Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 37

Columbus's reception, wherever it was, seems to have been gracious, and he made the most of the amenities of the occasion to picture, in his old exaggerating way, the wealth of the Ophir mines. He was encouraged by the effect which his enthusiasm had produced to ask to be supplied with another fleet, partly to send additional supplies to Espanola, but mainly to enable him to discover that continental land farther south, of which he had so constantly heard reports.

It was easy for the monarchs to give fair promises, and quite as easy to forget them, for a while at least, in the busy scenes which their political ambitions were producing. Belligerent relations with France necessitated a vigilant watch about the Pyrenees. There were fleets to be maintained to resist, both in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coast, attacks which might unexpectedly fall. An imposing armada was preparing to go to Flanders to carry thither the Princess Juana to her espousal with Philip of Austria. The same fleet was to bring back Philip's sister Margaret to become the bride of Prince Juan, in those ceremonials to which reference has already been made.

[Sidenote: 1496. Autumn. A new expedition ordered.]

These events were too engrossing for the monarchs to give much attention to the wishes of Columbus, and it was not till the autumn of 1496 that an appropriation was made to equip another little squadron for him. The hopes it raised were soon dashed, for having some occasion to need money promptly, at a crisis of the contest which the King was waging with France, the money which had been intended for Columbus was diverted to the new exigency. What was worse in the eyes of Columbus, it was to be paid out of some gold which it was supposed that Nino had brought back from the mines of Hayna. This officer on arriving at Cadiz had sent to the Court some boastful messages about his golden lading, which were not confirmed when in December the sober dispatch of the Adelantado, which Nino had kept back, came to be read. The nearest approach to gold which the caravels brought was another crowd of dusky slaves, and the dispatches of Bartholomew pictured the colony in the same conditions of dest.i.tution as before. There was no stimulant in such reports either for the Admiral or for the Court, and the New World was again dismissed from the minds of all, or consigned to their derision.

[Sidenote: 1497. Spring. Columbus's rights reaffirmed.]

[Sidenote: New powers.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FERDINAND OF ARAGON.

[From an ancient medallion given in Buckingham Smith's _Coleccion_.]]

When the spring months of 1497 arrived, there were new hopes. The wedding of Prince Juan at Burgos was over, and the Queen was left more at liberty to think of her patronage of the new discoveries. The King was growing more and more apathetic, and some of the leading spirits of the Court were inimical, either actively or reservedly. By the Queen's influence, the old rights bestowed upon Columbus were reaffirmed (April 23, 1497), and he was offered a large landed estate in Espanola, with a new territorial t.i.tle; but he was wise enough to see that to accept it would complicate his affairs beyond their present entanglement. He was solicitous, however, to remove some of his present pecuniary embarra.s.sments, and it was arranged that he should be relieved from bearing an eighth of the cost of the ventures of the last three years, and that he should surrender all rights to the profits; while for the three years to come he should have an eighth of the gross income, and a further tenth of the net proceeds. Later, the original agreement was to be restored. His brother Bartholomew was created Adelantado, giving thus the royal sanction to the earlier act of the Admiral.

[Sidenote: Fonseca allowed to grant licenses.]

In the letters patent made out previous to Columbus's second voyage, the Crown distinctly reserved the right to grant other licenses, and invested Fonseca with the power to do so, allowing to Columbus nothing more than one eighth of the tonnage; and in the ordinance of June 2, 1497, in which they now revoked all previous licenses, the revocation was confined to such things as were repugnant to the rights of Columbus.

It was also agreed that the Crown should maintain for him a body of three hundred and thirty gentlemen, soldiers, and helpers, to accompany him on his new expedition, and this number could be increased, if the profits of the colony warranted the expenditure. Power was given to him to grant land to such as would cultivate the soil for four years; but all brazil-wood and metals were to be reserved for the Crown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BARTHOLOMEW COLUMBUS.

[From Barcia's _Herrera_.]]

