrears of wages to the men who had worked on San Domingo. As nearly all the men had gone unpaid for a long time past (owing to utter lack of funds), when they heard this last proclamation, they hailed Bobadilla as a benefactor, and his narrow, mean soul swelled with pride.
To be sure, the monarchs really had issued all these letters; but Bobadilla was to read and act upon the second and third letters only in case Columbus refused to obey the first; and here, without giving Columbus any opportunity to speak for himself, Bobadilla had gone to the extreme limit of his powers. It makes one recall Shakespeare's lines about
"Man, proud man,Drest in a little brief authority….Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,As make the angels weep."
By the end of the second day the new governor had seized the Admiral's house. Next he sent a search party to find the two brothers and bid them return. This Christopher and Bartholomew did at once; and Bobadilla, whose noble birth had not given him a noble soul, treated the grumblers and talebearers of San Domingo to the shameful sight of the Discoverer of the New World marching in chains to prison!
While Columbus had not been a successful ruler, it must be borne in mind that the men he was expected to rule were a most ungovernable lot. But even so, it is difficult to believe that among them all there was not one big enough to forget that the man who had been an unsatisfactory colonial governor had been the bravest explorer ever known. But no, they were pitiless. His own cook was ordered to fasten the chains on him. The onlookers exulted in his disgrace; and their outcries were so loud and so bitter that Columbus and his brothers expected every moment to be put to death.
Bobadilla lost no time in deciding what to do with his prisoners. They must be put out of the way, but not by death. Instead, he ordered a nobleman named Villejo to take them at once to Spain. When Villejo, with some soldiers, entered the cell in order to remove the prisoners to the ship, Columbus thought he was to be escorted to the scaffold. "I see I am to die," he said calmly. Villejo, who seems to have been the only man in San Domingo with an ounce of humanity in him, answered kindly, "I am to escort you to a ship, Your Excellency, and then home to Spain."
As they marched to the shore, a rabble followed, shouting every insult imaginable. And thus did Christopher Columbus sail away, for the third time, from the island which he had found so quiet and peaceful that he once wrote, "The nights are lovely, like May nights in Cordova." Here was a change indeed!
When the caravel was under way, Villejo offered to remove the Admiral's shackles.
"No," answered Columbus, with dignity, "their Majesties gave Bobadilla authority to put me in irons; they alone must issue the authority to take the irons off."
And so in irons the greatest discoverer the world has ever known made his sixth crossing of the Atlantic. And in irons he landed in Cadiz in November, 1500.
We have just seen Columbus land in chains at Cadiz. We next see him free, traveling in great splendor to that scene of his first successful interview with Isabella—Granada. What had happened meanwhile to lift him out of misery and disgrace? Simply what always happens when a really great man is too harshly punished, a reaction in the public mind.
In all Spain Columbus had hardly a friend; yet when the people of Cadiz saw him leave Villejo's ship in chains, they were moved with deepest sympathy. They began telling each other that, no matter what his faults might be, he had been the first man deliberately to put out across the dreaded Atlantic and reveal to the world that land, and not monsters, lay on the other side. Had any one else ever begged, during seven years, for the privilege thus to risk his life for the benefit of Spain in particular, and all mankind in general? Even the Portuguese, greatest of exploring nations, had only hugged the African coast cautiously; but this man had sailed straight away from land into the setting sun. Even landsmen appreciated the fine courage that required.
And the first man bold enough to wish to go out and unravel the mystery of the west now walked in chains from a Spanish ship to a Spanish prison! It was monstrous ingratitude, all declared; and they did not hesitate to show their sympathy. The story of his disgrace traveled rapidly, and everywhere it brought out the better nature of the Spanish people, who accordingly denounced this harsh treatment by their sovereigns.
And what had Columbus himself done to help matters along? The wisest thing that he could have done; he had refrained from writing to Ferdinand and Isabella. His silence spoke in his favor; for they did not learn what had happened till a lady-in-waiting at court, a friend of Columbus and of the queen, received a letter which Columbus had written during the voyage, and which the good Villejo sent off by a trusty messenger the minute the ship reached Spain. This lady carried the shocking news to the queen, perhaps even read the whole letter to her; if so, Isabella must have winced at this passage: "I have been wounded extremely by the fact that a man should have been sent out to make inquiry into my conduct who knew that if he sent home a very aggravated account against me, he could remain himself at the head of the government."
Hardly had the queen heard this letter when there came a report from Villejo containing the same story of Bobadilla's brutal haste in dealing with the Admiral. And directly after this came an inquiry from the alcalde (mayor) of Cadiz asking what he should do with his distinguished prisoner.
Isabella saw it was all too true; Bobadilla had gone to the uttermost limit of authority without even waiting to try less offensive measures. She saw that she had selected a very unworthy person for the delicate task of removing a great man from office. Even Ferdinand, who, as we have seen, had no great opinion of Columbus, was grieved over the unhappy affair. Immediately they dispatched a courier to the alcalde with instructions to set the Admiral free, and to treat him with every consideration. Then they invited Columbus to come to them at court, and ordered a credit of two thousand ducats for him, a large sum in those days, for it was equal to about ten thousand dollars in our money. This they did without even waiting to hear Bobadilla's side of the story.
Columbus reached Granada in December, 1500; nine years precisely after the memorable journey that Friar Juan Perez had caused him to make to the same place. As on his return from the second voyage, when he was expecting royal reproaches, he received instead only the kindest treatment. Both Ferdinand and Isabella made him feel, instantly, that, whatever had gone wrong, they knew his worth and considered him a distinguished man.
So overcome was he by this magnanimity that it was some minutes before the white-haired, worn-out man could control his feelings sufficiently to tell his story. Finally, however, he managed to speak. He admitted all that had gone amiss in Espanola and said his only excuse was his inexperience in governing. (Ah, good Admiral, if only you had remembered your inexperience on that January day in that same city of Granada, when you insisted on being made Viceroy of all the lands you might discover!)
The queen, while she pitied Columbus profoundly in his distress, was too wise a woman to let her pity run away with her prudence; so she answered cautiously:—
"Common report accuses you of acting with a degree of severity quite unsuitable for an infant colony, and likely to incite rebellion in it. But the thing I find hardest to pardon is your reducing to slavery many Indians who had done nothing to deserve such a fate. This was contrary to my express orders. As ill fortune willed it, just at the time that news came to me of this breach of my instructions, everybody was complaining of you; no one spoke a word in your favor. I felt obliged to send a commissioner to the Indies to investigate and give me a true report, and, if necessary, to put limits to the authority you were accused of overstepping. If he found you guilty of the charges against you, he was to relieve you of the government and send you to Spain to give an account of your stewardship. This was the extent of his commission. I find that I have made a bad choice in my agent, and I shall take care to make an example of Bobadilla so as to warn others not to exceed their power. But I cannot promise at once to reinstate you as governor. As to your rank of Admiral, I never intended to deprive you of it. But you must abide your time and trust in me."
