Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery Part 55

[Sidenote: Columbus and the Bank of St. George.]

It will be remembered that, previous to starting on his last voyage, Columbus had written to the Bank of St. George in Genoa, proposing a gift of a tenth of his income for the benefit of his native town. The letter was long in reaching its destination, but a reply was duly sent through his son Diego. It never reached Columbus, and this apparent spurning of his gift by Genoa caused not a small part of his present disgust with the world.

[Sidenote: 1504. December 27.]

On December 27, 1504, he wrote to Nicolo Oderigo, reminding him of the letter, and complaining that while he had expected to be met on his return by some confidential agent of the bank, he had not even had a letter in response. "It was uncourteous in these gentlemen of St. George not to have favored me with an answer." The intention was, in fact, far from being unappreciated, and at a later day the promise became so far magnified as to be regarded as an actual gift, in which the Genoese were not without pride. The purpose never, however, had a fulfillment.

[Sidenote: 1505. January 4.]

On January 4, 1505, the Admiral wrote to his friend Father Gorricio, telling him that Diego Mendez had arrived from the Court, and asking the friar to encase in wax the doc.u.mentary privileges of the Admiral which had been intrusted to him, and to send them to him. "My disease grows better day by day," he adds.

[Sidenote: 1505. January 18.]

On January 18, 1505, he again wrote. The epistle was in some small degree cheery. He had heard at last from Diego. "Zamora the courier has arrived, and I have looked with great delight upon thy letter, thy uncle's, thy brother's, and Carvajal's." Diego Mendez, he says, sets out in three or four days with an order for payment. He refers with some playfulness, even, to Fonseca, who had just been raised to the bishopric of Placentia, and had not yet returned from Flanders to take possession of the seat. "If the Bishop of Placentia has arrived, or when he comes, tell him how much pleased I am at his elevation; and that when I come to Court I shall depend on lodging with his Grace, whether he wishes it or not, that we may renew our old fraternal bonds." His biographers have been in some little uncertainty whether he really meant here Fonseca or his old friend Deza, who had just left that bishopric vacant for the higher post of Archbishop of Seville. A strict application of dates makes the reference to Fonseca. One may imagine, however, that Columbus was not accurately informed. It is indeed hard to understand the pleasantry, if Fonseca was the bitter enemy of Columbus that he is pictured by Irving.

Some s.h.i.+ps from Espanola had put into the Tagus. "They have not arrived here from Lisbon," he adds. "They bring much gold, but none for me."

[Sidenote: Conference with Vespucius.]

[Sidenote: Vespucius's account of his voyage.]

We next find Columbus in close communion with a contemporary with whose fame his own is sadly conjoined. Some account of the events of the voyage which Vespucius had made along the coast of South America with Coelho, from which he had returned to Lisbon in September, 1502, has been given on an earlier page. Those events and his descriptions had already brought the name of Vespucius into prominence throughout Europe, but hardly before he had started on another voyage in the spring or early summer of 1503, just at the time when Columbus was endeavoring to work his way from the Veragua coast to Espanola. The authorities are not quite agreed whether it was on May 10, 1503, or a month later, on June 10, that the little Portuguese fleet in which Vespucius sailed left the Tagus, to find a way, if possible, to the Moluccas somewhere along the same great coast. This expedition had started under the command of Coelho, but meeting with mishaps, by which the fleet was separated, Vespucius, with his own vessel, joined later by another with which he fell in, proceeded to Bahia, where a factory for storing Brazil-wood was erected; thence, after a stay there, they sailed for Lisbon, arriving there after an absence of seventy-seven days, on June 18, 1504. It was later, on September 4, that Vespucius wrote, or rather dated, that account of his voyage which was to work such marvels, as we shall see, in the reputation of himself and of Columbus. There is no reason to suppose that Columbus ever knew of this letter of September 4, so subversive as it turned out of his just fame; nor, judging from the account of their interview which Columbus records, is there any reason to suppose that Vespucius himself had any conception of the work which that fateful letter was already accomplis.h.i.+ng, and to which reference will be made later.

[Sidenote: 1505. February 5.]

On February 5, 1505, Columbus wrote to Diego: "Within two days I have talked with Americus Vespucius, who will bear this to you, and who is summoned to Court on matters of navigation. He has always manifested a disposition to be friendly to me. Fortune has not always favored him, and in this he is not different from many others. His ventures have not always been as successful as he would wish. He left me full of the kindliest purposes towards me, and will do anything for me which is in his power. I hardly knew what to tell him would be helpful in him to do for me, because I did not know what purpose there was in calling him to Court. Find out what he can do, and he will do it; only let it be so managed that he will not be suspected of rendering me aid. I have told him all that it is possible to tell him as to my own affairs, including what I have done and what recompense I have had. Show this letter to the Adelantado, so that he may advise how Vespucius can be made serviceable to us."

[Sidenote: 1505. April 24. Vespucius naturalized.]

We soon after this find Vespucius installed as an agent of the Spanish government, naturalized on April 24 as a Castilian, and occupied at the seaports in superintending the fitting out of s.h.i.+ps for the Indies, with an annual salary of thirty thousand maravedis. We can find no trace of any a.s.sistance that he afforded the cause of Columbus.

