Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 15

It is thus beyond dispute that if Columbus entertained any views as to the geographical relations of Greenland, which had been practically lost to Europe since communication with it ceased, earlier in the fifteenth century, they were simply those of a peninsula of northern Europe, which could have no connection with any country lying beyond the Atlantic; for it was not till after his death that any general conception of it a.s.sociated with the Asiatic main arose. It is quite certain, however, that as the conception began to prevail, after the discovery of the South Sea by Balboa, in 1513, that an interjacent new world had really been found, there was a tendency, as shown in the map of Thorne (1527), representing current views in Spain, and in those of Finaeus (1531), Ziegler (1532), Mercator (1538), and Bordone (1528-1547), to relegate the position of Greenland to a peninsular connection with Europe.

There is a curious instance of the evolution of the correct idea in the Ptolemy of 1525, and repeated in the same plate as used in the editions of 1535 and 1545. The map was originally engraved to show "Gronlandia"

as a European peninsula, but apparently, at a later stage, the word Gronlandia was cut in the corner beside the sketch of an elephant, and farther west, as if to indicate its transoceanic and Asiatic situation, though there was no attempt to draw in a coast line.

[Sidenote: Later diverse views.]

Later in the century there was a strife of opinion between the geographers of the north, as represented in the Olaus Magnus map of 1567, who disconnected the country from Europe, and those of the south, who still united Greenland with Scandinavia, as was done in the Zeno map of 1558. By this time, however, the southern geographers had begun to doubt, and after 1540 we find Labrador and Greenland put in close proximity in many of their maps; and in this the editors of the Ptolemy of 1561 agreed, when they altered their reengraved map--as the plate shows--in a way to disconnect Greenland from Scandinavia.

It is not necessary to trace the cartographical history of Greenland to a later day. It is manifest that it was long after Columbus's death when the question was raised of its having any other connection than with Europe, and Columbus could have learned in Iceland nothing to suggest to him that the land of Eric the Red had any connection with the western sh.o.r.es of Asia, of which he was dreaming.

[Sidenote: Discovery of Vinland.]

If any of the learned men in Iceland had referred Columbus once more to the _Heimskringla_, it would have been to the brief entry which it shows in the records as the leading Norse historian made it, of the story of the discovery of Vinland. There he would have read, "Leif also found Vinland the Good," and he could have read nothing more. There was nothing in this to excite the most vivid imagination as to place or direction.

[Sidenote: Scandinavian views of Vinland.]

[Sidenote: Stephanius's map, 1570.]

It was not till a time long after the period of Columbus that, so far as we know, any cartographical records of the discoveries a.s.sociated with the Vinland voyages were made in the north; and not till the discoveries of Columbus and his successors were a common inheritance in Europe did some of the northern geographers, in 1570, undertake to reconcile the tales of the sagas with the new beliefs. The testimony of these later maps is presumably the transmitted view then held in the north from the interpretation of the Norse sagas in the light of later knowledge. This testimony is that the "America" of the Spaniards, including Terra Florida and the "Albania" of the English, was a territory south of the Norse region and beyond a separating water, very likely that of Davis'

Straits. The map of Sigurd Stephanius of this date (1570) puts Vinland north of the Straits of Belle Isle, and makes it end at the south in a "wild sea," which separates it [B of map] from "America." Torfaeus quotes Torlacius as saying that this map of Stephanius's was drawn from ancient Icelandic records. If this cartographical record has its apparent value, it is not likely that Columbus could have seen in it anything more than a manifestation of that vague boreal region which was far remote from the thoughts which possessed him, in seeking a way to India over against Spain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIGURD STEPHANIUS, 1570.]

[Sidenote: Dubious sagas.]