Isabella's reply is a model of fairness and prudence so far as Columbus is concerned, but it is hardly fair to Bobadilla. The comendador had been brutal, it is true; but it was not true that he had gone beyond the extent of his commission. His brutality consisted in pouncing upon the offender without any preliminaries whatever. Yet it turned out that, in acting thus, he did the best possible thing for Columbus's subsequent treatment. There is no doubt that had he proceeded slowly, with a fair and formal inquiry into all the complaints against the Admiral, it would have been clearly shown that, from the very beginning, everything had gone wrong in the colony. The Indians, once friendly, were now bitter against the Spaniards. The colonists were a bad lot, but Columbus himself had examined and accepted most of them before the ships left Spain.
If mistakes were committed while he was absent exploring Cuba, they were made by his brothers and by those whom he himself had selected to rule in his absence. All of this evidence would have been against Columbus, who in consequence would have been deposed as governor and sent home to answer Bobadilla's charges before a royal court of inquiry. Arriving as a man disgraced after a fair trial, nobody's sympathies would have been stirred. It was precisely because Bobadilla had acted like a brute instead of like a wise judge that everybody denounced him and pitied his victim.
Considering all this, and considering that Columbus himself had admitted his "inexperience in government" to the queen, it is astonishing to learn that he was deeply hurt because she did not reinstate him instantly as ruler of the island! Experience had taught the great discoverer but little. At a moment when he should have fallen on his knees in thankfulness because he would never again have to be responsible for that colony of vicious men, he instead felt hurt! He wanted to return and start the whole sorry business over again. Moreover, he protested, as indeed he had been doing for years, because other navigators were imploring the monarchs to break their contract givinghima monopoly of western exploration, and to allow them to undertake voyages, asking no government assistance whatsoever. Now was the time for him to say, "It is to Spain's interest that she send as many explorers as possible over to these new lands, in order that we may quickly determine how many islands there really are, and whether what I last visited was the mainland; only, pray let me hasten back free from every responsibility except that of a navigator; so that I, who so justly deserve the first chance of exploring the new lands, may get there ahead of these others who are clamoring to go."
Had Columbus been businesslike enough to make this proposition to the monarchs, he need not have died in ignorance of the prodigious fact that he had discovered a great continent undreamed-of by Europeans. But, instead of renouncing his monopoly, he complained that licenses had been granted to others to sail west in violation of the agreement that he alone, and his descendants after him, should sail among the new lands. This attitude annoyed King Ferdinand exceedingly.
For Columbus to hope to keep this monopoly in his own family was madness; as by this time other countries, having heard of his opening up the way, had sent out explorers to plant their standards. John and Sebastian Cabot had gone out from Bristol, England, to Newfoundland, and had discovered, in June, 1497, the North American continent before Columbus had touched South America. Early in 1499 one of the pilots who had accompanied Columbus on his Cuban trip secured a license, and not only explored the Central American coast for several hundred miles, but traded his European trifles and gewgaws with the natives for gold and silver, returning to Spain with real profits.
That same year, 1499, Vicente Pinzon of Palos, who with his brother Martin had made the first voyage, also secured a license and sailed southwest over the equator, discovering the Amazon River and taking possession of Brazil for Spain. Our adventurous acquaintance Ojeda also had been busy. When the Paria pearls arrived in Sevilla, he asked his friend Fonseca to show him both the pearls and Columbus's map of Trinidad and the neighboring coast. Although Ojeda had recently been in open rebellion against the Admiral in Haiti, as we have seen, Fonseca did not hesitate to let him see where the pearl land lay; and so Ojeda, with an Italian named Vespucci, whom we shall meet later, sailed to Paria and gathered its wealth.
Also, in this year so great for navigation, a Portuguese fleet of thirteen ships set out from Lisbon to round the Cape of Good Hope. In trying to escape the long calms which had beset Bartolome Dias in the Gulf of Guinea, Pedro Cabral, commander of the fleet, struck out quite far from the Morocco coast and got into the Equatorial Current. The existence of this powerful westward current had never been suspected by either Spanish or Portuguese mariners. Wind and current combining, Cabral and his captains found themselves, in about a month's time, on the coast of Brazil near the present Rio de Janeiro. Thus a current never before known carried them to land never before known. And thus for the second time, if the shipwrecked pilot told the truth, America was discovered by accident.
All this had given Europe some idea of the vastness of the world to the west. If Columbus was to bring his own discoveries to a glorious finish, it was high time that, instead of quibbling over maintaining a contract, he should have given up the empty honors that were to have been his, and have asked only for permission to hurry back and discover more land.
Ferdinand, who now saw that the islands would need not one but a dozen governors if ever they were to be colonized and developed, would not hear of reinstating Columbus as governor. The most the monarchs would give him in the way of satisfaction was that Bobadilla should be removed and another man, who had had nothing to do thus far with the quarrels of the New World, should be appointed for two years. This new governor, whose name was Nicolas de Ovando, was specially instructed to protect Columbus's profits in the colony, if profits there should ever be. Orders were given that the property of Columbus and his brothers, which Bobadilla had confiscated, was to be restored; and whenever gold was found and smelted, Columbus's share was to be put aside for him. This proved that the sovereigns intended to be just to Columbus, but the latter was nevertheless much depressed over his lost dignities.
The Comendador Ovando, of the famous religious order called the Knights of Alcantara, was appointed to succeed Bobadilla, and began his preparations with certain definite and practical ideas on the subject of colonizing. He was the first to see that respectable married men with their wives and children were needed to give the settlement character; so he offered, or asked the sovereigns to offer, proper inducement to married men. He also secured as many trained workers as possible— artisans and craftsmen. His other measures appear less wise; that is, he felt he must go in state and dignity, else the people would not regard his authority; so he took many body servants and house servants, and rich priestly robes, for he relied a great deal on the appearance of power. No less than thirty-five vessels would suffice to carry his twenty-five hundred passengers (among them Bartolome de las Casas) to San Domingo; and when he started in all his state, the heart of Columbus was sad and sore.
"Ah," thought he, "if onlyIhad had decent men, instead of jail- birds and loafers!" and he pondered sadly on his many misfortunes.
And still the monarchs kept him waiting and would not furnish him with a fleet. While he was waiting came the bitter and disquieting news that Portuguese explorers were returning in a stream from the Indian Ocean with exceedingly rich cargoes, all justly traded for in the markets of Calcutta. Why, he groaned, hadhisIndia been so barren of riches?