All this seemed to indicate that the complaints which had been made against the oppressive sternness of the Admiral's rule had not as yet broken down the barriers of the Queen's protection. Indeed, we find up to this time no record of any serious question at Court of his authority, and Irving thinks nothing indicates any symptom of the royal discontent except the reiterated injunctions, in the orders given to him respecting the natives and the colonists, that leniency should govern his conduct so far as was safe.

[Sidenote: 1498. February 22. Makes a will.]

Permission being given to him to entail his estates, he marked out in a testamentary doc.u.ment (February 22, 1498) the succession of his heirs,--male heirs, with Ferdinand's rights protected, if Diego's line ran out; then male heirs of his brothers; and if all male heirs failed, then the estates were to descend by the female line. The t.i.tle Admiral was made the paramount honor, and to be the perpetual distinction of his representatives. The entail was to furnish forever a tenth of its revenues to charitable uses. Genoa was placed particularly under the patronage of his succeeding representatives, with injunctions always to do that city service, as far as the interests of the Church and the Spanish Crown would permit. Investments were to be made from time to time in the bank of St. George at Genoa, to acc.u.mulate against the opportune moment when the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre seemed feasible, either to help to that end any state expedition or to fit out a private one. He enjoined upon his heirs a constant, unwavering devotion to the Papal Church and to the Spanish Crown. At every season of confession, his representative was commanded to lay open his heart to the confessor, who must be prompted by a perusal of the will to ask the crucial questions.

It was in the same doc.u.ment that Columbus prescribed the signature of his representatives in succeeding generations, following a formula which he always used himself.

[Sidenote: Columbus's signature.]

.S.

.S.A.S.

X M Y [Greek: Chr~o] FERENS.

The interpretation of this has been various: _Servus Supplex Altissimi Salvatoris, Christus, Maria, Yoseph, Christo ferens_, is one solution; _Servidor sus Altezas sacras, Christo, Maria Ysabel_, is another; and these are not all.

[Sidenote: Unpopularity of Columbus.]

The complacency of the Queen was soothing; her appointment of his son Ferdinand as her page (February 18, 1498) was gratifying, but it could not wholly compensate Columbus for the condition of the public mind, of which he was in every way forcibly reminded. There were both the whisper of detraction spreading abroad, and the outspoken objurgation. The physical debility of his returned companions was made a strong contrast to his reiterated stories of Paradise. Fortunes wrecked, labor wasted, and lives lost had found but a pitiable compensation in a few cargoes of miserable slaves. The people had heard of his enchanting landscapes, but they had found his aloes and mastic of no value. Hidalgoes said there was nothing of the luxury they had been told to expect. The gorgeous cities of the Great Khan had not been found. Such were the kind of taunts to which he was subjected.

[Sidenote: His sojourn with Bernaldez.]

Columbus, during this period of his sojourn in Spain, spent a considerable interval under the roof of Andres Bernaldez, and we get in his history of the Spanish kings the advantage of the talks which the two friends had together.

The Admiral is known to have left with Bernaldez various doc.u.ments which were given to him in the presence of Juan de Fonseca. From the way in which Bernaldez speaks of these papers, they would seem to have been accounts of the voyage of Columbus then already made, and it was upon these doc.u.ments that Bernaldez says he based his own narratives.

[Sidenote: Bernaldez's opinions.]

This ecclesiastic had known Columbus at an earlier day, when the Genoese was a vender of books in Andalusia, as he says; in characterizing him, he calls his friend in another place a man of an ingenious turn, but not of much learning, and he leaves one to infer that the book-vender was not much suspected of great familiarity with his wares.

We get as clearly from Bernaldez as from any other source the measure of the disappointment which the public shared as respects the conspicuous failure of these voyages of Columbus in their pecuniary relations.

[Sidenote: Scant returns of gold.]