Beside the scant historic record respecting Vinland which has been cited from the _Heimskringla_, it is further possible that Columbus may have seen that series of sagas which had come down in oral shape to the twelfth century. At this period put into writing, two hundred years after the events of the Vinland voyages, there are none of the ma.n.u.script copies of these sagas now existing which go back of the fourteenth century. This rendering of the old sagas into script came at a time when, in addition to the inevitable transformations of long oral tradition, there was superadded the romancing spirit then rife in the north, and which had come to them from the south of Europe. The result of this blending of confused tradition with the romancing of the period of the written preservation has thrown, even among the Scandinavians themselves, a shade of doubt, more or less intense at times, which envelops the saga record with much that is indistinguishable from myth, leaving little but the general drift of the story to be held of the nature of a historic record. The Icelandic editor of Egel's saga, published at Reikjavik in 1856, acknowledges this unavoidable reflex of the times when the sagas were reduced to writing, and the most experienced of the recent writers on Greenland, Henrik Rink, has allowed the untrustworthiness of the sagas except for their general scope.

[Sidenote: Codex Flatoyensis.]

[Sidenote: Leif Erikson.]

Less than a hundred years before the alleged visit of Columbus to Thule, there had been a compilation of some of the early sagas, and this _Codex Flatoyensis_ is the only authority which we have for any details of the Vinland voyages. It is possible that the ma.n.u.script now known is but one copy of several or many which may have been made at an early period, not preceding, however, the twelfth century, when writing was introduced.

This particular ma.n.u.script was discovered in an Icelandic monastery in the seventeenth century, and there is no evidence of its being known before. Of course it is possible that copies may have been in the hands of learned Icelanders at the time of Columbus's supposed voyage to the north, and he may have heard of it, or have had parts of it read to him.

The collection is recognized by Scandinavian writers as being the most confused and incongruous of similar records; and it is out of such romancing, traditionary, and conflicting recitals that the story of the Norse voyages to Vinland is made, if it is made at all. The sagas say that it was sixteen winters after the settlement of Greenland that Leif went to Norway, and in the next year he sailed to Vinland. These are the data from which the year A. D. 1000 has been deduced as that of the beginning of the Vinland voyages. The princ.i.p.al events are to be traced in the saga of Eric the Red, which, in the judgment of Rask, a leading Norse authority, is "somewhat fabulous, written long after the event, and taken from tradition."

[Sidenote: Peringskiold's edition of the sagas.]

Such, then, was the record which, if it ever came to the notice of Columbus, was little suited to make upon him any impression to be a.s.sociated in his mind with the Asia of his dreams. Humboldt, discussing the chances of Columbus's gaining any knowledge of the story, thinks that when the Spanish Crown was contesting with the heirs of the Admiral his rights of discovery, the citing of these northern experiences of Columbus would have been in the Crown's favor, if there had been any conception at that time that the Norse discoveries, even if known to general Europe, had any relation to the geographical problems then under discussion. Similar views have been expressed by Wheaton and Prescott, and there is no evidence that up to the time of Columbus an acquaintance with the Vinland story had ever entered into the body of historical knowledge possessed by Europeans in general. The scant references in the ma.n.u.scripts of Adam of Bremen (A. D. 1073), of Ordericus Vitalis (A. D.

1140), and of Saxo Grammaticus (A. D. 1200), were not likely to be widely comprehended, even if they were at all known, and a close scrutiny of the literature of the subject does not seem to indicate that there was any considerable means of propagating a knowledge of the sagas before Peringskiold printed them in 1697, two hundred years after the time of Columbus. This editor inserted them in an edition of the _Heimskringla_ and concealed the patchwork. This deception caused it afterwards to be supposed that the accounts in the _Heimskringla_ had been interpolated by some later reviser of the chronicle; but the truth regarding Peringskiold's action was ultimately known.

[Sidenote: Probabilities.]

Basing, then, their investigation on a narrative confessedly confused and unauthentic, modern writers have sought to determine with precision the fact of Norse visits to British America, and to identify the localities. The fact that every investigator finds geographical correspondences where he likes, and quite independently of all others, is testimony of itself to the confused condition of the story. The soil of the United States and Nova Scotia contiguous to the Atlantic may now safely be said to have been examined by competent critics sufficiently to affirm that no archaeological trace of the presence of the Norse here is discernible. As to such a forbidding coast as that of Labrador, there has been as yet no such familiarity with it by trained archaeologists as to render it reasonably certain that some trace may not be found there, and on this account George Bancroft allows the possibility that the Norse may have reached that coast. There remains, then, no evidence beyond a strong probability that the Norse from Greenland crossed Davis'

Straits and followed south the American coast. That indisputable archaeological proofs may yet be found to establish the fact of their southern course and sojourn is certainly possible. Meanwhile we must be content that there is no testimony satisfactory to a careful historical student, that this course and such sojourn ever took place. A belief in it must rest on the probabilities of the case.