[Sidenote: Columbus's effects sold.]

Meanwhile events were taking place which Columbus might well perhaps have arrested, could he have got the royal ear. An order had been sent in February to Espanola to sell the effects of Columbus, and in April other property of the Admiral had been seized to satisfy his creditors.

[Sidenote: 1505. May. Columbus goes to Segovia.]

[Sidenote: August 25. Attests his will.]

[Sidenote: Columbus and Ferdinand.]

In May, 1505, Columbus, with the friendly care of his brother Bartholomew, set out on his journey to Segovia, where the Court then was. This is the statement of Las Casas, but Harrisse can find no evidence of his being near the Court till August, when, on the 25th, he attested, as will appear, his will before a notary. The change bringing him into the presence of his royal master only made his mortification more poignant. His personal suit to the King was quite as ineffective as his letters had been. The sovereign was outwardly beneficent, and inwardly uncompliant. The Admiral's recitals respecting his last voyage, both of promised wealth and of saddened toil, made little impression.

Las Casas suspects that the insinuations of Porras had preoccupied the royal mind. To rid himself of the importunities of Columbus, the King proposed an arbiter, and readily consented to the choice which Columbus made of his old friend Deza, now Archbishop of Seville; but Columbus was too immovably fixed upon his own rights to consent that more than the question of revenue should be considered by such an arbiter. His recorded privileges and the pledged word of the sovereign were not matters to be reconsidered. Such was not, however, the opinion of the King. He evaded the point in his talk with bland countenance, and did nothing in his acts beyond referring the question anew to a body of counselors convened to determine the fulfillment of the Queen's will.

They did nothing quite as easily as the King. Las Casas tells us that the King was only restrained by motives of outward decency from a public rejection of all the binding obligations towards the Admiral into which he had entered jointly with the Queen.

[Sidenote: 1505. August 25. His will.]

[Sidenote: Columbus pleads for his son.]

[Sidenote: Rejects offers of estates.]

Columbus found in all this nothing to comfort a sick and desponding man, and sank in despair upon his couch. He roused enough to have a will drafted August 25, which confirmed a testament made in 1502, before starting on his last voyage. His disease renewed its attacks. An old wound had reopened. From a bed of pain he began again his written appeals. He now gave up all hopes for himself, but he pleaded for his son, that upon him the honors which he himself had so laboriously won should be bestowed. Diego at the same time, in seconding the pet.i.tion, promised, if the reinstatement took place, that he would count those among his counselors whom the royal will should designate. Nothing of protest or appeal came opportunely to the determined King. "The more he was pet.i.tioned," says Las Casas, "the more bland he was in avoiding any conclusion." He hoped by exhausting the patience of the Admiral to induce him to accept some estates in Castile in lieu of such powers in the Indies. Columbus rejected all such intimations with indignation. He would have nothing but his bonded rights. "I have done all that I can do," he said in a pitiful, despairing letter to Deza. "I must leave the issue to G.o.d. He has always sustained me in extremities."

"It argued," says Prescott, in commenting on this, "less knowledge of character than the King usually showed, that he should have thought the man who had broken off all negotiations on the threshold of a dubious enterprise, rather than abate one t.i.ttle of his demands, would consent to such abatement, when the success of that enterprise was so gloriously established."

[Sidenote: Columbus at Salamanca.]

[Sidenote: Mendez and Columbus.]

The Admiral was, during this part of his suit, apparently at Salamanca, for Mendez speaks of him as being there confined to his bed with the gout, while he himself was doing all he could to press his master's claims to have Diego recognized in his rights. In return for this service, Mendez asked to be appointed princ.i.p.al Alguazil of Espanola for life, and he says the Admiral acknowledged that such an appointment was but a trifling remuneration for his great services, but the requital never came.

[Sidenote: Columbus unable to leave Valladolid to greet Philip and Juana.]

There broke a glimmer of hope. The death of the Queen had left the throne of Castile to her daughter Juana, the wife of Philip of Austria, and they had arrived from Flanders to be installed in their inheritance.

Columbus, who had followed the Court from Segovia to Salamanca, thence to Valladolid, was now unable to move further in his decrepitude, and sent the Adelantado to propitiate the daughter of Isabella, with the trust that something of her mother's sympathy might be vouchsafed to his entreaties. Bartholomew never saw his brother again, and was not privileged to communicate to him the gracious hopes which the benignity of his reception raised.

[Sidenote: Negroes sent to Espanola.]

A year had pa.s.sed since the Admiral had come to the neighborhood of the Court, wherever it was, and nothing had been accomplished in respect to his personal interests. Indeed, little touching the Indies at all seems to have been done. There had been trial made of sending negro slaves to Espanola as indicating that the native bondage needed reinforcement; but Ovando had reported that the experiment was a failure, since the negroes only mixed with the Indians and taught them bad habits. Ferdinando cared little for this, and at Segovia, September 15, 1505, he notified Ovando that he should send some more negroes. Whether Columbus was aware of this change in the methods of extracting gold from the soil we cannot find.

