Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 27

CHAPTER XI.

COLUMBUS IN SPAIN AGAIN; MARCH TO SEPTEMBER, 1493.

Peter Martyr tells us of the common ignorance and dread pervading the ordinary ranks of society, before and during the absence of Columbus, in respect to all that part of the earth's circ.u.mference which the sun looked upon beyond Gades, till it again cast its rays upon the Golden Chersonesus. During this absence from the known and habitable regions of the globe, that orb was thought to sweep over the ominous and foreboding Sea of Darkness. No one could tell how wide that sea was. The learned disagreed in their estimates. A conception, far under the actual condition, had played no small part in making the voyage of Columbus possible. Men possessed legends of its mysteries. Fables of its many islands were repeated; but no one then living was credibly thought to have tested its glooms except by sailing a little beyond the outermost of the Azores.

[Sidenote: Palos aroused at the return of Columbus.]

It calls for no stretch of the imagination to picture the public sentiment in little Palos during the months of anxiety which many households had endured since that August morning, when in its dim light Columbus, the Pinzons, and all their companions had been wafted gently out to sea by the current and the breeze. The winter had been unusually savage and weird. The navigators to the Atlantic islands had reported rough pa.s.sages, and the ocean had broken wildly for long intervals along the rocks and sands of the peninsular sh.o.r.es. It is a natural movement of the mind to wrap the absent in the gloom of the present hour; and while Columbus had been pa.s.sing along the gentle waters of the new archipelago, his actual experiences had been in strange contrast to the turmoil of the sea as it washed the European sh.o.r.es. He had indeed suffered on his return voyage the full tumultuousness of the elements, and we can hardly fail to recognize the disquiet of mind and falling of heart which those savage gales must have given to the kin and friends of the untraceable wanderers.

The stories, then, which we have of the thanksgiving and jubilation of the people of Palos, when the "Nina" was descried pa.s.sing the bar of the river, fall readily among the accepted truths of history. We can imagine how despondency vanished amid the acclaims of exultation; how mult.i.tudes hung upon the words of strange revelations; how the gaping populace wondered at the bedecked Indians; and how throngs of people opened a way that Columbus might lead the votive procession to the church. The canonizers of course read between the lines of the records that it was to the Church of Rabida that Columbus with his men now betook themselves. It matters little.

There was much to mar the delight of some in the households. Comforting reports must be told of those who were left at La Navidad. No one had died, unless the gale had submerged the "Pinta" and her crew. She had not been seen since the "Nina" parted with her in the gale.

The story of her rescue has already been told. She entered the river before the rejoicings of the day were over, and relieved the remaining anxiety.

[Sidenote: The Court at Barcelona.]

The Spanish Court was known to be at this time at Barcelona, the Catalan port on the Mediterranean. Columbus's first impulse was to proceed thither in his caravel; but his recent hazards made him prudent, and so dispatching a messenger to the Court, he proceeded to Seville to wait their majesties' commands. Of the native prisoners which he had brought away, one had died at sea, three were too sick to follow him, and were left at Palos, while six accompanied him on his journey.

[Sidenote: 1493. March 30. Columbus summoned to Court.]

The messenger with such startling news had sped quickly; and Columbus did not wait long for a response to his letter. The doc.u.ment (March 30) showed that the event had made a deep impression on the Court. The new domain of the west dwarfed for a while the conquests from the Moors.

There was great eagerness to complete the t.i.tle, and gather its wealth.

Columbus was accordingly instructed to set in motion at once measures for a new expedition, and then to appear at Court and explain to the monarchs what action on their part was needful. The demand was promptly answered; and having organized the necessary arrangements in Seville for the preparation of a fleet, he departed for Barcelona to make homage to his sovereigns. His Indians accompanied him. Porters bore his various wonders from the new islands. His story had preceded him, and town after town vied with each other in welcoming him, and pa.s.sing him on to new amazements and honors.

[Sidenote: 1493. April. In Barcelona.]

[Sidenote: Received by the sovereigns.]