Many writers upon the Norseman discovery would do well to remember the advice of Ampere to present as doubtful what is true, sooner than to give as true what is doubtful.

"Ignorance," says Munoz, in speaking of the treacherous grounds of unsupported narrative, "is generally accompanied by vanity and temerity."

[Sidenote: Did Columbus hear of the saga stories?]

It is an obvious and alluring supposition that this story should have been presented to Columbus, whatever the effect may have been on his mind. Lowell in a poem pardonably pictures him as saying:--

"I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale Of happy Atlantis; and heard Bjorne's keel Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland sh.o.r.e, For I believed the poets."

But the belief is only a proposition. Rafn and other extreme advocates of the Norse discovery have made as much as they could of the supposition of Columbus's cognizance of the Norse voyages. Laing seems confident that this contact must have happened. The question, however, must remain unsettled; and whether Columbus landed in Iceland or not, and whether the bruit of the Norse expeditions struck his ears elsewhere or not, the fact of his never mentioning them, when he summoned every supposable evidence to induce acceptance of his views, seems to be enough to show at least that to a mind possessed as his was of the scheme of finding India by the west the stories of such northern wandering offered no suggestion applicable to his purpose. It is, moreover, inconceivable that Columbus should have taken a course southwest from the Canaries, if he had been prompted in any way by tidings of land in the northwest.

CHAPTER VIII.

COLUMBUS LEAVES PORTUGAL FOR SPAIN.

[Sidenote: Columbus's obscure record, 1473-1487.]

It is a rather striking fact, as Harrisse puts it, that we cannot place with an exact date any event in Columbus's life from August 7, 1473, when a doc.u.ment shows him to have been in Savona, Italy, till he received at Cordoba, Spain, from the treasurer of the Catholic sovereigns, his first gratuity on May 5, 1487, as is shown by the entry in the books, "given this day 3,000 maravedis," about $18, "to Cristobal Colomo, a stranger." The events of this period of about fourteen years were those which made possible his later career. The incidents connected with this time have become the shuttlec.o.c.ks which have been driven backward and forward in their chronological bearings, by all who have undertaken to study the details of this part of Columbus's life. It is nearly as true now as it was when Prescott wrote, that "the discrepancies among the earliest authorities are such as to render hopeless any attempt to settle with precision the chronology of Columbus's movements previous to his first voyage."

[Sidenote: His motives for leaving Portugal.]

[Sidenote: Chief sources of our knowledge.]

The motives which induced him to abandon Portugal, where he had married, and where he had apparently found not a little to reconcile him to his exile, are not obscure ones as detailed in the ordinary accounts of his life. All these narratives are in the main based, first, on the _Historie_ (1571); secondly, on the great historical work of Joam de Barros, pertaining to the discoveries of the Portuguese in the East Indies, first published in 1552, and still holding probably the loftiest position in the historical literature of that country; and, finally, on the lives of Joo II., then monarch of Portugal, by Ruy de Pina and by Vasconcellos. The latter borrowing in the main from the former, was exclusively used by Irving. Las Casas apparently depended on Barros as well as on the _Historie_. It is necessary to reconcile their statements, as well as it can be done, to get even an inductive view of the events concerned.

The treatment of the subject by Irving would make it certain that it was a new confidence in the ability to make long voyages, inspired by the improvements of the astrolabe as directed by Behaim, that first gave Columbus the a.s.surance to ask for royal patronage of the maritime scheme which had been developing in his mind.

[Sidenote: Columbus and Behaim.]