He began to ponder over all the theories he had read concerning the geography of the world, and to wonder what his discoveries might really be. If it dawned upon him that he had struck islands fringing on absolutely new, unsuspected land, he appears to have dismissed the extraordinary idea, and to have come back to Martin Alonzo Pinzon's theory that he, by sailing west over the globe, had come to Asiatic regions. It must be so, he argued. Marco Polo had made known the fact that an ocean bounded Asia on the east, and that ocean must be the Atlantic, which continued across to Europe. The Indian Ocean which the Portuguese had crossed must be the southern part of the Atlantic, where it curved around Asia's southern shores. Ah, if only he could reach it! If only he had sailed straight for the rich mainland, instead of wasting his time on those pretty islands, inhabited only by a "poor people"!
He began to recall how the land north of the Gulf of Paria stretched far west; how the southern shore of Cuba stretched far west; how the currents of the Caribbean Sea indicated, by the fact that they had washed Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico into their long narrow east-and-west shape that somewhere in the west they passed through a strait which separated some large island from southeastern Asia; and that strait must lead into the Indian Ocean—the very ocean the Portuguese were now sailing so profitably! He wisely resolved to linger no longer in Spain, importuning for his lost governorship, but to undertake a fourth voyage and find this passage.
Good reasoning, all this about "the strait," if only facts had been geographically correct; and a brave determination, too, for an old man afflicted with rheumatism and fever and bad sight to resolve to put out once more on that boisterous ocean. We salute you, Don Cristobal! You are a true navigator, never afraid of hardships and labor and perplexing problems. Even had you not discovered America for us, we still would salute you, because you were a tremendous worker!
Full of his new plan, Columbus left beautiful Granada where he had spent two empty years and went to Sevilla. King Ferdinand readily granted him four ships, for the Admiral Cristobal Colon, off on a voyage of discovery, was not nearly so troublesome as the deposed governor and viceroy, lingering around the court to obtain his lost title and revenues.
The fitting out of the ships restored his spirits considerably. Whenever Christopher had to do with boats and sea preparations he was in his element. He now grew optimistic, and, with his usual fatal habit of promising great results, he told his Sevilla acquaintances that he expected to circumnavigate the world. Fatal habit, yes; but it meant that he still kept that rich imagination, without which he never would have made his first voyage.
Meanwhile, he realized that he was getting old, and that he might never come back from this trip. His thoughts often turned to his native Genoa, where he had played so happily as a child in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; so, one day he sat down and generously wrote to the authorities of Genoa that, should his claims against the Spanish Crown ever be settled, a part of his money was to be used in paying the Genoese tax on wheat and wine, so that the poor might buy these two staples at a lower price.
Finally all was ready; four small, weather-beaten ships; a crew of one hundred and fifty men and boys; a few months' provisions. His brother Bartholomew, not very willingly, and his son Fernando, almost too eagerly, accompanied him. This, his fourth and last voyage, started from Cadiz on May 9, 1502.
Fernando Columbus, though only a lad of fourteen, noted every new experience with intelligent delight. He had his father's passion for writing things down. As it was the result of personal observation, Fernando's account of the fourth voyage may be accepted as more reliable than many other items he has left us concerning the Admiral's history.
Among other things, Fernando says that the little fleet intended starting its search at the outlet of the Gulf of Paria, and then following the land west until they came to the straits leading into the Indian Ocean; but while approaching the Caribbean Islands, his father discovered that one of the vessels was in need of repairs; for which reason he headed for San Domingo, where he hoped to purchase a better caravel.
As Columbus had been toldnotto stop there till his return trip, he sent one of the faster ships ahead with a letter to Governor Ovando, explaining that he wanted to buy another ship, and also that he was seeking protection from a hurricane that he saw approaching. Knowing the peculiarities of weather in those regions, he was so sure of the storm that he advised Ovando to hold back any vessels that might be about to depart for Spain.
Our weather-wise old Admiral was not mistaken in his prophecy. A furious West Indian hurricane broke on the last day of June; but his poor little ships, instead of lying safe in the shelter of San Domingo harbor, were exposed to all the ravages of the storm. Why? Because Ovando had refused to let him enter the port! A cruel insult; but the Admiral was too busy just then to brood over it. He must hastily draw in under the lee of the land and wait for the hurricane to pass.
It was not the sort that passed, for it stayed and stayed till it was worn out by its own fury. "Eighty-eight days," Columbus wrote to his sovereign, "did this fearful tempest continue, during which I was at sea and saw neither sun nor stars. My ships lay exposed with sails torn; and anchors, cables, rigging, boats, and a quantity of provisions lost…. Other tempests have I experienced, but none of so long duration or so frightful as this."
And all this perilous time, when men and vessels narrowly escaped going to the bottom, the discoverer of the New World was denied the privilege of the only seaport in it! It makes one's blood boil, even to-day, to think that at San Domingo the Comendador Ovando and the whole group of ungrateful landsmen went safely to bed every night in the very houses that they had hated Columbus for making them build, while he was lashing about on the furious waves, thinking his other three ships lost, and expecting every minute a similar fate for his own!
The eighty-eight days, fortunately, were not continuously stormy; there were occasional lulls. It was the end of June when Columbus had asked for shelter; not till the middle of July did the first clear weather come. Then the scattered, battered boats reunited as by a miracle, and found themselves near the "Queen's Garden" islands south of Cuba. Let us leave them there patching their boats and enjoying a bit of sunshine while we see what has been happening at ungrateful San Domingo.
Ovando had been on the island a month and a half when Columbus came along asking permission to land. Whether this was refused through the new governor's ugly nature alone, or whether he believed Columbus's prophecy of bad weather merely an excuse to land, is not known. Certain it is that, although the Spanish monarchs thought San Domingo could get along better without the Admiral, they never intended him to be turned off when a violent hurricane was pending. Ovando evidently did not believe in the hurricane; besides, he did not want Columbus to find out that the new governors were managing no better than he had managed. In this respect there was nothing to be proud of, else Ovando would surely have believed in the hurricane. Bobadilla had been a miserable failure; and he himself had not been there long enough to make any improvements, except the detestable one of sending for African negroes to replace Indian slaves!
One thing, however, had turned out a little better than any one expected, and that was the gold mine near which the town of San Domingo had been built. When Columbus's warning about the storm came, eighteen caravels lay in the harbor ready to start for Spain with eighteen hundredweight of gold. One nugget alone, Las Casas tells us, weighed thirty-five pounds. Out of all this treasure, Columbus's share was forty pounds, and that was set aside and loaded on the poorest, leakiest caravel of the lot, calledThe Needle, to be sent to Spain and to remain there until he should appear to claim it.