[Sidenote: 1506. May 4. Codicil to his will.]

As soon as Bartholomew had started on his mission the malady of Columbus increased. He became conscious that the time had come to make his final dispositions. It was on May 4, 1506, according to the common story, that he signed a codicil to his will on a blank page in a breviary which had been given to him, as he says, by Alexander VI., and which had "comforted him in his battles, his captivities, and his misfortunes."

This doc.u.ment has been accepted by some of the commentators as genuine; Harrisse and others are convinced of its apocryphal character. It was not found till 1779. It is a strange doc.u.ment, if authentic.

[Sidenote: Thought to be spurious.]

Itholds that such dignities as were his under the Spanish Crown, acknowledged or not, were his of right to alienate from the Spanish throne. It was, if anything, a mere act of bravado, as if to flout at the authority which could dare deprive him of his possessions. He provides for the descent of his honors in the male line, and that failing, he bequeaths them to the republic of Genoa! It was a gauge of hostile demands on Spain which no one but a madman would imagine that Genoa would accept if she could. He bestowed on his native city, in the same reckless way, the means to erect a hospital, and designated that such resources should come from his Italian estates, whatever they were.

Certainly the easiest way to dispose of the paper is to consider it a fraud. If such, it was devised by some one who entered into the spirit of the Admiral's madness, and made the most of rumors that had been afloat respecting Columbus's purposes to benefit Genoa at the expense of Spain.

[Sidenote: 1506. May 19. Ratified his will.]

About a fortnight later (May 19), he ratified an undoubted will, which had been drafted by his own hand the year before at Segovia, and executed it with the customary formalities. Its testamentary provisions were not unnatural. He made Diego his heir, and his entailed property was, in default of heirs to Diego, to pa.s.s to his illegitimate son Ferdinand, and from him, in like default, to his own brother, the Adelantado, and his male descendants; and all such failing, to the female lines in a similar succession. He enjoined upon his representatives, of whatever generation, to serve the Spanish King with fidelity. Upon Diego, and upon later heads of the family, he imposed the duty of relieving all distressed relatives and others in poverty. He imposed on his lawful son the appointment of some one of his lineage to live constantly in Genoa, to maintain the family dignity. He directed him to grant due allowances to his brother and uncle; and when the estates yielded the means, to erect a chapel in the Vega of Espanola, where ma.s.ses might be said daily for the repose of the souls of himself and of his nearest relatives. He made the furthering of the crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre equally contingent upon the increase of his income. He also directed Diego to provide for the maintenance of Donna Beatrix Enriquez, the mother of Ferdinand, as "a person to whom I am under great obligations," and "let this be done for the discharge of my conscience, for it weighs heavy on my soul,--the reasons for which I am not here permitted to give;" and this was a behest that Diego, in his own will, acknowledges his failure to observe during the last years of the lady's life. Then, in a codicil, Columbus enumerates sundry little bequests to other persons to whom he was indebted, and whose kindness he wished to remember. He was honest enough to add that his bequests were imaginary unless his rights were acknowledged. "Hitherto I neither have had, nor have I now, any positive income." He failed to express any wish respecting the spot of his interment. The doc.u.ments were committed at once to a notary, from whose archives a copy was obtained in 1524 by his son Diego, and this copy exists to-day among the family papers in the hands of the Duke of Veragua.

[Sidenote: 1506. May 20. Columbus dies.]

This making of a will was almost his last act. On the next day he partook of the sacrament, and uttering, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit," he gasped his last. It was on the 20th of May, 1506,--by some circ.u.mstances we might rather say May 21,--in the city of Valladolid, that this singular, hopeful, despondent, melancholy life came to its end. He died at the house No. 7 Calle de Colon, which is still shown to travelers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE WHERE COLUMBUS DIED.

[From Ruge's _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_.]]

[Sidenote: His death unnoticed.]

There was a small circle of relatives and friends who mourned. The tale of his departure came like a sough of wind to a few others, who had seen no way to alleviate a misery that merited their sympathy. The King could have but found it a relief from the indiscretion of his early promises.

The world at large thought no more of the mournful procession which bore that wayworn body to the grave than it did of any poor creature journeying on his bier to the potter's field.

It is hard to conceive how the fame of a man over whose acts in 1493 learned men cried for joy, and by whose deeds the adventurous spirit had been stirred in every seaport of western Europe, should have so completely pa.s.sed into oblivion that a professed chronicler like Peter Martyr, busy tattler as he was, should take no notice of his illness and death. There have come down to us five long letters full of news and gossip, which Martyr wrote from Valladolid at this very time, with not a word in them of the man he had so often commemorated. Fracanzio da Montalboddo, publis.h.i.+ng in 1507 some correction of his early voyages, had not heard of Columbus's death; nor had Madrignano in dating his Latin rendering of the same book in 1508. It was not till twenty-seven days after the death-bed scene that the briefest notice was made in pa.s.sing, in an official doc.u.ment of the town, to the effect that "the said Admiral is dead!"