The results are summed up by that historian to show that the cost of the voyages had been so great and the returns so small that it came to be believed that there was in the new regions no gold to speak of. Taking the first voyage,--and the second was hardly better, considering the larger opportunities,--Harrisse has collated, for instance, all the references to what gold Columbus may have gathered; and though there are some contradictory reports, the weight of testimony seems to confine the amount to an inconsiderable sum, which consisted in the main of personal ornaments. There are legends of the gold brought to Spain from this voyage being used to gild palaces and churches, to make altar ornaments for the cathedral at Toledo, to serve as gifts of homage to the Pope, but we may safely say that no reputable authority supports any such statements.

Notwithstanding this seeming royal content of which the signs have been given, there was, by virtue of a discontented and irritated public sentiment, a course open to Columbus in these efforts to fit out his new expedition which was far from easy. There was so much disinclination in the merchants to furnish s.h.i.+ps that it required a royal order to seize them before the small fleet could be gathered.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in fitting out the new expedition.]

[Sidenote: Criminals enlisted.]

The enlistments to man the s.h.i.+ps and make up the contingent destined for the colony were more difficult still. The alacrity with which everybody bounded to the summons on his second voyage had entirely gone, and it was only by the foolish device which Columbus decided upon of opening the doors of the prisons and of giving pardon to criminals at large, that he was enabled to help on the registration of his company.

[Sidenote: 1498. Two caravels sail.]

Finding that all went slowly, and knowing that the colony at Espanola must be suffering from want of supplies, the Queen was induced to order two caravels of the fleet to sail at once, early in 1498, under the command of Pedro Fernandez Coronel. This was only possible because the Queen took some money which she had laid aside as a part of a dower which was intended for her daughter Isabella, then betrothed to Emmanuel, the King of Portugal.

[Sidenote: Fonseca's lack of heart.]

So much was gratifying; but the main object of the new expedition was to make new discoveries, and there were many hara.s.sing delays yet in store for Columbus before he could depart with the rest of his fleet. These delays, as we shall see, enabled another people, under the lead of another Italian, to precede him and make the first discovery of the mainland. The Queen was cordial, but an affliction came to distract her, in the death of Prince Juan. Fonseca, who was now in charge of the fitting out of the caravels, seems to have lacked heart in the enterprise; but it serves the purpose of Columbus's adulatory biographers to give that agent of the Crown the character of a determined enemy of Columbus.

[Sidenote: Columbus's altercation with Fonseca's accountant.]

Even the prisons did not disgorge their vermin, as he had wished, and his company gathered very slowly, and never became full. Las Casas tells us that troubles followed him even to the dock. The accountant of Fonseca, one Ximeno de Breviesca, got into an altercation with the Admiral, who knocked him down and exhibited other marks of pa.s.sion. Las Casas further tells us that this violence, through the representations of it which Fonseca made, produced a greater effect on the monarchs than all the allegations of the Admiral's cruelty and vindictiveness which his accusers from Espanola had constantly brought forward, and that it was the immediate cause of the change of royal sentiment towards him, which soon afterwards appeared. Columbus seems to have discovered the mistake he had made very promptly, and wrote to the monarchs to counteract its effect. It was therefore with this new anxiety upon his mind that he for the third time committed himself to his career of adventure and exploration. The canonizers would have it that their sainted hero found it necessary to prove by his energy in personal violence that age had not impaired his manhood for the trials before him!

Before following Columbus on this voyage, the reader must take a glance at the conditions of discovery elsewhere, for these other events were intimately connected with the significance of Columbus's own voyagings.

[Sidenote: Da Gama's pa.s.sage of the African cape.]

The problem which the Portuguese had undertaken to solve was, as has been seen, the pa.s.sage to India by the Stormy Cape of Africa. Even before Columbus had sailed on his first voyage, word had come in 1490 to encourage King Joo II. His emissaries in Cairo had learned from the Arab sailors that the pa.s.sage of the cape was practicable on the side of the Indian Ocean. The success of his Spanish rivals under Columbus in due time encouraged the Portuguese king still more, or at least piqued him to new efforts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VASCO DA GAMA.

[From Stanley's _Da Gama_.]]

[Sidenote: Reaches Calicut May 20, 1498.]