Ovando, like Columbus, wanted the colony to appear profitable in the eyes of the monarchs, and was eager to start off this first golden cargo, also all the spoils he had filched from the natives since his arrival. Then, too, the Comendador Bobadilla was already aboard, and Ovando was eager to be rid of him and also of Francisco Roldan, who never had been, and never could be, of use in any colony; so Ovando, when he read Columbus's warning, threw back his head and exclaimed, "Nonsense! Let them start just the same!"
And start they did; and scarcely were the vessels out of sight when the hurricane broke. Of the eighteen ships only one ever got to Spain. Three returned much damaged to San Domingo. The others went down. The one vessel that reached Spain was the leaky little tub calledThe Needle, laden with the Admiral's gold! Thus the same storm that sent many of his San Domingo enemies to a watery grave saved for him the first profits he received from the island. It would be some satisfaction to learn that Ovando was rebuked for his cruelty and stupidity; but there is no record of such a reprimand. Perhaps no one even knew that Ovando had been warned. As for the wholesale shipwreck, people merely looked at such things piously in those days, and said, "It is the will of Heaven!"
When the first lull came in that devastating storm, Columbus found himself south of Cuba among the little "Garden" group. It was the third time he had had a chance to sail along the Cuban coast and discover whether it really was an island, as the natives said, or whether it was the mainland, as he had forced his sailors to swear while on the Cuban voyage when his brain was full of fever. Again he let the problem go unsolved; the object of this fourth voyage was to find the straits leading into the Indian Ocean. Having failed to begin his search from Trinidad by following South America westward, as originally planned, he expected he would come to the straits by following Cuba's southern shore in the same direction, if Cuba, as he hoped, was a great strip of land projecting eastward from the continent. And yet, instead of sailing along Cuba, or returning to the Gulf of Paria and hugging the land westward, he suddenly decided to put out southwest into the open sea. This seems to us a foolish course, for no matter at what point he struck land, how would he know whether to explore to the left or right for his straits? Why this least desirable of three courses was taken neither the Admiral nor his son explained in their diaries. Of course he found land,—the Honduras coast; but of course he had no means of knowing what relation it had either to Cuba or to the land around the Gulf of Paria. Thus the poor Admiral lost his last chance of arriving at any just conclusions of the magnitude of his discovery.
Before reaching this Honduras coast they stopped at the Isle of Pines, where they saw natives in comfortable-looking house boats; that is, huge canoes sixty feet long, cut from a single mahogany tree, and with a roofed caboose amidships. These natives wore plenty of gold ornaments and woven clothing; they had copper hatchets and sharp blades of flint; and they used a sort of money for buying and selling. In other words, it was the nearest approach to civilization that Columbus had ever seen in his new lands. He tried by signs to ask about all these things, and the natives pointed west as the place from which their house boat had come. But so keen was Columbus for "the straits" to the Indian Ocean that even gold could not divert him this time; he refused to proceed due west, and thus failed to discover Mexico, the richest region the Spaniards were ever to find on the North American continent.
From the Isle of Pines, the Admiral put out again into the open sea, southwest, and the moment he had cleared land terrific storms were encountered. Worse still, when he neared the coast which he named Honduras, the currents were so violent that his boats could hardly make headway against them. All July and August thunder and lightning were incessant. Timbers creaked and strained till each minute it appeared as if they must have reached the breaking point. Meanwhile the Admiral was enduring the tortures of rheumatism and could not leave his bed; and so, up on deck where the gales and the waves swept free, he ordered them to rig a little cabin of sailcloth; there he lay and directed every move of his crew. One minute he saw his terrified seamen clinging to masts or slipping over wet decks; another, hauling in the mere shreds of sails that were left. One minute he heard them vowing pilgrimages and penances if only they might be saved; another, denouncing the madman who brought them to these terrible waters.
But the sick man did not heed all this; his business was to bring them out alive if possible; so he kept a clear head and issued his orders. Whenever he became discouraged, he looked across the wave-washed decks to the comforting sight of a slender lad of fourteen, brought up delicately at court, but now turning to with a will and helping the sailors with every rough, heavy task. How proud the Admiral must have felt when he wrote in his journal, "It was as if Fernando had been at sea eighty years!"
At last they rounded a point where better weather greeted them, and in thankfulness Columbus called it Cape Gracias a Dios (Thanks to God). But straightway came another blow. On the very first day when they could catch their breath and cease struggling against wind and current and rain, their spirits were again dashed. A rowboat went near the mouth of a river to take on fresh water, and the river came out with a gush, upset the boat, and drowned the men in it. So our sick Admiral, who was drawing a map of the coast, and had just finished writing "Thanks to God," marks down the rushing river and names it "Rio de Desastre" (River of Disaster).
Just below Gracias Cape the current divided into two, one part flowing west, the other south; this latter was followed. Sailing down the Mosquito Coast they came, toward the end of September, to a pleasant spot which Columbus called "The Garden," or El Jardin (pronounced Khar- deen'), and where the natives appeared to be more intelligent than any he had yet seen. Continuing south, he came to Caribaro Bay, where the people wore many flat ornaments of beaten gold. As if they could detect, from afar, the gold lust in the European eye, the poor creatures brandished their weapons to keep the strange-looking visitors from landing; but it was of no avail. Land they did, and traded seventeen gold disks for just three tinkly bells! The voyagers asked, of course, where the gold came from, and were told from Veragua, a little farther south. For once the sign language was correctly understood. Veragua actually existed. The Spaniards found it just west of the Isthmus of Darien.
Here plenty more gold was seen. "In two days," wrote Columbus, "I saw more indications of near-by gold mines than I had seen in four years in Hispaniola." Not only did he see the precious metal, but he heard that "ten days inland" lived tribes who possessed quantities of gold and silver. And then the natives spoke of something far more wonderful, had Columbus but known it, than gold; for they said, also, that ten days' tramp westward lay a vast sea. This, Columbus concluded, must be the immense river Ganges; and his tired brain began figuring how, by a little "tramping west," and a little river boating, and then some more tramping, a Spaniard could get from Darien back to Spain, provided the Moslems did not murder him on the way!
But he was not seeking for gold on this trip. He did not march ten days inland. He turned a deaf ear to it and to all his importuning crew and went searching for his "strait"; by which steadfastness of purpose he just missed discovering the Pacific Ocean. It has been said that Fate was always a little niggardly with Columbus, and never was it truer than at this moment when she at last deafened his ear to the tale of gold and sent him south.