By the middle of April he approached Barcelona, and was met by throngs of people, who conducted him into the city. His Indians, arrayed in effective if not accustomed ornament of gold, led the line. Bearers of all the marvels of the Indies followed, with their forty parrots and other strange birds of liveliest plumage, with the skins of unknown animals, with priceless plants that would now supplant the eastern spices, and with the precious ornaments of the dusky kings and princes whom he had met. Next, on horseback, came Columbus himself, conspicuous amid the mounted chivalry of Spain. Thus the procession marched on, through crowded streets, amid the shouts of lookers-on, to the alcazar of the Moorish kings in the Calle Ancha, at this time the residence of the Bishop of Urgil, where it is supposed Ferdinand and Isabella had caused their thrones to be set up, with a canopy of brocaded gold drooping about them. Here the monarchs awaited the coming of Columbus.

[Sidenote: King Ferdinand.]

[Sidenote: Queen Isabella.]

Ferdinand, as the accounts picture him, was a man whose moderate stature was helped by his erectness and robes to a decided dignity of carriage.

His expression in the ruddy glow of his complexion, clearness of eye, and loftiness of brow, grew gracious in any pleasurable excitement. The Queen was a very suitable companion, grave and graceful in her demeanor.

Her blue eyes and auburn tresses comported with her outwardly benign air, and one looked sharply to see anything of her firmness and courage in the prevailing sweetness of her manner. The heir apparent, Prince Juan, was seated by their side. The dignitaries of the Court were grouped about.

[Sidenote: Columbus before the Court.]

Las Casas tells us how commanding Columbus looked when he entered the room, surrounded by a brilliant company of cavaliers. When he approached the royal dais, both monarchs rose to receive him standing; and when he stooped to kiss their hands, they gently and graciously lifted him, and made him sit as they did. They then asked to be told of what he had seen.

As Columbus proceeded in his narrative, he pointed out the visible objects of his speech,--the Indians, the birds, the skins, the barbaric ornaments, and the stores of gold. We are told of the prayer of the sovereigns at the close, in which all joined; and of the chanted _Te Deum_ from the choir of the royal chapel, which bore the thoughts of every one, says the narrator, on the wings of melody to celestial delights. This ceremony ended, Columbus was conducted like a royal guest to the lodgings which had been provided for him.

It has been a question if the details of this reception, which are put by Irving in imaginative fullness, and are commonly told on such a thread of incidents as have been related, are warranted by the scant accounts which are furnished us in the _Historie_, in Las Casas, and in Peter Martyr, particularly since the incident does not seem to have made enough of an impression at the time to have been noticed at all in the _Dietaria_ of the city, a record of events embodying those of far inferior interest as we would now value them. Mr. George Sumner carefully scanned this record many years ago, and could find not the slightest reference to the festivities. He fancies that the incidents in the mind of the recorder may have lost their significance through an Aragonese jealousy of the supremacy of Leon and Castile.

It is certainly true that in Peter Martyr, the contemporary observer of this supposed pageantry, there is nothing to warrant the exuberance of later writers. Martyr simply says that Columbus was allowed to sit in the sovereigns' presence.

Whatever the fact as to details, it seems quite evident that this season at Barcelona made the only unalloyed days of happiness, freed of anxiety, which Columbus ever experienced. He was observed of all, and everybody was complacent to him. His will was apparently law to King and subject. Las Casas tells us that he pa.s.sed among the admiring throngs with his face wreathed with smiles of content. An equal complacency of delight and expectation settled upon all with whom he talked of the wonders of the land which he had found. They dreamed as he did of entering into golden cities with their hundred bridges, that might cause new exultations, to which the present were as nothing. It was a fatal lure to the proud Spanish nature, and no one was doomed to expiate the folly of the delusion more poignantly than Columbus himself.

[Sidenote: Spread of the news.]

Now that India had been found by the west, as was believed, and Barcelona was very likely palpitating with the thought, the news spread in every direction. What were the discoveries of the Phoenicians to this? What questions of ethnology, language, species, migrations, phenomena of all sorts, in man and in the natural world, were pressing upon the mind, as the results were considered? Were not these parrots which Columbus had exhibited such as Pliny tells us are in Asia?

The great event had fallen in the midst of geographical development, and was understood at last. Marco Polo and the others had told their marvels of the east. The navigators of Prince Henry had found new wonders on the sea. Regiomonta.n.u.s, Behaim, and Toscanelli had not communed in vain with cosmographical problems. Even errors had been stepping-stones; as when the belief in the easterly over-extension of Asia had pictured it near enough in the west to convince men that the hazard of the Sea of Darkness was not so great after all.