Just what const.i.tuted the acquaintance of Columbus with Behaim is not clearly established. Herrera speaks of them as friends. Humboldt thinks some intimacy between them may have existed, but finds no decisive proof of it. Behaim had spent much of his life in Lisbon and in the Azores, and there are some striking correspondences in their careers, if we accept the usual accounts. They were born and died in the same year.

Each lived for a while on an Atlantic island, the Nuremberger at Fayal, and the Genoese at Porto Santo; and each married the daughter of the governor of his respective island. They pursued their nautical studies at the same time in Lisbon, and the same physicians who reported to the Portuguese king upon Columbus's scheme of westward sailing were engaged with Behaim in perfecting the sea astrolabe.

[Sidenote: Columbus and the king of Portugal.]

The account of the audience with the king which we find in the _Historie_ is to the effect that Columbus finally succeeded in inducing Joo to believe in the practicability of a western pa.s.sage to Asia; but that the monarch could not be brought to a.s.sent to all the t.i.tular and pecuniary rewards which Columbus contended for as emoluments of success, and that a commission, to whom the monarch referred the project, p.r.o.nounced the views of Columbus simply chimerical. Barros represents that the advances of Columbus were altogether too arrogant and fantastic ever to have gained the consideration of the king, who easily disposed of the Genoese's pretentious importunities by throwing the burden of denial upon a commission. This body consisted of the two physicians of the royal household, already mentioned, Roderigo and Josef, to whom was added Cazadilla, the Bishop of Ceuta.

Vasconcellos's addition to this story, which he derived almost entirely from Ruy de Pina, Resende, and Barros, is that there was subsequently another reference to a royal council, in which the subject was discussed in arguments, of which that historian preserves some reports. This discussion went farther than was perhaps intended, since Cazadilla proceeded to discourage all attempts at exploration even by the African route, as imperiling the safety of the state, because of the money which was required; and because it kept at too great a distance for an emergency a considerable force in s.h.i.+ps and men. In fact the drift of the debate seems to have ignored the main projects as of little moment and as too visionary, and the energy of the hour was centered in a rallying speech made by the Count of Villa Real, who endeavored to save the interests of African exploration. The count's speech quite accomplished its purpose, if we can trust the reports, since it rea.s.sured the rather drooping energies of the king, and induced some active measures to reach the extremity of Africa.

[Sidenote: Diaz's African voyage, 1486.]

[Sidenote: Pa.s.ses the Cape.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTUGUESE MAPPEMONDE, 1490.

[Sketched from the original MS. in the British Museum.]]

In August, 1486, Bartholomew Diaz, the most eminent of a line of Portuguese navigators, had departed on the African route, with two consorts. As he neared the lat.i.tude of the looked-for Cape, he was driven south, and forced away from the land, by a storm. When he was enabled to return on his track he struck the coast, really to the eastward of the true cape, though he did not at the time know it. This was in May, 1487. His crew being unwilling to proceed farther, he finally turned westerly, and in due time discovered what he had done.

The first pa.s.sage of the Cape was thus made while sailing west, just as, possibly, the mariners of the Indian seas may have done. In December he was back in Lisbon with the exhilarating news, and it was probably conveyed to Columbus, who was then in Spain, by his brother Bartholomew, the companion of Diaz in this eventful voyage, as Las Casas discovered by an entry made by Bartholomew himself in a copy of D'Ailly's _Imago Mundi_. Thirty years before, as we have seen, Fra Mauro had prefigured the Cape in his map, but it was now to be put on the charts as a geographical discovery; and by 1490, or thereabouts, succeeding Portuguese navigators had pushed up the west coast of Africa to a point shown in a map preserved in the British Museum, but not far enough to connect with what was supposed with some certainty to be the limit reached during the voyages of the Arabian navigators, while sailing south from the Red Sea. There was apparently not a clear conception in the minds of the Portuguese, at this time, just how far from the Cape the entrance of the Arabian waters really was. It is possible that intelligence may have thus early come from the Indian Ocean, by way of the Mediterranean, that the Oriental sailors knew of the great African cape by approaching it from the east.