All November and December he continued coasting along South America. But his greedy crew could never forget the sight of those Veragua natives actually smelting gold. The men became sulky and clamored to go back; and furthermore, the ships were too worm-eaten and too covered with barnacles to proceed. On December 5, in order to take the gold-seekers back to Darien, he reluctantly gave over his search for the passage to the Indian Ocean. But the minute he turned north new gales began to blow. These continued so furiously that in a whole month they progressed barely a hundred miles. All this time they were nearly starved; about the only provisions left were their rotten biscuits and these were, as Fernando tells us, so disgusting to look upon that "many waited till night to eat their sop."
At last the famished party got back to Veragua. Eighty men landed with the idea of forming a settlement under Bartolome Colon. They had the good sense to act in the friendliest manner to the native chief; but he was not the simple-minded creature that Guacanagari was, over in Haiti. He saw at once that they wanted gold, so he nodded obligingly, and indicated by signs that he would lead them to the gold mines. And he did; but they proved to be the small, worked-out mines of a neighboring chief who drove the intruders off. Back they went to the first chief's land and began to build a stockade. The first chief still appeared friendly enough, but a very clever young Spaniard named Diego Mendez happened to prowl through the undergrowth to the Indian village and saw the warriors sharpening their knives and making ready to attack the uninvited settlers. Off rushed Diego to tell Don Bartolome; and he, believing that "the best defense is a sharp attack," rushed to the village, captured the chief and many warriors, and sent them captive aboard the waiting caravels. The chief, however, succeeded in jumping over the side, diving to the bottom, and swimming ashore.
It was then quite dark and none saw him come to the surface, but the next day he had another force ready to defy them. Of his fellow- prisoners who had been thrust into the hold, some managed to throw open a hatchway, overpower the guard, and likewise plunge into the sea. The sailors hurriedly pushed back the hatchway so that no more might climb out on deck; but next morning it was discovered that all those who had not escaped were dead. They had committed suicide rather than be carried off by the ruthless strangers.
All this time there was such a rough sea that no small boats could get ashore from the caravels to obtain news of the eighty colonists under Bartolome. At last a sailor offered to swim to land; when he came back, it was with the news that this settlement had gone the way of Isabella and San Domingo, for half its men had mutinied. The gold did not seem worth fighting for where natives were so hostile that a man could not even pick fruit from a tree and eat it! Columbus saw that there was nothing to do but get the men back on the boats and abandon all thought of colonizing what he had already named Costa Rica (Rich Coast).
But to carry out this decision for a while appeared impossible; the waves were too high for any boat to venture out; but at last the clever Diego Mendez, by lashing two canoes together into a sort of raft, got near enough to shore to rescue Don Bartolome and his men and stores. When Diego had succeeded in this perilous task, his Admiral was so grateful that, in the presence of all the men, he kissed him on both cheeks, a mark of great respect in those days. Ah, if only Christopher had found such a stanch, capable friend earlier in his career!
Ever since they reached the mainland Columbus had been suffering torments with rheumatism. Now to add to his agonies a fever attacked him. Along with these ills, and the murmurings of his hungry men, one of the ships was wrecked; and after they had rescued its men and provisions, and were about to find room for them on another ship, this other ship was discovered to be too worm-eaten and disabled to continue the voyage. Columbus, in all his pain, directed the removal of men and goods to the best two caravels. This done, he started for San Domingo, turning his back on his last chance to find the passage to India—the broad Pacific Ocean—if only he had crossed the isthmus between!
At last they were clear of the most disastrous landing that Columbus had ever made. What you have read is but the bare sketch of a chapter in his life that was crowded thick with misfortunes and even horrors. And yet, strange to say, on this detestable coast is the only settlement in the New World that perpetuates the great discoverer's name, the town of Colon, at the Atlantic terminus of the Panama Canal.
The Admiral's health was now ruined, for fevers, sleeplessness, gout, and eyestrain kept him in constant pain, and at times made even that strong mind of his a little queer and wobbly. But on one point at least it remained alert and lucid,—he still could think out his course clearly. With a view to avoiding the treacherous winds and coastwise currents that had previously wrought such havoc with his ships, he set his rudders due east on leaving Veragua; his idea being to sail first east and then north to San Domingo.
Straightway the crews became alarmed, thinking he meant to return direct to Spain, in spite of the fact that the ships were too rotten for the long trip. But no; the Admiral hoped, besides escaping currents, to mystify them as to the geographical position of the gold coast. Remembering how Alonzo de Ojeda had gone back and reaped riches from the pearl coast, and how Pedro Nino, that captain who brought slaves to Cadiz and sent word that he had brought a cargo of gold, and also been to Paria, Christopher decided to zigzag about in such a manner that no one could ever find his way back to the gold country ten days inland from Darien. Suffering and misfortune were surely telling on the Admiral's mind, else he would never have written this childish note: "None of them [the crew] could explain whither I went nor whence I came; they did not know the way to return thither."
But all the time his men grumbled, and could not understand why they were starting for Spain on crazy, crumbling ships, when San Domingo lay so much nearer. Every day they murmured louder, till at last the Admiral foolishly humored them by heading due north; the result was that he turned too soon and found himself in a new current he had never met before. This current carried them past Hispaniola westward again to those same "Gardens of the Queen." The series of storms that here overtook the two battered little ships were almost as bad as those that met them on their last approach to Hispaniola. Anchors were lost and the men kept the ships from sinking only by the constant use of "three pumps and all their pots and kettles." By the 23d of June they had drifted over to Jamaica. The crews were worn out by their hard work to keep afloat. It seemed as if human endurance could stand no more. Many were badly bruised from being dashed down on the decks like bits of wood before the gales; they had had no dry clothing on for days; their hearts were faint, their stomachs fainter, for they had had nothing to eat and drink for some time but black wormy bread and vinegar. How, we ask ourselves as we sit in our comfortable, solid houses, did they endure it? And yet there was even worse to come!
The Admiral saw that even "three pumps and all their pots and kettles" could not keep the water bailed out of the leaky boats. The only thing he could do was to run his ships aground. The first harbor he tried was so barren on every side that starvation stared them in the face; so they pushed on a little farther, the exhausted men again bailing steadily, till they entered a greener spot, now called Don Christopher's Cove. Not a minute too soon did they reach it. Once the ships were grounded on the sandy beach, the tide soon filled the hulls with water. The weary men had to turn to and build cabins on the forecastles; and here at last they managed to keep dry, and to lie down and rest.