[Sidenote: Peter Martyr records the event.]

Spain was then the centre of much activity of mind. "I am here," records Peter Martyr, "at the source of this welcome intelligence from the new found lands, and as the historian of such events, I may hope to go down to posterity as their recorder." We must remember this profession when we try to account for his meagre record of the reception at Barcelona.

That part of the letter of Peter Martyr, dated at Barcelona, on the ides of May, 1493, which conveyed to his correspondent the first tidings of Columbus's return, is in these words, as translated by Harrisse: "A certain Christopher Colonus, a Ligurian, returned from the antipodes. He had obtained for that purpose three s.h.i.+ps from my sovereigns, with much difficulty, because the ideas which he expressed were considered extravagant. He came back and brought specimens of many precious things, especially gold, which those regions naturally produce." Martyr also tells us that when Pomponius Laetus got such news, he could scarcely refrain "from tears of joy at so unlooked-for an event." "What more delicious food for an ingenious mind!" said Martyr to him in return. "To talk with people who have seen all this is elevating to the mind." The confidence of Martyr, however, in the belief of Columbus that the true Indies had been found was not marked. He speaks of the islands as adjacent to, and not themselves, the East.

[Sidenote: The news in England.]

Sebastian Cabot remembered the time when these marvelous tidings reached the court of Henry VII. in London, and he tells us that it was accounted a "thing more divine than human."

[Sidenote: Columbus's first letter.]

A letter which Columbus had written and early dispatched to Barcelona, nearly in duplicate, to the treasurers of the two crowns was promptly translated into Latin, and was sent to Italy to be issued in numerous editions, to be copied in turn by the Paris and Antwerp printers, and a little more sluggishly by those of Germany.

[Sidenote: Influence of the event.]

There is, however, singularly little commenting on these events that pa.s.sed into print and has come down to us; and we may well doubt if the effect on the public mind, beyond certain learned circles, was at all commensurate with what we may now imagine the recognition of so important an event ought to have been. Nordenskiold, studying the cartography and literature of the early discoveries in America in his _Facsimile Atlas_, is forced to the conclusion that "scarcely any discovery of importance was ever received with so much indifference, even in circles where sufficient genius and statesmans.h.i.+p ought to have prevailed to appreciate the changes they foreshadowed in the development of the economical and political conditions of mankind."

[Sidenote: 1493. June 19. Carjaval's oration.]

It happened on June 19, 1493, but a few weeks after the Pope had made his first public recognition of the discovery, that the Spanish amba.s.sador at the Papal Court, Bernardin de Carjaval, referred in an oration to "the unknown lands, lately found, lying towards the Indies;"

and at about the same time there was but a mere reference to the event in the _Los Tratados_ of Doctor Alonso Ortis, published at Seville.

[Sidenote: Columbus in favor.]

While this strange bruit was thus spreading more or less, we get some glimpses of the personal life of Columbus during these days of his sojourn in Barcelona. We hear of him riding through the streets on horseback, on one side of the King, with Prince Juan on the other.

[Sidenote: Reward for first seeing land.]

We find record of his being awarded the pension of thirty crowns, as the first discoverer of land, by virtue of the mysterious light, and Irving thinks that we may condone this theft from the brave sailor who unquestionably saw land the first, by remembering that "Columbus's whole ambition was involved." It seems to others that his whole character was involved.

[Sidenote: Story of the egg.]

We find him a guest at a banquet given by Cardinal Mendoza, and the well-known story of his making an egg stand upright, by chipping one end of it, is a.s.sociated with this merriment of the table. An impertinent question of a shallow courtier had induced Columbus to show a table full of guests that it was easy enough to do anything when the way was pointed out. The story, except as belonging to a traditional stock of anecdotes, dating far back of Columbus, always ready for an application, has no authority earlier than Benzoni, and loses its point in the destruction of the end on which the aim was to make it stand. This has been so palpable to some of the repeaters of the story that they have supposed that the feat was accomplished, not by cracking the end of the egg, but by using a quick motion which broke the sack which holds the yolk, so that that weightier substance settled at one end, and balanced the egg in an upright position.

So pa.s.sed the time with the new-made hero, in drinking, as Irving expresses it, "the honeyed draught of popularity before enmity and detraction had time to drug it with bitterness."