Their first thought was how to get food. The resourceful Diego Mendez offered to tramp over the island and trade whatever personal articles the sailors had left for foodstuffs. In this he was successful; he secured more than food; he exchanged the clothing on his own back for a large canoe and six rowers, and returned by sea. The next aid Mendez rendered the shipwrecked men showed even finer heroism than his lashing the canoes together to rescue Bartholomew. He offered to go in an open rowboat all the way from Jamaica to Haiti and ask Ovando to send a rescue vessel!
Look at a map of the West Indies and see what this offer meant! Two hundred miles to the western point of Haiti, two hundred more to the governor at San Domingo, and this, too, across a sea frequented by perilous hurricanes. It was a magnificent piece of volunteer work! Not one chance in a hundred did Diego Mendez have of reaching his destination, and he knew it; yet he offered to take the risk. One of his shipmates caught some of his valorous spirit and offered to accompany him; and the six native rowers, of course, had no choice but to go.
Mendez was as practical and ingenious as he was brave. He fastened weatherboards along the rim of the canoe to prevent shipping water; he fitted it with a mast and sail, and coated it with tar; and while he was doing it the Admiral wrote a brief, businesslike letter to Ovando, telling of the sad plight they were in; he also wrote a long, rambling letter, full of evidence of feeble-mindedness, to the monarchs. These letters Mendez was to take with him.
But Mendez, to every one's dismay, came back again in a few days,—came back alone and with boat and oars smashed. While waiting at the eastern point of Jamaica for a favorable wind to take them over to Haiti, they were surrounded by hostile natives and captured. The six rowers escaped, and the companion of Mendez was probably killed instantly; but while the savages were debating how to kill and cook Mendez, he managed to dash away, jump in his huge canoe, and push off!
The shipwrecked party felt crushed indeed. Their last hope of rescue was gone; but no—Diego Mendez offered to start all over again, if only Don Bartolome would march with an armed force along the shore till there came a favorable moment in the weather for Diego to push across to Haiti.
This precaution saved the intrepid Diego a second surprise from cannibals; but the passage, after leaving Jamaica, was torture. So intense was the heat, that he and his Indian rowers were forced to take turns jumping overboard and swimming alongside the canoe in order to cool off. The Indians, like children, wanted to drink all the water at once. In spite of warning, they emptied the kegs the second night, and then lay down on the bottom of the canoe, panting for more. Diego and his Spanish companion did the rowing till the Indians were rested a bit. Then Diego brought out two more kegs of water which he had artfully hidden under his seat, gave them all a drink, and set them to work again. Late that second night the moon came up, not out of the sea, but behind the jagged rock that lies ten miles off the western end of Haiti. Blessed sight! What new courage it put into the tired rowers; how eager they were to make the rock by sunrise so as to lie in its shade all that August day of 1503, instead of blistering under the torrid sun in an open boat. Surely, if ever men deserved to lie all day in the shade, it was these brave fellows who were trying to save Christopher Columbus.
From this point Mendez went on with his six rowers till he found the governor; but before going into that matter, let me tell you how proud, and justly proud, Diego Mendez was all his life of this canoe trip. He lived to be an old man (in the city of Valladolid), and when he felt himself nearing the end, he asked his relatives to mark his grave by a tombstone, "in the center of which let a canoe be carved (which is a piece of wood hollowed out in which the Indians navigate), because in such a boat I navigated some three hundred leagues; and let some letters be carved above it sayingcanoa."
Quite right of you, Diego Mendez, to wish posterity to know of your plucky voyage. We hope your relatives gave you the coveted tombstone; and we hope, also, that they carved, on its reverse side, that of all the men who ever served Don Cristobal Colon, you were the most loyal and the most valiant.
The Admiral, in writing an account of what happened on the Jamaica beach while Mendez was seeking aid, says:—
"At the request of the king's treasurer, I took two brothers with me to the Indies—one as captain, the other as auditor. Both were without any capacity for their work, yet became more and more vain. I forgave them many incivilities. They rebelled openly on Jamaica, at which I was as much astonished as if the sun should go black."
Yet why, we ask, should Columbus have been so astonished? Had he ever known much else from those under him but incivility and rebellion?
Ever since Mendez left in August the men had been looking in vain for his return. Autumn and winter and spring wore away, and as the natives had grown tired of feeding them, the shipwrecked crew were now mere skeletons. Of course they blamed the pain-racked Admiral because Mendez had not returned with succor; and of course they were constantly quarreling among themselves. One day the captain who had commanded the vessel that went to pieces near Darien came into the cabin where the sick Admiral lay, and grumbled and quarreled and said he was going to seize canoes from the Indians and make his way to Haiti. It was Francisco Porras, one of the two brothers foisted on Columbus by their relative, the king's treasurer, who wanted to get rid of them.
Porras and forty-one of the discontented voyagers actually started for Haiti, but a short time on the rough sea sent them back ashore. They next formed themselves into a raiding party and outraged the natives in every possible way, falsely saying that they did so by order of the Admiral. This so angered the Indians that they marched down to Don Christopher's Cove, surrounded the beached ships, and threatened to kill every Spaniard there.
It so happened that there was to be an eclipse of the moon that night, and Columbus suddenly recalled it and turned the fact to good use. He told the angry natives that the power that had made the moon and the stars was very displeased with them and would prove it that very night by darkening the moon. The childish creatures decided to wait before attacking and see if the Admiral spoke the truth. When the eclipse really started, they became terrified and sent their chiefs to ask Columbus's pardon; Columbus promptly declared that the light of the moon would return if the Indians would faithfully promise to treat the Spaniards kindly and supply them with food. The credulous creatures hastened to procure it; and as they brought it to the shore, the moon kindly emerged from the black shadow that had covered it. Result, the Indians believed Columbus to be a superior being and from that time on they fed him and his men well. This eclipse was on February 29, 1504.
But even with plenty of food the months of waiting were long and dreary. Had the brave Diego Mendez gone to the bottom? He must have perished, thought the Admiral, for surely if he had reached San Domingo alive even the harsh Comendador Ovando could not have refused to send aid to stranded countrymen on a savage island! But why not, good Admiral? Had not this same Ovando refused to let you enter the harbor of San Domingo last year when the frightful hurricane was gathering?
Yet that was what happened. Ovando, whose heart, if he ever had one, had shriveled to the size of a mustard grain, practically refused to send help. On hearing Mendez' tale he said he was sorry for the Admiral and his men, but he did not say he would send them a ship. Mendez kept at him, telling him very emphatically that the one hundred and thirty stranded Spaniards would certainly die unless soon rescued; still Ovando said he was sorry, but did not offer to send relief. Instead, scoundrel that he was, hedidsend a small caravel, very small indeed, so that it could not accommodate the forlorn men, and could not carry them any provisions. The captain, one of Roldan's rebels, was carefully instructed merely to see if Columbus and his shipmates were still alive, and then to come back and report. The Roldan rebel took his caravel to Don Christopher's Cove, rowed out in a small trailer until within shouting distance of the two rotting hulks on the beach, and yelled out that Governor Ovando was very sorry to learn from Mendez that the Admiral and his party were in trouble, and regretted that he had no ship large enough to send to their rescue. And then the villain sailed back to his villainous master.
Imagine this studied, impudent message to a group of men whose eyes had been straining for months to see a relief ship head their way! Imagine sending such a message to the most illustrious discoverer the world has ever known! A more dastardly bit of cruelty hardly exists in history!
This expedition was kept secret from Diego Mendez, however; and Diego, still storming about because nothing was being done, went among the populace of San Domingo and declared that it was a base, shameful business to leave a sick old man to perish on a savage island, especially when that old man had discovered all these lands for Spain. The people, though many of them had been the sick old man's enemies in bygone days, and though they never suspected the greatness of Columbus, agreed. They even began to clamor that Columbus should be rescued; but it was not until they had clamored long and urgently that their knightly governor sent a ship.
On June 25, 1504, exactly one year after Columbus had beached his two remaining caravels, the relief ship came in sight. "Never in my life," wrote Christopher, "did I experience so joyful a day!" and we may well believe it.
On the 15th of August the party reached San Domingo after their long suffering and hardships. Ovando, seeing how popular sympathy had turned towards the sick Admiral, decided to secure a little popular favor himself out of the incident by inviting the discoverer to stay in his own house, that is, the governor's house, which really had belonged to Columbus. There Columbus learned that the agent appointed to set aside his share of the island profits had not done so; also, as Ovando wanted to punish Captain Porras, who had rebelled on Jamaica, while Columbus preferred to deal with the matter himself, host and guest disagreed.
Too proud to remain an unwelcome guest in Ovando's house, Columbus collected what he could of the money due him, and prepared to go home to Spain. Two vessels were purchased, one for Bartholomew and one for Fernando and himself. Again Columbus proceeded with the familiar business of calking ships, buying provisions, and engaging a crew. In less than a month he was off again from San Domingo on the last voyage he was ever to make. On September 12, 1504, the ships weighed anchor and pointed away from the "western lands" which Christopher Columbus had made known to Europe. The white-haired old man, we may be sure, stood long on deck gazing backward as the scene of his triumph and his humiliation faded from sight. Never again could he undertake a voyage of discovery, for he was now a confirmed invalid. Cipango, Cathay, and "the strait" to the Indian Ocean were not for him; so it was with many a heartburn that his poor old eyes strained toward the fading islands.
His ill luck held out to the end. The first day a sudden storm broke with a crash and carried away his masts. With the utmost difficulty he and Fernando got into a small boat and clambered on board Bartholomew's vessel, the disabled boat being sent back to San Domingo. Still the sea would show him no mercy. Hardly had he crawled into a berth than another tempest came, and another and another, one unending, pitiless fury all across the ocean, till our great man must have thought that old Atlantic hated him for having solved her mysteries. The ship appeared to leap and stagger every minute of the time, and the Admiral was too ill to take command. Bartholomew was doing his best and little Fernando was helping; running down to his father for orders, scurrying up to his uncle with directions. What a struggle for life it was! And it was repeated every single day till November 7, when the crippled little caravel put into the harbor of San Lucar near Cadiz. Christopher Columbus's last voyage was over. No bells pealed out to greet him; no flags were flung to the breeze; but at least he had the glory of knowing in his heart that he had conquered that grim, unknown, menacing Atlantic Ocean which man had feared since the beginning of time.
The merciless storm that had beaten Columbus across the ocean swept over Spain after he landed. He had gone as far north as Sevilla, intending to proceed from there to court, which was being held at Medina del Campo, in Old Castile; but illness overcame him, and for three months he lay bedridden in the Sevillan monastery called Las Cuevas.
Besides his rheumatism, and all the other ills that might arise from two and a half years of exposure and bad food, an event happened, a few days after his return to Spain, that crushed him utterly. This was the death of his best friend, the only one to whom he could look for securing his rights in "the Indies," where Ovando and other enemies had conspired to rob him of his share of profits in the colonies. The great Queen Isabella had passed away on November 26, 1504, in the lonely castle at Medina del Campo. In these two lives, though they had walked such different paths, there was much resemblance. The queen, like Columbus, had known a life of unceasing hard work and anxiety; like Columbus she had striven for a great purpose and had triumphed; her purpose being the driving out of the Moor, and the establishment of Spain as a world power; like Columbus, she had made mistakes, and like Columbus, she had known much sorrow. There was a strong bond of sympathy between these two, and the news of the queen's death was a great blow to the bedridden old man in Sevilla.
Isabella had asked to be buried in Granada, the city she had labored so hard to win for Christianity, and from the day the little funeral party set out from Medina to the day they arrived at Granada, three weeks later, a frightful tempest raged that swept away bridges, flooded rivers, and made roads impassable. All the time poor Columbus, as he lay ill in the monastery, listened to the storm and thought of that mournful party tramping with their solemn burden down to the city where he and Isabella had both gained a victory. Maybe he envied the worker who had passed away first, for he sadly wrote to his son Diego, "Our tired lady now lies beyond the desires of this rough and wearisome world."
But Columbus himself was not yet out of this "wearisome world," and was troubling his weary brain far too much about its petty details. From his fourth voyage he had returned much poorer than he ever expected to be at the end of his sea-going life. The little money he had been able to collect from his plantation in Espanola had been used to equip the ships that brought him home, and to pay his sailors; for this was a point on which he was always most scrupulous. When his ready money was thus used up, the good monks of Las Cuevas had to provide for his necessities until finally the banks advanced money on the strength of his claims against the Crown. After the death of Isabella these claims had small chance of being considered to his full satisfaction, for Ferdinand argued that the contract of Granada was, owing to the vast extent of the new lands, impossible for either the Crown on the one hand or Columbus on the other to fulfill. That rascally Porras, who had caused so much trouble during the Jamaica days, was at court, filling everybody's ears with slanderous stories about the Admiral during the days when the Admiral himself was wearying Ferdinand with a constant stream of letters. Every day that he was able to sit up he wrote long appeals for "his rights" and his property. Not only did he present his claims for recognition and reward, but he told how badly things had been going in San Domingo under Ovando; how the comendador was hated by all for his tyranny and for the favoritism he showed; and how things would soon come to a sorry pass in the colony unless a better governor were quickly appointed; and then, poor man, deluded with the idea that he could set things right, he asked to be reinstated as governor! Good Christopher! can you not realize that your work is done now, for better or worse? Can you not let others solve the great problems across the ocean? Can you not see that you have been greatest of them all, and that nothing more is required of you? And as for all the dignities and titles and properties that should be yours, according to the Granada contract, we know you want them only to pass them on to your boy, Diego; but never mind him; you are leaving him a name that will grow greater and greater through the coming ages; a name that is a magnificent inheritance for any child.
About this time the sick man received a visit which brightened him a great deal, a visit from the man who, never intending any harm, was destined to soon assume the greatest honor which the world could have given Columbus—the honor of naming the newly discovered lands Columbia, instead of America.
Americo Vespucci was an Italian from Florence who, in 1492 or 1493, came to Sevilla to carry on a commercial business. Here he learned of Columbus's first voyage and became eager to make a trip himself to the new lands. It was a Florentine friend of Americo's who fitted out Columbus's second expedition; but this Florentine died before the vessels were ready, and Americo continued the work. More than this; seeing, when the king canceled Columbus's monopoly, a chance for himself to win glory, he hastened off with one of the new expeditions. He claimed that they reached a continental coast on June 16, 1497, which was earlier than Columbus had reached Para, and eight days before Cabot touched at the northern edge of the new continent. We have only Americo's own account of the voyage, and his statements are so inaccurate that many students refuse to believe him the real discoverer of South America.
Of Americo's second voyage, however, we have reliable information, for it was made in the company of Alonzo de Ojeda, that one-time friend of Columbus who later rebelled against him at Espanola. Vespucci sent a letter to a friend in Florence describing his voyages and saying that the continent he had reached "ought to be considered a new world because it had never before been seen by European eyes." His second letter, written from Portugal in September, 1504, to another friend, was used by Martin Waldseemuller, a German professor who was then collecting all the information he could gather to make up a book on geography.
Martin Waldseemuller divided the globe into four large parts or continents—Europe, Asia, Africa, and the newly discovered fourth part, which he suggested "ought to be called America, because Americus discovered it." This professor, like most learned men of his time, wrote in Latin; and in Latin the Italian name Americo is Americus; the feminine form of Americus is America, which was used because it was customary to christen countries with feminine names. As nobody else had yet suggested a name for the vast new lands in the west, the German's christening of 1507 was adopted for the country which should have been called Columbia, in justice to the man who first had the splendid courage to sail to it across the untraveled waters and reveal its existence to Europe. Had Columbus lived to know that this was going to happen, it would have been one more grievance and one more act of ingratitude added to his already long list; but at the time that Americo Vespucci visited his countryman who lay ill in Sevilla, neither one of them was thinking about a name for the far-away lands. They merely talked over their voyages as any two sailors might. As Vespucci was now looked up to as a practical, new-world traveler and trader, and the Admiral was lonely and forgotten, it shows a kind feeling on the visitor's part to have looked him up. When Americo left to go to court, Columbus gave him this letter to carry to Diego, who was still in the royal service:—
* * * * *
My dear son:
Within two days I have talked with Vespucci. He has always manifested a friendly disposition towards me. Fortune has not always favored him and in this he is not different from many others. He left me full of kindest purposes towards me and will do anything he can (at court). I did not know what to tell him to do to help me, because I knew not why he had been called there.
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In February, 1505, a royal order was issued to the effect that Don Cristobal Colon be furnished with a mule to ride to court, then being held in Segovia. To ride a mule in those days necessitated a royal permit, for every Spaniard preferred mules to horses. The government hoped that horses would be in more general use if the use of mules was restricted.
The Admiral's long rest with the monks of Las Cuevas had apparently improved his health, for, as this royal permit proves, he applied for a mule and went to Segovia; from there, that same year, he followed the king to Salamanca and later to Valladolid. Segovia, Salamanca, Valladolid! All bleak, harsh places in winter, and fiery hot ones in summer. Our poor Admiral left pleasant Sevilla and exposed his worn old body to icy blasts and burning suns all for naught; for, as Las Casas writes:—
"The more he petitioned, the more the king was bland in avoiding any conclusion; he hoped, by wearing out the patience of the Admiral, to induce him to accept some estates in Castile instead of his powers in the Indies; but Columbus rejected these offers with indignation."
The Admiral could not be made to see that the Granada contract was impossible; that Ferdinand had signed it only because he never expected the voyage to be successful; and that now, when men were beginning to believe Americo's assertion that a whole continent lay off in the west, it was preposterous that one family should hope to be its governor and viceroy and to control its trade. No, Columbus could only go on reiterating that it was so written down in Granada, away back in April, 1492.
So King Ferdinand merely shrugged his shoulders and referred the matter to a learned council who talked about it a long, long time, hoping the sick old man might meanwhile die; and at last the sick, tired, troublesome old man obliged them, and left all the business of "shares" and "profits" for his son Diego to settle several years after by bringing suit against the Crown. Toward the end of 1505 and the beginning of 1506 the Admiral became very ill. He was in Valladolid, and he realized that he could travel no more; so he secured for himself, or perhaps Diego secured for him, as comfortable a lodging as possible in a street now called the Calle Colon, and determined not to move about any more. We, accustomed to heat and a dozen other comforts in our dwellings, would not consider the house in the Calle Colon, with its cold stone floors and walls, a suitable place for a rheumatic, broken- down old man; but it was the typical solid, substantial residence of its day; and the only pity is that the city of Valladolid permitted it to be torn down a few years ago to make room for a row of flats.
Even in icy Valladolid, winter with its discomfort comes to an end at last. One May day, when spring sunshine was warming up the stone chamber where the old Admiral lay, he called for a pen and put the last touches to his will. All the titles he still hoped to get back were for Diego; and should Diego die without a son, Fernando was to be Admiral; and if Fernando should have no son, the loyal brother Bartholomew, who had shared those horrible days of disappointment and disaster off in the Indies, was to be Admiral. (Brother Diego had no need of an inheritance, for he had become a monk.) Part of the moneys due Columbus, if ever collected, were to be spent on that long-dreamed-of Crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre. His remains were to be taken out to San Domingo. These were a few of the instructions he left.
The next day, May 20, 1506, came another whisper of springtide, and the faithful Diego Mendez, who "navigated three hundred leagues in a canoe," came to see him; his sons, Diego and Fernando, too, and his brother Bartholomew; and as the dim old eyes saw these affectionate faces bending over him, he counseled Diego always to love his younger brother Fernando, as he had always loved Bartholomew; and Diego pressed his hand and promised. Then the old man rested quietly for a time. He was clad in the frock of a Franciscan monk, the same sort of frock that good Friar Juan Perez wore when he welcomed him to La Rabida.